The Red Bottoms of Red-Staters: How Corporal Punishment Contributes to Right Wing Paranoia

For some time now, whenever contemplating the political events of the day, I find myself wrestling with a troubling uncertainty. At any given moment, it's not entirely clear which group of politicians galls me more. On the one hand, we have the brazen and guiltlessly mendacious sociopaths who are setting the moral compass of the Republican Party, one on which true north is constituted by untrammeled predation and the tactics that enable it.

On the other hand, there are the Democrats, a party that seems more divided -- primarily between staggeringly feckless "liberals" who cower and retreat in the face of GOP attacks, and "moderate" corporate mercenaries of the "Blue Dog" contingent who aspire to nothing grander than being the Democratic Pepsi alternative to Republican Coke. But today, because GOP propaganda is winning hearts and minds among the ignorant and vulnerable, it is the party of Dick Armey, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin that vexes me the most.

As the recent lobbyist-choreographed, anti-health care, town hall lynch mobs have demonstrated, Republican leaders and right wing media demagogues will say anything to advance their interests and those of their moneyed sponsors. And, apparently, their constituents among the electorate will believe anything. No paranoid fantasy seems too bizarre, too implausible, or too disconnected from consensual reality to find a credulous audience among right wing true believers.

Some readers with a partisan bent other than my own might assert that the conservative base has no monopoly on paranoid thinking. And that would be true. The difference is that in left wing conspiracy theories, those leaders who are seen as constituting a plot usually have a public record of lethal and Machiavellian machinations, and an indifference to human "collateral damage."

Take the popular notion that the Bush II regime planned and executed the 9/11 attacks on their own. In my view, this seems quite unlikely, given that administration's combination of hubris, stupidity, and determined incompetence. Nevertheless, we know its members, individually and collectively, had a history of deception, ruthlessness, sadism, and a willingness to kill hundreds of thousands people to gratify their wet dreams of imperial conquest. Right wing paranoid delusions, on the other hand, seem much more like frank projections. For example, we already have "death panels;" they are run by health insurance companies and determine whether life-saving care will be paid for.

It is not especially hard to figure out why GOP politicians and pundits would make up whatever fictions might enhance their economic and political well being. But it is not so self-evident why middle and under class conservative voters would so eagerly, and at the moment, deliriously, swallow the delusional confections offered up by their cynical and amoral leaders. A provocative but largely ignored recent article in the New York Times might provide a clue.

Nearly all of the states in which it is legal for school authorities to inflict corporal punishment on children are in the South. According to a study jointly authored by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, not only is it acceptable to hit students in these Republican strongholds but disabled children receive a disproportionate amount of the beatings. A principle at one school explained, "I was whipped as a child, so it's fine with me." The article describes the physical punishment of a 6-year old autistic boy, who was spanked with an inch-thick wooden paddle wielded by a 300-pound assistant principle. "It just devastated him," the boy's grandmother recalled.

OK, so folks in red states like to "discipline" children by raising welts on their buttocks, and find the derrières of the disabled a particularly tempting target. What does that tell us about politics other than confirming what we already know about the sadism of conservatives, their contempt for the vulnerable, and their absence of empathy? Well, as it turns out, not only does a right wing ideology justify and facilitate spanking, but also spanking helps to create future right wing ideologues.

Two University of Massachusetts research psychologists, Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad, studied the developmental impact of authoritarian and physically punitive parenting, and described the results in their book, The Politics of Denial. Controlling for the known effects of education and income, they found that a history of this sort of childrearing predicted conservative political attitudes in adulthood. If we attend to the affective register of Republican "street" politics (however fueled by K Street), it is obviously driven by fury, vengeance, and a sense that a malevolent authority whose responsibility is to care for them is really out to humiliate, hurt and destroy those who are dependent on its ministrations. No wonder GOP propagandists, like Frank Luntz, have gotten such a high political yield out of conjuring up the evil parental bogey of "Big Government."

To be clear, I am not making a reductionist argument. Obviously, there are numerous interacting factors -- psychological, economic, and sociological -- that contribute to the adoption of conservative values and ideas. A history of harsh childhood punishment that includes spanking is only one. But there's a well-known public figure whose history is quite illustrative in this regard.

