Liberal Senator thinks spanking is the cause of all violence

I'm not even kidding.

So she wants to make it a crime to spank your kids. That's right: get a criminal record for it. And mandatory, government parenting classes.

Read her nutty speech here. My favourite part is when she cites an animal biologist to say no animals are naturally violent -- it's taught.

As if carnivores in nature would naturally negotiate with their dinner-to-be, as opposed to hunting them.

As if Paul Bernardo was a peacenik saint who was tipped over by a spanking when he was five.

It's cultish stuff, seriously.

Here's my column:

A Liberal senator proposes to criminalize spanking in Canada.

Celine Hervieux-Payette has introduced bill S-204 that, if passed into law, would expose parents to assault charges for spanking a child, QMI Agency’s Brian Lilley reports.

She would repeal Criminal Code section 43, which protects parents and teachers “using force by way of correction toward a pupil or child,” as long as that force is “reasonable under the circumstances.”

Anti-spanking radicals challenged that law all the way to the Supreme Court. But in 2004 that court upheld its constitutionality. Child abuse remains criminal, of course, but spanking is fine as long as it is a “genuine effort to educate the child, poses no reasonable risk of harm that is more than transitory and trifling, and is reasonable under the circumstances.”

The Supreme Court of Canada is liberal, especially on social issues. You’ve got to go to the hard left — the anti-parent left, the government-is-your-nanny left — to be further left than they are.

Which Hervieux-Payette certainly is.

She’s the same senator who wants a law forcing Canadian companies to have 50% of their directors be women.

It’s not surprising that someone who thinks the government is a better parent than actual parents are, also thinks the government is better at running businesses than actual businesses are.

So what would Hervieux-Payette’s enlightened Canada look like? Her speech promoting her bill is revealing.

Canadian parents who spank, even in accordance with the Supreme Court’s rule about gentleness, are “violent,” she says.

But she goes much further, and weirder. She claims spanking is “the root cause of the violence in our society.”

Poor Clifford Olson. Poor Paul Bernardo. If only their parents hadn’t spanked them, those two misunderstood boys would have grown up to spend their lives doing yoga and burning incense candles. They’re the true victims, and their parents are the true criminals.

Hervieux-Payette actually cites an animal biologist as an authority that violence is not a natural human tendency — it’s imposed on us by others, like spanking parents. She’s even blames aggressive sports. Oh, how many genocides could have been prevented without spanking or football!

Hervieux-Payette rails against Christianity, specifically denying its doctrine of original sin, and its belief that all boys and girls have some evil tendencies within them that have to be controlled. According to her, “parental authority” is just a Christian superstition. Badly behaved children, especially ages three to six, simply need to be persuaded “through argument in order to bring them under control.”

Are you ready to take mandatory parenting classes from her?

She calls obedience and virtue “old ideals” and points to psychologists who highlight more modern, scientific ideas of child-rearing, like “democratic relations within the family.”

This is tinfoil hat stuff. It’s cult stuff.

Hervieux-Payette says “beliefs are slow to die and churches do not intend to surrender so readily to science.”

But it’s not the church that spanks kids. It’s parents. And it’s not the church that upheld the law in 2004. It’s our liberal Supreme Court.

Who is this woman? Some backbench crank?

Hardly. Until recently she was the Liberal party’s lieutenant for Quebec, and leader in the Senate.

Michael Ignatieff must disown her and this bill.