You got chocolate in my peanut butter!
No! You got peanut butter on my chocolate!
(Insert Authoritarian Approach)
Lets outlaw Peanut Butter!
(Alternate Authoritarian Approach)
Lets outlaw Chocolate but not Peanut Butter!
The fallacy here is that what works for one does not work for another. But like acptulsa said, a kitten of ANY age still has the capacity of learning. What differs is the level of teaching being appropriate for the age. If a kitten wants to bite, pull your hand away, but if the kitten is becoming excessively agressive, then there are appropriate courses to teach it that such behavior is not going to be accepted by those it lives with. Hence, a light tap on the nose, which is probably physically equivilant of a spanking to a child.
The problem is both extremism and people not being able to mind their own business. If a child is going to be disciplined by taking six swats upside the skull with a baseball bat at full on major league baseball force, they arent going to survive the very first strike, and definitely wont survive the next. That is the most extreme thing I can think of that I believe everyone would agree is excessive. At the same time, there is that old proverb of "Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child" which also has merit. We've all met these types of children and know full well what they grow up to become. Thus, the opposite end of the extreme of zero discipline is also not a viable solution. There is an acceptable range of what can be done without becoming extreme or abuse. But as we continue to try to use Government as a replacement for parents that are right fucking there, we narrow this window until what is acceptable is outside of the range of what works.
There are already laws on the books for the most extreme cases of child abuse. Forcing a child to live in a closet for weeks and months at a time I think we can all agree is abuse because it is excessive. We dont need to pass new laws for every little fucking thing. When we even think that this type of solution is going to work, we legislate away our morality, our dignity, and our liberty.
Always look to the future.
What is the next thing that is going to be considered abuse? Your kid is five pounds over / under weight? You should spend a year in jail because you are a negligent parent! Is that what we want? It is pretty damn obvious that we do because we keep opening up the doors that leads to your arrest for giving your child toast with butter on it.
The Free Man does not need the intervention of Government to raise a child. And nosy know-it-all neighbors who want to tell everyone else whether they should be "allowed" to eat peanut butter, or to eat chocolate accomplishes nothing but alienates the child from the community, which can be taken to the extremes just as anything else can be, and has the potential to cause much deeper psychological trauma on the child than a simple spanking ever could, and it all results because people wont mind their own fucking business.
This is what happens when you have Zero Privacy. Every busy body on the planet will tell you how to live your life.