Occasionally right wing pundits tell more truth than they might have intended. Michael Savage, the bigoted, shrieking rage-monger of ultra-conservative talk radio, offered up a moment of rare if still rationalizing candor in his 2003 book. In a passage that referenced his childhood, he said, "Things were tough every day of our lives. And we made the best of it. Frankly, that's why I'm driven the way I am. I was raised on neglect, anger, and hate. I was raised the old-fashioned way."

In another interview, following his usual rant against "turd-world immigration," "left-wing pinko vermin in high places," and the uppity women of the "she-ocracy," he warns his readers, "Only a more savage nation can survive -- not a more compassionate nation." It seems the only way he could survive, when in the late 1980s he shifted his identity from an ambivalent North Beach bohemian to a reborn conservative, was to change his last name from Weiner (pronounced whiner) to Savage. If you accept power as a zero-sum game -- which is the Republican world-view, and one that parental violence makes quite persuasive -- it's better to be a perpetrator than a victim.

One of the frothing town hall brown shirts, Scott Oskay, tweeted to his comrades last week that they should bring their guns, and that if anyone from ACORN or SEIU attended the gatherings, "...stop being peaceful, and hurt them. Badly." With this sort of fascist thuggery being stage-managed and celebrated by the party of punishment, and dutifully enacted by its wounded and gullible flock, can a revived militia movement and more Oklahoma City cataclysms be far behind? If the Democrats, especially Obama, can't tap some hitherto undiscovered well of passion and courage, and learn to create narratives more compelling than the right wing's grim fairy tales about government-mandated euthanasia, the past will have been our ominous prologue.

Comments

[KidsRpeople2]

Our children are more than test scores and FUNDING, they are our most precious future, our leaders of tomorrow! 20 STATES STILL ALLOW CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN SCHOOLS, and, earlier this week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that almost a fifth of students struck by teachers suffer from disabilities. Teachers legally can spank an autistic students whom they feel are acting out of turn. To receive federal funds, states should be required once and for all to ban school corporal punishment. After all, beating prisoners is illegal. Beating school children should be, too. A SHOCKING Children's Civil Rights INEQUALITY exists in 21st Century Classrooms! SHOCKING news headlines of injuries suffered by children abused by school employees in states where the practice is legal are all too common! Physical or Corporal Punishment is HEAVILY ASSOCIATED WITH THE PORNOGRAPHY INDUSTRY, just type corporal punishment or spanking into any internet search engine to verify. U.S. Congress is currently holding hearings on Abusive and DEADLY (kids have died at the hands of government employees entrusted with their care and education) practices in schools and MUST ABOLISH PHYSICAL/CORPORAL PUNISHMENT OF ALL CHILDREN IN ALL SCHOOLS, ALREADY ILLEGAL IN 30 STATES!

[reasonshouldrule]

Just have to post again. Your piece was so enlightening to me and explained a lot of my feelings and limitations. It was VERY helpful!

[reasonshouldrule]

This is an interesting concept. In my case, though, it doesn't fit. I was spanked within an inch of my life several times a day from the time I was walking, and I'm a liberal who doesn't believe in corporal punishment. Maybe that's just an alternate reaction to the violence.

[Tulka2]

Do you have children? Do not be discouraged when you do. It took me only two counselling sessions to get beyond the body memory.

The adult who was physically abused is overwhelmed at the first sign of defiance from their own children. It's this; "NOooo! I am not the oppressor. I am the victim of abuse and here is this child i love looking at me as though i am an oppressor". It is very disturbing to rationally reject corporal punishment, but still find one's hand balled into a fist.

It was so frightening, i ran into counseling and got a great woman who walked me through it. Meditation tames the tiger of anger.

May you be happy; may you have cause to be happy.

[reasonshouldrule]

Very good advice and nice wishes. Thank you.

[Nommo]

Of course, if this were about dogs, the outrage would be over the top!

[Tulka2]

Good point!

Dogs will leave with the first kind person, but children internalize the abuse. They think they deserve it. Children cannot help loving their parents.

