In Reply to: alternatives to spanking posted by damaged on October 14, 2006 at 21:27:22:
Together with the post of Had a Swedish Girlfriend make a compelling argument about physical abuse of children, even by parents. My memories of the only spanking I received from my mother is not as light as Mr. Don's. I am very sorry for any and all of the times I was ever physically hard on my children. I now view any physical act against a child as senseless and mean, regardless of any reasoning and attempt to justify it. In fact, the only way to explain any physical imposition on a child is calling it by its name: abuse.
I didn't read the posts about the Torah on slavery but did some of the comments by Jo and others and think they are right on. One of the most interesting aspects of human nature is the way we justify our actions. We fight any notion that may make us see ourselves in bad light, spankings and abuse is only one of those delicate points.
Regardless of our actions, we as humans, will reason ways that will prevent us from counting ourselves from being part of groups of people we despise or combat. Some societies even pass laws to allow their people to behave a certain way, churches and other groups do the same. That's why FF missionaries are not cheap prostitutes by God's Whores. This is less demeaning than just plain money procurers.
We are taught that evil monsters physically abuse children but we are not them because we correct them, we only apply a certain degree of extra physical stress on their bodies to trigger some memory through which they will remember something.
On a way, it is fascinating to observe how otherwise nice people adopt for themselves different standards than those they use to evaluate others. It is actually plain darn scary.