What's Wrong With Spanking in Public Schools?

Due to a recent interest in public views about child rearing, and particularly with innovative new disciplinary methods, I recently came across a USA Today editorial opposing corporal punishment in public schools. It ought to go without saying that I have a profound dislike for corporal punishment of any kind applied to anyone. Not being a parent myself, by the grace of God, I stop short of presenting this dislike as a conviction, but--as an ardent opponent of violence properly understood and in all its forms--the prospect of hitting a child in a way which is typically logically unconnected to the offense being corrected is repugnant to me. In addition to being nonsensical and to the multiplicity of more taxing but more benign forms of discipline that could function as alternatives, corporal punishment teaches that violence is an appropriate corrective, an ethical and pragmatic fallacy that has far-reaching personal, political, and global consequences when children inevitably undergo the metamorphosis into citizens.

Yet, with all that being said, something about this article immediately rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn't even the pathetic and predictable public declamation of everyone's favorite ideologically backward whipping boy, the South, in the second sentence. It also wasn't the specious attempt by the writer to make an entire system culpable in the excessive of a few extreme incidents. It wasn't even the shameless way the bugaboo of racism was conjured. Okay, so maybe it was all those things--as good points poorly argued are a pet peeve of mine--but not first and not most. This is what really troubled me:

When children are struck by school personnel, they learn a couple of lessons, neither of them good: One is that it's OK for non-parental authority figures to hit them. Another is that violence is an acceptable response to bad behavior.

Why should that bother me? After all, that sounds very much like my primary objection to the corporal punishment of children. Here's the problem: both of those "bad" lessons are true lessons which will serve children in our society. After all, I wonder if the writer is aware that the police, the most prominent domestic "non-parental authority figures," still employ force as a means of social control, even in the thirty one states and over one hundred foreign countries that have disallowed corporal punishment in schools. We may think ourselves civilized in America because we don't cane vandals or maim thieves, but our civil servants still strike, mace, wrestle, and electrocute suspected criminals for refusing to comply with official directives. As for violence acting as "an acceptable response to bad behavior," the continuing presence of capital punishment domestically and military action internationally prove that violence is still very prominent in our culture as a means for suppressing unacceptable behavior.

Perhaps the editorial writer and the enlightened residents of the Northeast would like it if all of that weren't true, if there were no violent action by the police, no armed conflict internationally, and no capital punishment. As a matter of fact, I'd like those things. But saying that for children to learn that the world is controlled by means of violence is a bad lesson is disingenuous. It is perhaps the most basically true lesson they can learn in school. If they'd like, opponents of corporal punishment can change the way the world works so that the life lessons they admit corporal punishment teaches are no longer true. If, however, the idea is to alter education in an attempt to rework the world order into their ideological image...well, wouldn't that be shocking.

Don't Feed the Bears

And by bears, I of course mean homeless people in Philadelphia:

The city of Philadelphia is being sued in federal court for its ban on feeding the homeless in city parks.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday on behalf of a group of community and church organizations who have distributed meals for years in parks along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

The area is also home to many Philadelphia museums and tourist attractions. The city moved in March to ban the feedings.

Homeless advocates say the city wants to keep the homeless hidden. But businesses in the area complain about health hazards and crime in the feeding areas.

Mayor Michael Nutter says the city wants to get the homeless indoors where they can get medical and other services.

Signs have been posted prohibiting outdoor feeding. Repeat violators are subject to $150 fines.

I realize that there may be legitimate concerns on the part of the city, but the humane course of action seems to be to provide indoor places for the homeless to be fed and receive "medical and other services" before penalizing the charitable groups that are doing the best they can with what's available to them.

Cow News

Speaking of beef behaving badly, apparently a pair of lascivious cattle decided to hold up traffic outside of Pittsburgh in order to have sex in the middle of a highway, causing a traffic jam and outshining the parkway pig.

"It's right in the construction zone so it's making a big mess out there," Trooper John Corna said.

The bull rebuffed any notion of interruptus and police had to summon Pennsylvania Farm Bureau personnel. They coaxed the animals into custody.

In other news, while digging up the link to this amusing article using the search terms "cow sex road," an article about the Queen's diamond jubilee was the fifth result. I'm not sure what that's about, but congratulations to her majesty nonetheless.