[TopProf]

The principals you describe have no principles.
But really, there are too many false positives to take this seriously. Fascist tendencies honor no state boundary lines. Neither does stupidity or willingness to believe about any crap that arouses basic instincts of fear and hatred.

[BigShotBob]

"Nearly all of the states in which it is legal for school authorities to inflict corporal punishment on children are in the South."

This is, at best, a mistake. More likely, it's a misstatement calculated to isolate and stereotype everyone from the South. Yes, corporal punishment is allowed in most, if not all, of the Southern states. But we Southerners are not alone in the benighted attitude that the occasional swat on the behind is not going to turn our children into a bunch of Uncle Adolfs. Of the 21 states that permit corporal punishment in schools, almost half cannot remotely be considered "in the South": Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and Wyoming. Further, I doubt most people from Kentucky and Missouri (2 more states that allow corporal punishment) would consider themselves "Southern.­"

Get your facts straight before indicting an entire region.

[Stephen Ducat - Huffpost Blogger]

Part One of my reply: I have no interest in demonizing the South, whether defined as the "Old South" (eg. Georgia), the "Southern United States" (eg. Oklahoma), or states aligned the former Confederacy (eg. Kentucky and Missouri). Those states certainly don't have a monopoly on conservative cultural beliefs and practices. But there is no getting around the fact that citizens in that region of the country, primarily the white ones, distinguish themselves in a number of ways. And it's not just that they embrace corporal punishment more than the rest of the country (73% vs 60%, according to an ABC poll conducted a number of years ago). They are also more enthusiastic practitioners of state executions. In addition, they tend to be uncritical boosters of imperial wars of choice, think that Biblical fairy tales should be taught as science, and exhibit a remarkable credulity in the face of lunatic right wing conspiracy theories. Regarding the latter, a Research 2000 survey in July found that while over 90% of Americans in the Northeast and Midwest believed Obama to be a natural born citizen, only 47% of those in Southern states did.

[Stephen Ducat - Huffpost Blogger]

Part Two of my reply: In my view, these tendencies do not obtain because of some innate deficiency among white Southerners. While it would require a much longer analysis than can be undertaken here, I suspect that what we are witnessing is the transgenerational legacy of one on the most cruel, sadistic, and destructive forms of systemic domination -- slavery. This was a practice that not only persisted for centuries, but was sanctified by religion, codified in law, built into the economy, and woven into the fabric of family life. How could this not have an enduring and devastating impact on all concerned, including future generations? Beating children to enforce compliance seems like a logical outgrowth of such a legacy.

Stephen Ducat

[RoloTomassi]

I grew up in the deep south, and certainly experienced my share of corporal punishment; that said, I consider centrists in the US to be Rightwingers in a non-US centric comparison, so I'm about as liberal-minded as one can be.

Corporal punishment is not the best method by any stretch--but sometimes [given a situation that you did not create and MUST manage], it is unfortunately a necessity of last resort.

Are southerner GOPers cronic users of the coporal punishment model? Why of course they are--but such is a symptom of the total mentally deranged package, and to assert such is the root CAUSE of such a mental make up is simply nonsense.

The folks who push this kind of drivel are most likely of the same cloth as those who pushed the perpetual "high self-esteem" mode of operation for child rearing; and frankly, I fall in line with the late George Carlin on that notion--that experiment has turned out to be an utter failure, and the telling signs and obviously negative results are too many to cite here....

[Tulka2]

Raising children with loving kindness also includes honest evaluation. This is perfectly demonstrated in a Tibetan film called "The Cup". It's about a very willful little boy. I think we would agree he is very well handled.

[DaleWWay]

Read Berkeley Prof. George Lakoff's "Moral Politics, How Liberals and Conservatives Think" to get the complete picture of this phenomenon from a cognitive science point of view. It makes everything clear. It's about more than how you were raised, though that can be a factor.

[Tulka2]

Alice Miller, a German psychiatrist, wrote _The Drama of the Gifted Child_.

It is a book about corporal punishment, physical intimidation and verbal abuse used against children. She writes that in many cultures such child abuse is completely accepted as normal. Miller extrapolates into the wide world and hypothesises that while most children will be merely stunted, some children treated so will become psychopathic killers.

