I don't think parents have a fundamental right to hit their children. What about children's rights? And I don't like to analyze things in terms of rights, anywa

I don't think parents have a fundamental right to hit their children. What about children's rights? And I don't like to analyze things in terms of rights, anyway. But I don't think spanking should be banned today in the USA. I don't want to make 90% of families (or whatever the number is) into criminals overnight, and make the debate go underground. A ban wouldn't stop spanking; we need to persuade more people first. I do expect that some time in the future we will rightly ban spanking. I wouldn't object to the State taking steps to discourage spanking, but I don't think the State is really any good at persuasion. Their anti-drug and anti-smoking campaigns and stuff like that don't work. What we need is for people to start believing that rationality isn't just for doing science, and maybe your job, it's for everything including parenting and relationships. And to learn something about which ways of arguing and thinking are capable of finding better conclusions than you started with, and which aren't.