The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

When I was growing up in the 1990s, I always knew my mom’s parents had spanked her about every day. I knew this both because she also spanked us every day and because it was clear how much she did not want to. She had been taught by people who enjoyed it, and enjoy it she did not.

Every time, I felt her parents’ trauma being passed on to me, and I always knew it was less than what they got. That’s how I know she did better than them, and I know they also did better than their folks before them.

Mom spanked, both because she didn’t know what else to do, and because church made sure of it.

About parenting, church taught her family everything they knew. Church told them everything they believed. And they always did their best to choose a church where they already believed what the church was going to tell them. Their eternal salvation depended on it.

When people in the United States speak of ‘parents’ rights,’ in general, what they mean is, parents have rights and kids don’t.

Specifically, what they mean is, parents have a right to hit their kids as they see fit, and they get this right from God, and it is their duty even if they don’t want to. Especially if they don’t want to.

When people stand up for ‘parents’ rights,’ what they are standing up for is a culture of domestic violence by parents toward children in order to discourage self-exploration and self-expression. In fact what they are creating is a culture where children are slavishly obedient to authority figures and divide themselves naturally into predators and prey.

Sadly, this is not an historic novelty. It is an historic norm, and ‘God’ only knows how many times it’s been forcibly reasserted since Deuteronomy.

The Bible says you need to hit your kids as much as necessary to make them turn out right, and Christianity depends on your believing the Bible. Therefore, Christianity itself depends on you hitting your kids a certain amount.

Christianity evolved to explain bloodshed in places where bloodshed was common and accepted both inside the home and out. Indeed, bloodshed was regarded as a kind of divine currency to predict the future and make up for mistakes. Therefore, the more violence there is in the world, the more people are vulnerable to the ideas of Christianity and the more Christianity appeals to the vulnerable.

Christianity predicts world war and global catastrophe with absolute glee. It regards a totalitarian prison state as an eternal necessity. It relies on the doctrine of hell to keep people as fearful of God as possible and as ignorant of everything else. Its prophecies depend for fulfilment on ignorance, poverty and repression: the real trinity behind Christianity’s success. Generation by generation kids asking difficult questions are silenced lest the difficulty of the questions become too great for the faithful to bear.

Inevitably, the culture of violence between parents and children leads to a culture of violence between children and one another, and since bullying makes children feel vulnerable it serves to further reinforce Christianity.

The less you spank your kids, the less frightened they are going to be of a fate worse than death. The less frightened your kids are, the less they will be impressed by confidence men, the less they will be intimidated by bullies, the more honest and reasonable adults they will become.

My mom’s father was a gay man who lived and died in the closet. Her mother was a sociopath. They used each other to put on the appearance of the American dream. They used their religion to repress their emotions they couldn’t understand. They spanked their kids to repress their kids’ emotions, too, and to keep them from understanding their emotions either, because church told them this was the right thing to do.

Families that spank every day are still common in the United States, common enough that they have their own political lobbying organizations, but they are no longer the norm. As long as I was getting spanked every day, I knew my family was abnormal for it.

But had we been part of Robert Green Ingersoll’s audience in 1877, spanking every day would have made us normal. That shows, I think, both Ingersoll’s legacy, and that of Christianity.

Thankfully, ‘traditional family values’ are no longer the norm in the US. But if Christian supremacists have their way, they will be forced on us once again.

Background art

Expulsion of Adam and Eve, John Faed, 1880.
St. Jerome Saving Sylvanus and Punishing the Heretic Sabinianus, Raphael, 1502, meisterdrucke.ie.
The Inquisition, Joaquin Pinto, unknown date, Wikimedia Commons.
Leaflet about a witch burning in Derenburg, 1559. R. Decker, Hexen, p. 52
A Roundel of Brahma, Unknown author, 1850.
Napoleone Bonaparte’s Tomb, 2016, User Livioandronico2013: Wikimedia Commons.
The School of Athens, Raphael, 1511.
Titanic (1997).
Roadway to Lindsey Lake in David Crockett State Park, Christopher Hollis, 2008, Wikimedia Commons.

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