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