Excuse my ignorance, but which part of the anatomy exactly is he referring to with the word "fern?"

I can think of few issues that create the kind of internal conflict for me that this one does.

I was raised in a conservative household, where spanking was employed as part of a system of authority that taught me to think twice before acting in selfish ways. In hindsight, I feel grateful that my parents instilled this form of behavioral "governor" in me from a very early age. It's very, very hard to imagine any other method being as effective.

As an adult, I have rejected my parents' conservative politics and spiritual beliefs, as well as their simplistic Manichean worldview. I recoginize positive reinforcement is a real, effective method of creating healthy behaviors in children. Yet, I watch my friends who have children -- parents struggling with doubts (and even shame) instilled in them regarding discipline and punishment -- flailing about in futile attempts to rein-in their children's behavior that's rapidly growing more out-of-control with each passing month. These are parents who seem utterly consumed with the process of child-rearing: analizing, re-analizing and re-re-analizing their every interraction with their kids, talking about it in support-groups (some of which unreservedly characterize spaking as "child abuse"), exhausting themselves in continual attempts to talk their children through their misbehavior ... and who, still, come to me talking about how, during family get-togethers with their parents and in-laws, their children mortify them with their disobedient behavior. Their mothers take my friends aside and tell them they "need to do something about their children." The defiance and disobedience I observe in my friends' kids seems to be growing like a pandemic.

We've been told "parenting using fear is bad." And I observe these miserably unhappy households ... where there may be no punishment, but there certainly is no happiness either, in neither parents nor children.

This is why I am beginning to see this absolutist view of spanking as "child abuse by any other name" as something just as reductionist as the either/or, good-versus-evil simplicities of my parents and their fellow travellers in conservative dogma. And, it's why I appreciate this article's resisting of such easy conclusions.

... would be the spelling. Perhaps anal-izing was a Freudian slip? Apologies.

Of course you can't believe it, because you haven't lived through it, like I have and others who have posted here have discussed as well. Until you've lived a life (in the South in my case, but there are always pockets everywhere) where you are raised to believe that blacks, homosexuals, non-subservient women, and Democrats in general are not only "other" but practically space aliens, you can't understand how voting for such a person could be beyond consideration for a huge number of Americans.

I want to hope. I do hope. But I hope with cynicism and caution. Changing this cultural tide has proven to be harder than changing the direction of a barreling Titanic, given the vested interests who insist on continually feeding the boilers (and holding the bridge crew hostage) decade after decade. Let us hope that metaphor doesn't come to its corresponding conclusion.

Two small words, Cary, that can never convey the degree of appreciation I have for your insight, your sensitivity and humanity, wit and intelligence. But they are the only words right now.

Thank you for everything you have given me, and all of us. That love and karma you have spread with your life's work is coming back to you now, my friend. We are sending it your way, from the four corners of the Earth.