Spare the rod …

Sally Lieber, D-Calif.

(Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.)

Perseverance is more efficacious than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they stand together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.

– Plutarch

And so California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber once more has introduced anti-spanking legislation, taking again the incremental approach so favored by the left. More important, however, than her bill's incrementalism are its techniques of association and extension.

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To wit: Assembly Bill 2943 would ban infliction of corporal punishment employing (but not limited to) "a stick, a rod, a switch, an electrical cord, an extension cord, a belt, a broom, or a shoe." Somehow, she omitted the cat o' nine tails.

(Earlier in my life I would have wished Lieber to specify as well "a fraternity paddle." For as a child, despite my mother's admonitions, I persisted in walking up the banister rail rather than the stairs of our two-story house. When she caught me in these hazardous gymnastics, her concern for my safety would induce her to swat me on the posterior with the flat of her hand. Due to my robust physique, this corporal emphasis had virtually no effect. Matters changed when I engaged in some juvenile horse trading and obtained a frat paddle, which she recognized immediately – and correctly – as the suasional leverage required.)

Further, the bill would ban "throwing, kicking, burning or cutting a child, striking a child with a closed fist, striking a child under three years of age on the face or head" and "vigorous shaking of a child under three years of age."

If this has you nodding in agreement, consider that existing laws on child abuse already have all of this covered. And if you think this doesn't really cover simple spanking, you will find – if you comb through the underbrush of this weedy legislation – strictures against "any person who, under circumstances or conditions other than those likely to produce great bodily harm or death, willfully causes or permits any child to suffer, or inflicts thereon unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering …" Transgressions of this section would be determined by some unspecified "finder of fact."

You see, in the minds of Ms. Lieber and her allies, corporal punishment at the benign end of the spectrum is qualitatively the same as corporal punishment at its malign extreme. Thus, the flat of the hand is the same as the back of a hairbrush; the back of a hairbrush is the same as a broomstick; a broomstick is the same as a bullwhip; and so on. If you follow this logic out, any corporal punishment becomes the moral equivalent of waterboarding.

(At the other end of the spectrum, those who believe waterboarding is not torture are in danger of justifying any torture. Thus, the rack could become merely high-amplitude, therapeutic traction, and the iron maiden a natural extension of acupuncture. Like Lieber's reasoning, this displays an evident lack of common sense.)

Ms. Lieber, being childless herself, no doubt falls into the error common among barren women, the belief that children are simply small adults, amenable to logic, rational argument and explanation. On the other hand, she regards responsible parents as children and is quite willing to employ the corporal powers of the state to bend them to her will: Lock them up; subject them to the mental suffering of "parenting classes" etc.

Knowing what we do about the cosseting and cooing accorded our state legislators, we're inclined to believe Ms. Lieber has herself regressed to the level of a spoiled child. She was legislatively spanked with the defeat of her anti-spanking bill last year, so she has stamped her little foot and defied the public will by introducing it again. If she doesn't get all she wants, like the tantrum-throwing child she hopes to get a portion of it. And, like the tantrum-throwing child, she hopes to get all of what she wants, little by little.

Alas! In this lawmaker's case, it's way too late for the edifying application of the fraternity paddle.

Logical inconsistencies: Why is it that Democratic presidential candidates always talk about fighting? Al Gore was going to fight for those of us in the middle and lower economic strata. John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) talked about fighting for us so much we thought he might engage in actual fisticuffs. Now Hillary Clinton is telling us what a fighter she is. Too bad they don't want to fight the war on terror.

Then, take Sen. Joe Biden (as Henny Youngman would have said, "please"): Last week he was repeating the Demo refrain that if we weren't spending all that money on the war in Iraq, we could spend it on marvelous social programs at home. Let us remind the smarmy senator from Delaware: You (yes you) are financing that war with deficit spending. The money doesn't really exist.

Wait a minute: This makes the senator either ignorant or a liar. You decide.