Breaking News: Vatican Opposes Gay Marriage...

...as part of a broader agenda to systematically oppress and silence women. That, at least, is the position of some unnamed "critics" in a USA Today article. The story is a response to a recent Vatican censure of a book on sexual ethics by nun and Yale professor Margaret A. Farley.

After two years of study, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a "notification" on Farley's Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, saying it contradicts Catholic doctrine on key issues such as gay marriage, homosexuality and divorce.

Coming just days after U.S. nuns rejected the Vatican's reasoning for a wholesale makeover, and a year after U.S. bishops sanctioned another nun theologian, the condemnation of Farley is the latest example of what critics see as a top-down attempt to muzzle women's voices and an obsession on sexual ethics.

Curiously, there is no report of critics taking aim at Farley for her obsession with sexual ethics--after all, she is the one who published a book on sexual ethics--but the Vatican, in evaluating and responding to the work, reveals its deep and abiding obsession. More importantly, this notification is clearly an attempt to silence women and has nothing to do with the long-standing and well known opposition of the Roman Catholic Church to homosexuality. I mean, who could have expected that the Vatican would react negatively to the argument "that 'masturbation … usually does not raise any moral questions at all,' and that homosexual acts 'can be justified' following the same ethics as heterosexual ones." Apparently Farley could, as she admits that some of her views are "not in accord with current official Catholic teaching."

Nevertheless, there is clearly a vast, institutionalized misogynistic mechanism at work here. Luckily we have feminism to protect women from facing the same standards of ethical orthodoxy as men.

The Lord's Church in Nigeria

Though overshadowed, perhaps rightly, by the considerably more lethal plane crash, Christians should also be aware that on the same Sunday a suicide bomber attacked a church in the Nigerian city of Bauchi resulting in the death of twenty of the congregants and the injury of forty five others. Nigeria is a Christian majority nation, though only just with Muslims making up most of the remainder of the population. In the North, where Bauchi is located, the population is almost exclusively Muslim, and Boko Haram--the Islamic group responsible for the Christmas Day bombings in Nigeria--have claimed responsibility for the bombing. There were, allegedly, three other assaults planned for the same day, but they were intercepted.

Perhaps more disturbing than the attack itself is the accusation by the local chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria that not all of the deaths were the direct result of the explosion:

At a press conference in Bauchi, the state’s chairman of CAN, Rev. Lawi Pokti, alleged: “Twenty Christians and a Muslim have been confirmed dead. Twelve died from the bomb blast while eight were shot dead by the military personnel drafted to the scene to maintain law and order.”

Pokti, accompanied by CAN executives, condemned the bombing and described it as evil, dastardly and satanic.

According to him, “though CAN appreciates the state government’s efforts in responding quickly to the attack and attending to the injured victims by taking them to hospital, we condemn in strong terms the extra-judicial killing and injuring of the unarmed and aggrieved relations of the victims of the bomb blast.”

He added: “Women and children have sustained various degrees of injuries from the military bullets. As far as the civilised world is concerned, we see this as an extra judicial killing.”

Officials are denying any involvement in any of the injuries, going so far as to say, "no soldier or policeman fired at any person," but the nature of the relationship between separatist Islamic groups and the government of northern states at least makes the CAN's accusation possible if never conclusively demonstrable. Regardless, it is important that Christians worldwide, but particularly in the West where complacency is so easy a temptation, remain mindful of the ongoing suffering of the Lord's church throughout the world and lend our eager and familiar support to them in whatever ways we can.

Who Owns Jerusalem, Historically?

I believe very strongly that the artificial drawing of new national lines by benignly disinterested world powers is idiotic. A popular form of postbellum recreation for Western countries during the colonial period on through the early twentieth century, the foolhardy attempt to make new countries has led to countless wars in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Of all the manifest stupidity that has been splattered across the pages of history, there has been no more boneheaded move on the part of the wise world rulers than the creation of an independent Israel in 1948. Recognizing this is, of course, not the same as suggesting that the state of Israel, now in existence, should be as blithely destroyed or that the Palestinian people have a right to any or all of the land that was given to the Jews after World War II. It is, primarily, a historical observation, a looking back into time and performing the academic equivalent of a facepalm in view of our forefathers shortsightedness and naivete.

