"Spanking" your child isn't the same as beating him up. It's far worse.

This article was first posted on Reddit, and then mirrored by Everything Voluntary.

Starting from the most fundamental basics: "spanking" (a term used to describe a certain particular form of initiation of violence) is an initiation of violence, and therefore it is an obvious and open violation of the NAP.

There is no difference whatsoever, not morally and not even legally either, between "spanking" and battery. If you hit another person -- whether adult or child, with an open hand or a closed fist -- it is the same action regardless of how you do it or who your victim is, because you initiated the violence. Calling it a different word doesn't change the observable reality of the action.

So, right there, every single ancap, every single person, should know (or, at least, those of us who have the sufficient integrity not to lie to ourselves) "spanking" is wrong. It literally shouldn't take much thought, but in the past few days I have regrettably had to endure particularly venal excuses concocted deliberately to reject this obvious conclusion. Thorougly venal stuff like "children are little slaves", or "the NAP couldn't possibly apply to children, because otherwise every parent aggresses against their child when protecting him".

In addition to that, "spanking" is also extremely cowardly. Unlike initiating violence against a six-foot-four person (who could break your back in one self-defense swing), child abusers choose to violate the NAP against people far smaller and weaker than them, who literally cannot defend themselves against such an aggression. Their actions literally terrorize a defenseless creature who cannot fight back.

Finally, "spanking" is also corrupt. It is corrupt because the use of the word "spanking" as an euphemism for hitting children, is deliberately done to falsely conceal the nature of violent, aggressive, immoral and cowardly actions against defenseless people.

I have far more respect for a person who openly states "You know, I beat children up". Such a person, at least, isfar more honest than the cowards to say "I spank my kids" or "spanking is good" or "but how are we to educate our children, if we aren't allowed to spank?".

So there you have it: "spanking" is evil, it is cowardly, and it is corrupt. I don't know how more clear-cut this issue can get.

This place -- indeed, the whole planet -- is far too small for us to harbor child abusers, much less hypocritical rats who try and rationalize their child abuse.

You might have noticed an absence of "science", "proof", "evidence" or "studies" in my post. This is intentional. Though the studies on child abuse are copious and conclusive, those of you who aren't child abusers don't need the evidence, and those who are child abusers will resist believing it anyway.

As I'm sure you have personally witnessed already in the past days, child abusers are resistant to reason. Their compulsion for child abuse does not respond to logic and evidence. They are doing what they do, either because they want to clear their own consciences of the irreparable damage they have inflicted, or because they want to bury the anxiety and dread that comes with recognizing that they were abuse victims (what we call Livestockholm Syndrome when the abuser is the State). Their whole intervention in defense of child abuse is easily reduced to the irrational plea "make this not be true".

The practical corollary to this observation, you are already very familiar with: One simply can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into; this is particularly true for child abusers, since they were usually beaten and broken into their corrupt and malevolent belief ("they turned out alright", I'm sure they will tell you).

That leaves us with only one option, and one option only: Those of you who have a conscience, join me in deliberately and openly ostracizing defenders and rationalizers of child abuse. Test, ask questions, attempt to persuade, and if your interlocutor resists reason and continues to advocate child abuse, triage, ostracize and move on. You must do this. You may not be able to change their minds, but you sure as hell are able to derail their participation, and you can definitely highlight their defense of child abuse as (rightly) abominable. If we are not to act to defend and uphold your values, then who will?

The root of statism is quite literally the doublethink of "the NAP for my in-group, and aggression for the rest". It has always been like that -- "the NAP for everybody but Negroes", or "for everybody but women", or "for everybody but foreigners". "The NAP for everybody but children" is not how a free society will arise. We will never have a non-violent society, ever, I swear to you on my life, until and unless we treat the most defenselessmembers of our society with the same respect and according to the same principles that we openly advocate and demand for ourselves and everybody else.

I'm done entertaining stupidities and venalities from child abusers who want to pretend that what they do isn't abusive. You should be done too.