Its About F@#%ing Time!!

Well somebody in this country has finally grown some balls and gotten their sense back when it comes to unruly children. http://www.newsweek.com/id/195119?Gt1=43002

Mikes Vacation is naturally against "child abuse". However we are worldly enough to make a distinction between good old fashioned discipline, and "abuse".

Mikes Vacation also believes that our national movement against parents and schools spanking kids was started by the pharmaceutical manufactures that make drugs such as "Ritalin".

When it becomes illegal to spank your kids, the only method to control them is to drug them. Hence our recent industry of drugging kids with mood and behavior altering drugs to get them to behave, as opposed to augmenting positive re-enforcement with a good whipping from time to time.

A good friend of Mikes Vacation has proposed very strong and through arguments against the corporal punishment of children. He contends that the only time a child needs to be whipped, or spanked is when a parent has failed in their duties to teach and monitor a child. He contends that violence begets violence, and that statistics have shown that violence and abuse has been a major contributory factor to the millions of citizens now incarcerated in our jails and prisons.

The man making this argument to Mikes Vacation is a highly educated, and intelligent man. His opinions are not to be taken lightly. While sometimes he is wrong, it is not usually in matters of science. His opinions in the areas of human behavior are frequently correct, but not absolutely so. Needless to say he is credible enough to have his opinions take very seriously.

What has happened to our country in the past 30-40 years in the general area of gentility, or lack of it, could be likened to a power vacuum.

For a long time in America we had a problem with a very few "exotic" cases of child abuse being far and away beyond what could be construed as "discipline" or even "harsh discipline". We had a situation where a mentally or emotionally unstable parent could abuse a child at will, with virtually no recourse.

During the Late sixties and early seventies the hippie movement's use of mind altering drugs, and Hollywood's unveiling of films portraying children as "evil" or "possessed" led to an unprecedented string of "exotic abuse/murder" cases of children being killed by their emotionally unstable parents.

During this same time period Americas began to become even more mobile and transient in regards to their geographic locale than ever before.

This set the stage for public outcry against "abuse of children". Mikes Vacation is against the abuse of children. We naturally endorse the gentle and patient rearing of children.

However what has become of our well meaning movement to "not abuse" children has not been effectively replaced our old standard methods of spanking kids when they needed it.

Let me explain a little further. Prior to 1970 or so, virtually all of America was raised in the same general fashion. Disrespect to parents, teachers, and elders was a universally accepted taboo. Violating this taboo led to corporal punishment. As a general rule, this didn't lead to death, torture, or prison, it just led to a sassy kid getting whipped and brought back into line.

Since we have entered the period of criminalizing the spanking of children, we have not entered into what I would call the "pseudo-Utopian intellectual period" of child rearing.

Mikes Vacation tends to agree with the gentleman who believes that children could very well be raised without ever spanking them, and that two intelligent intellectuals with all the time in the world to supervise their child could raise a prodigy, without ever raising their hand once to that same child. Mikes Vacation both agrees with this "concept" and we like the idea of it.

HOWEVER: This modern forward thinking model of child rearing is not likely to be adopted in America anytime soon. The fact is that we are a country of very average people. These same people are too tired, too simple, and often too sub-collegiate to be able to function as "cerebral and educated" non-violent parents.

As a result of the criminalization of parents "spanking" children when necessary and the lack of a "universally implemented " non-violent model for child rearing our nations children have been raised in a "power vacuum" where they have been allowed to turn into little, and now large monsters.

The only method left to parents is to take their child to a psychiatrist and get "drugs" prescribed to help control unruly behavior. Is this our American dream, a nation of chemically restrained children? Is this better than an occasional whipping? I don't think so.

Who profits from our modern child abuse laws? Children as a group do not profit from being allowed to grow up without respect and consequences for their actions. Parents do not profit from suffering delinquent and unruly kids. Society itself doesn't profit from having our newest generation imbibe on pills to control their behavior. Perhaps there are some children in our country who don't die of abuse because of our new laws against the spanking of kids.

How do we quantify the days, months and years of our nations youth lost to reform school and ultimately jail because of their unchecked delinquency and emotional maladjustment? Is this not a price of our reliance on behavior altering drugs as opposed to an occasional whipping?

But lets consider for a moment who actually profits from a national policy criminalizing the spanking of our children. THE DRUG COMPANIES PROFIT!!!!!

THE DRUG COMPANIES ARE BEHIND THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT TO "PROTECT CHILDREN FROM ABUSE"!!!!!

Mikes Vacation believes that it will ultimately be proven that Drug Companies have financed the lobbying of our politicians to criminalized the corporal punishment of kids. They are the sole entities that have profited from our modern "no-spank" model of child rearing.

In summary, America had a very effective child rearing model up to the early seventies. We built a society that raised industries, and won wars, we engendered generations of heros, intellectuals and artists. The bulk of all that is great about America was raised under this model.

Our current model of drug pushing, and no spanking will not breed great men. It will only produce slackers with no souls.

We as a society need to construct a model, at least as productive as the one used to make this nation great. We need to be wary of the predators that would abuse this new model, predators such as drug companies and crooked politicians.

You can't replace a system that has been effective for 300, 500, or even 5000 years with something dreamed up in the marketing office of a drug company.