Friday Night Free for All

Is a light smack exactly the same as a beating? The two descriptors are typically used as if they are, so we need to spend $10 million dollars to decide if we are going to let the left continue to mangle the way we think and the way we communicate.

If the referendum comes out in our favour, then ordinary people are capable of discerning the difference, and are rejecting the idea that a parent that smacks a child is the same as a "partner" that beats a child. They are rejecting the idea that one drink makes an alcoholic; that killing in self defence is the same as pre-meditated murder.

It's a dangerous society when lawmakers can't be bothered to legislate the differences, and that is what started this. Perhaps a dozen cases since the 1980's managed to successfully argue that the defendant used "reasonable force" for the purposes of correction when they hit a child. Whilst we haven't had those cases fully examined in the public arena, it has always been assumed that the force was unreasonable, and that therefore the judge got it wrong or was senile.

Rather than correct the judge, or clarify the law, the aim was to make any and all physical punishment illegal. However, you cannot legislate common sense, and you cannot legislate loving parents. You can however destroy them. Oops, collateral damage. This will become the law of unintended consequences, like many laws these days.

It's Friday. Whilst we wait for the referendum, drop in and have a drink (it's BYO tonight, but the thought is there).

Good evening one and all.