Thanks for sharing. I realize it takes a lot of courage to reveal such personal details of your life, but you may very well encourage someone that reads your comment and this is the point. I am a strong advocate of mandatory parenting education.

As a person who has had the great good fortune to read many life histories I can say your comment rings so true and is a perfect expression of what children experience. Unfortunately, they don't dare give free expression to their honest thoughts. Thanks so much for sharing your experience and insights.

I snip articles that advocate the progressive viewpoint and post them on my Twitwall. Twitwall is a way to promote content to the twitter community and I have about 1600 followers on my twitwall. I use the headline of an article as the Twit that leads my readers to the excerpt, usually the lead paragraphs. It is like baiting a hook. From where they land they can read the entire article. Twitwall has a way to send the same twit at intervals so it catches readers at various times coming to the stream. Here is a link to my twitwall:
http://twitwall.com/view/?who=Librehombre

Check our Amazon portal just to the right on this page. Beating the Devil out of them is a seminal work by the prominent research scientist Murray A. Straus. If you want to win an argument with your brother-in-law you can find lots of ammunition in this book. The Amazon program that suggests book titles to offer is really improved lately. The Greven book is part of the no-spank canon. If you think you might want to add one these books to you library please consider accessing Amazon through our portal. That way we make a small amount to keep us going.

The law would be difficult to enforce if looked at through your lens. However, laws effect culture and it is culture which has to change. I won't try to tackle the issue of why conservatives homeschool, but that is a concern. When ever parents have sequestered their children history teaches us that it has always turned out badly for the children. Conservatives rebel against secular authority because it is a competing power center and has always represented a threat to their religion. I challenge your assertion that no model exists. One only has to look to the example of the socialist democracies in Europe or even Japan. The ban gets enforced through social mechanisms, new generations learning that gentle parenting is a better model, and pressure through state education programs.

Andy Rooney was an out atheist, but I don't recall him ever making pro atheism comments on his 60 Minutes gig. Anybody know differently?

There is a limit to what the planet can support and for this reason alone our attitudes towards unlimited procreation require thoughtful consideration. If devout religious people are procreating simply to insure that their particular religion survives that is unethical because it treats their children as objects and must be condemned.

Hi Ron, I do remember your blog and have it listed in our links. I guess I need to change the entry.

I like to recommend http://projectnospank.net (and their fb site as well). In addition there is http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/ These are two major web sites for ending physical punishment of children.

Can you please be more specific?