Unfortunately, however, the ability of so many to distinguish between historical and political realities has apparently been stunted by decades of war and rhetoric that grasps hopelessly at historical straws to justify political actions. Consider this passing, and thoroughly unnecessary, aside in Seyyed Hossein Nasr's brief introduction to (and apology for) Islamic civilization, Islam:

But [Arabs] remain of central importance in the ​ummah​ because of their historical role in the Islamic world...and the significance for all Muslims of the sacred sites of Islam that lie within the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia, and old Jerusalem, which was historically in Palestine but has been occupied by Israel since 1967.

Subtle, Nasr. Not to mention irrelevant to your point, which was, ostensibly, to explain the ongoing significance of the Middle East and Arabs to the global Muslim community. Most unfortunate of all, however, when evaluating a work of supposed history, is the ease with which Nasr states as a matter of incontestable fact that "historically" Jerusalem has been in Palestine. Perhaps in the primary sense of the term Palestine prior to 1988 as a geographical determination, Jerusalem has always been in Palestine and, of course, still is. As for who has controlled Jerusalem, I would hope that Nasr--as with every thoughtful intelligent person with access to Wikipedia--would realize that if anyone can ever be said to have owned it, then just about everyone can be said to have owned it. So, in the interest of injecting some much needed history in to the question of who "historically" Jerusalem belonged to, let's construct a timeline beginning with David, the first Israelite who "occupied" the city:

• ca. 1000 BC - David seizes Jerusalem
• 586 BC - After more than four centuries of Israelite occupation, Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Babylonians
• 539 BC - Cyrus the Great and his Medo-Persians take control of all Babylonian holdings, soon after allowing the exiled Israelites to repatriate and be ruled, alternatively, by Israelite governors and Israelite theocrats
• 332 BC - Alexander conquers and the region is held by his Ptolemaic successors
• 198 BC - The rival Hellenistic Seleucids take control of the region
• 167 BC - The Israelites resume autonomous control after the Maccabean Revolt
• 63 BC - Pompey captures Jerusalem for Rome
• AD 614-629 - Jerusalem is briefly in the hands of the Sassanid Persians before returning to the Romans (now known to history as Byzantines)
• AD 637 - Jerusalem is captured by the Rashidun Caliphate, representing the first time in more than one thousand years that Jerusalem was under the control of non-Jewish Semites (e.g. Arabs)
• AD 1099 - The First Crusade results in the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
• AD 1187 - Saladin takes Jerusalem back for the Ayyubids
• AD 1229 - Frederick II treats to return control of most of Jerusalem to the Kingdom of Jerusalem
• AD 1244 - Mercenary Turkic Khwarezmians take Jerusalem and raze it to near total destruction
• AD 1247 - The Ayyubids resume control of Jerusalem
• AD 1250 - The Mamluks overthrow the Ayyubids, thus inheriting Jerusalem
• AD 1517 - The Ottomon Turks take control
• AD 1917 - The British win control of Jerusalem as part of World War I and are entrusted with its care
• AD 1948 - The State of Israel declares independence and begins the process of occupying of Jerusalem

Was that easy enough to follow? If not, realize that the above is the condensed and sanitized version. It omits the centuries of infighting between various Arab states, a number of momentarily successful Jewish revolts, the constant battling between Persian and Egyptian Muslim groups, and so on. The result ought to be a humble refusal to say that anyone has a legitimate historical claim to Jerusalem. The Jews are in the wonderful position, historically, of being the first and last group to hold it (unless there are some Jebusites who protest), but that reality is historically incidental. If people really want to give Jerusalem back to its previous owner, then pass it back to the British. After all, they won it fair and square the way territorial lines used to be drawn. Of course, the problem there is that the British don't want it. We could go back another generation and give it to the Turks, ethnically and geographically distinct from the Palestinians with their "historical" claim to the territory, who ruled it before the British in the form of Ottomans and Mamluks. Of course, Turkey has enough problems of it's own without adopting Levantine ones. One of those problems happens to be a restless Kurdish population. Turkey might consider signing over their rights to Jerusalem to the Kurds who ruled it before the Turks did in the form of the Ayyubid Caliphate.