She thinks it inevitable that a world that allows children to be "raised" with punitive methods will suffer for it by producing regular monsters. Hitler, Nicolae Cheausescu of Romania, Saddam Hussein, all raised by brutal adults. The book analyses their early childhoods. Not all mistreated children will become monsters, but all children will be diminished. The "gifted child" in the title is the potential Everychild raised in loving kindness.

Criticism of Miller's work says the world's suffering cannot be just this one cause.

Even most psychiatrists will not accept how huge is the damage done by angry, dismissive parents, but i agree with Miller. "Raise one generation with loving kindness and we would have a different world".

[TomR]

According to Dr. Drew Pinsky, corporal punishment changes brain chemistry. For those who have been emotionally or physically abused as a child, that abuse most likely impacts how they perceive the world today.

Moreover, because we all go through childhood developmental phases of splitting (perceiving the world in black and white as a way to manage anxiety and feel safe), that same abuse may have hindered their ability to further develop emotionally to understand nuance and see the world in shades of gray.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-frank/politics-on-the-couch-spl_b_105396.html

While abusive behavior can happen to anyone anywhere, I believe it's more prevalent with those who follow a conservative authoritarian ideology since discipline via corporal punishment is sanctioned, i.e. James Dobson writes "...the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.­"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dobson

This episode of SuperNanny also addresses the use of corporal punishment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYbBXK-frZE

- Tom

[Tulka2]

Hey, Tom,

Thank you for the links.

There is a published study where lab rats were purposely frustrated by lack of space and sexual competition. Dye was injected into their brains and the part of the rats' brains that handle anger/frustration light up like Christmas trees. The interesting bit was that as the weeks went by, that part of the brain increased in size. Anger does not drain off when "expressed". Humans too become increasingly comfortable with indulged anger.

[Steven Duke]

Maybe next the Duke University study that found that roughly 20% of the population, all self-identified right-wing conservatives, rather than accept factual and truthful information once they had been told something by a "Trusted" source, rejected the facts and only dug themselves further into a deluded fantasy world. The study focused around the lead up to the war in Iraq and the assertions of WMD's and Saddam's involvement with Al-queada, the later of which is still believed by 30% of the American people...a­nd every Fox News viewer.

[anniecanuck]

There is some evidence that the "right wing mind" is more fearful than the "liberal" mind.
Of course, exceptions abound, but this all stands to reason.

[Jane]

And then there's that angry God, too. Some of the commenters are pretty typical--I got hit, so I hit my kids, what's wrong with that? Well, let me tell you. I got hit. I didn't hit my kids. Many of my peers got hit, and they didn't and don't hit their kids. Not only are our kids better behaved and more thoughtful than we were at their age (less likely to have their flight/flight response engaged), they like us better than we did or do like our parents. So, go ahead, raise your child to fear because you were raised to fear. They're your kids, and if they hate ya, that's your problem

[MajorKong]

It's no surprise that so many conservatives are looking for a stern daddy figure to tell them what to do. Whether it's a pastor, coach, CEO or President.

[Rogan]

...though they're big on accusing "liberals" of doing exactly that same thing, seeking "daddy figures" in politics and culture. Another glaring example of psychological projection, on the part of all "Republicans" -

(I tend to call the smart conservatives, who seem to be hiding at home in silence and terror these days, "conservatives," and the dopey mean ones out in the streets, "Republica­ns." There has to be SOME way to distinguish between the two - though I haven't seen or talked to a genuine and sensible and sane conservative for a couple of years, now, I know they must still exist.)

[Tulka2]

Susan Eisenhower, Ike's grand-daughter, was on Bill Maher a few weeks ago and it was a so refreshing to hear her measured, thoughtful comments. Only later did she mention she has officially left the GOP for all the reasons you give above.

[progpro1]

Wilhelm Reich's classic book "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" was way ahead it's time on describing how corporal punishment was the single most consistent variable in the childhoods of the Nazi Party leadership. Nothing new here, right wingers are clearly suffering from a pervasive mental illness. It's time for progressives to understand who exactly they are fighting and to what extent mental illness contributes to both their conservative ideology and behaviors.