That rational, logical, research-based position will satisfy some, but it will not satisfy anti-spanking activists, who would have the government tell parents how they may and may not discipline their children. They see no difference between two open-handed swats to a child’s rear end and a brutal beating.

These are some of the extremists Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had in mind when he wrote that “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.”

—John Rosemond, On Spanking Children

Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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