In truth, a historical evaluation of who has ruled Jerusalem throughout its history shows both Jews and Arabs (which most modern, self-identifying Palestinians are) are both in the ethnic minorities. Turks, Persians, Greeks, and Romans occupied it with at least equal frequency. In fact, in the above timeline, Jews and Arabs each have only about four centuries each in the form of the Davidic and Rashidun dynasties respectively. If either party wants to make a historical argument on the grounds of frequency of occupation or proximity to the present, they will find other groups with stronger cases based on the offered criteria.

What's truly important to remember, however, is that deciding national lines on the basis of historical arguments is a modern novelty, not to mention a modern fantasy. It's lucky for Americans that people who owned our land one thousand years ago (which was the last time an Arab empire ruled over Jerusalem) can't just demand to have it back. For millennia, borders have been determined in the same bloody way. It's awful, it's immoral, but it's effective. Moreover, it is precisely what we are seeing played out in the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict. UN resolutions and negotiated borders cave under the tantalizing prospect of land won a the expense of life. What will ultimately decided the conflict--if we can pretend, after seeing the above timeline, that the conflict will ever be ultimately resolved this side of the eschaton--will be who ends up with the biggest guns in the best positions when everyone gets bored of fighting. War and politics are a nasty business (perhaps the same nasty business variously named). Let's try not to sully the noble discipline of history by impressing it into their service armed conflict.

Unorthodox Teen Discipline Prompts Criticism

In a story surprising equally for the unapologetic ingenuity of its protagonist and the gross oversensitivity it uncovers in the general public, ABC reports that one woman has taken her fight against inappropriate social media behavior deep into enemy territory:

At first, it might seem like your typical case of modern parental discipline: A Texas mom has prohibited her 12-year-old daughter from using the photo-sharing site Instagram after she caught the girl posting a photo of herself holding an unopened bottle of vodka with a caption that read “I sure wish I could drink this.”

But it’s what ReShonda Tate Billingsley did next that has people buzzing: Billinglsey, a prominent Houston-area author, had her daughter post a new picture of herself to Instagram earlier this month holding a sign reading, “Since I want to post photos of me holding liquor, I am obviously not ready for social media and will be taking a hiatus until I learn what I should (and) should not post. Bye-bye.”

Billingsley then posted the same photo – in which only the lower half of her daughter’s face was visible – to her own personal Facebook page and it has since gone viral. It has seen 11,000 shares from Facebook alone, not to mention attention from various media outlets.

It was a clever move on the part of Billingsley and effective, apparently so much so that the daughter begged for a spanking as an alternative. What I love about this, particularly when compared to corporal punishment, is there is a logical relationship between the "crime" and the "punishment." Most obviously, if children abuse social media, they should have their access to social media restricted. Moreover, with the theoretically limitless reach of online behavior, the act of forcing her daughter to own up to her mistakes is equally essential. When I committed some indiscretion against someone, some public act of bad behavior, as a child, I was required to apologize to all those who were effected by said behavior. As Instagram was the arena of her malfeasance, then it is appropriate that she should own up to her mistakes through in the same place.

For some reason, however, the "public shaming" has apparently made Billingsley the target of serious criticism. Aside from the presumptuousness of child-rearing professionals and the public at large meddling in other people's parenting in ways they would never permit in their own families, the real problem with this is the labeling of the second picture as the embarrassment rather than the first. It is precisely this misconception that Billingsley's choice of discipline can serve to correct. The shameful act is not and should not be taking public responsibility for one's actions and accepting the consequences of them, as Billingsley made her daughter do. It is the careless and deeply inappropriate act of a twelve year old announcing to the world how much she would love to be able to drink hard liquor. When the child's aberrant behavior ceases to shock and the act of publicly taking responsibility offends, it becomes clear that the world is hopelessly confused about what is truly shameful.

And just so that we can all gain a little perspective, let's all take a look at this mother in Mexico City who also employed an unorthodox punishment:

A mother in Mexico has been arrested on suspicion of gouging out the eyes of her 5-year-old son during a ceremony...The mother is believed to have removed the eyes with her bare hands because the boy refused to close them during the ceremony, police told a news conference.