In mid June, Montreal Superior Court Justice Suzanne Tessier created a crisis by overturning a father’s decision to ground his daughter.  Justice Tessier ruled that the father had no right to inflict an “unduly severe punishment” (in this case, denying his daughter permission to attend a school trip). Even for Canada this decision is unprecedented; few observers expect it to stand.

But we shouldn’t be shocked.

In early 2008, California State Assemblywoman Sally Lieber introduced a bill that criminalizes spanking children under three with any “implement” (i.e. with anything other than one’s hand).  The bill was approved by the Public Safety Committee, and currently awaits a vote on the assembly floor.  Perhaps the bill’s success would be more surprising if the Canadian Senate hadn’t passed an even more extreme anti-spanking law in mid-June — one that makes it a crime for anyone to virtually ever spank a child.

But we should have seen these bills coming.  They shouldn’t surprise us.

These events represent the logical extension of a principle at the heart of the modern political and social order. That principle is the denial of any kind of natural authority.  This denial flows out of an absolute belief that reality is completely egalitarian, with no one person naturally occupying a higher level than another.  It is a belief rooted in a vision of society that sees individuals as having no ultimately legitimate connections to anything (such as family, culture, history, or biology) other than the state.  And it’s there for all of us to see, if we pay attention.

The presence of this belief and vision is evidenced by much of the anti-spanking movement’s rhetoric. Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette, the sponsor of Canada’s proposed anti-spanking law, provides a good example: “When it is an adult who is hit, we call it assault. When it is an animal, we call it cruelty. And when it is a child, we call it discipline. We need to change that perception.” Senator Hervieux-Payette’s words imply that there’s no difference between a parent’s relationship with his child and the same person’s relationship with another adult.  Both relationships simply involve two autonomous individuals with equal rights that must be equally respected. That literally every society in history has understood parents to have the authority to discipline their children simply by virtue of their parenthood seems to be a fact not worth contemplating, let alone responding to, for the Senator and her fellow anti-spankers. Individuals are just individuals, and as such are all equal.

But the anti-spankers’ arguments — that spanking represents conduct that would be criminal in any other situation — prove too much.  Their arguments would not just condemn spanking: they would condemn virtually any form of discipline. Take grounding, for example.  If we deny parents the authority to use physical discipline with their children, how can we justify them denying children their freedom?  After all, when it’s an adult who is kept inside against his will, we call it kidnapping.  When it’s an animal, we call it abuse.  But when it’s a child, we call it discipline.  Or how about “time out”?  What right do parents (or educators, or childcare professionals) have to shame a child and cause him emotional distress?  When it’s adults who are treated that way, we call it harassment.  When it’s animals, we call it abuse.  But when it’s children, we still call it discipline. Must we change these perceptions too?  Yes we must, if the anti-spankers’ arguments are correct. If parents enjoy no special status in their relationship with their children, they have no right to use any forms of discipline against them other than reason or persuasion, the only tools one adult can legitimately use to deal with another.  They have no right to use any kind of force whatsoever.  No one does.

Well, that is not quite true.  There is one entity that is acknowledged as having this right: the right to coerce where it cannot persuade, to punish or detain the recalcitrant, to impose its will on others for their own good or correction.  That entity, of course, is the state. Think about it.  If all individuals are essentially the same (not just equal, but the same) then no one person can possess any kind of authority over another by right, and the only people with the authority to tell or force others to do anything are those who have taken power through social means — in other words, the government.

The extent of the state’s influence over individuals in the West attests to the hold this belief has on our societies.  Much of how we allowed, and often expected, individuals to deal with one another privately in the past we now allow (and often expect) the state to handle. In much of the West, for instance, the state punishes citizens who don’t speak nicely to others (hate speech laws).  Throughout the West, the state has assumed increasing responsibility for citizens’ diets, from funding educational campaigns to get people to eat more healthy foods to outlawing foods or ingredients considered unhealthy. And in some parts of the West individual security is entirely the prerogative of the state, which no longer permits individuals to defend themselves.

These are not isolated or unrelated developments, and they didn’t happen overnight.  People labored for generations to integrate the belief in absolute equality into Western society, and these are its results. Their efforts have succeeded, largely or partially, in subsuming the realms of individual security, expression, and lifestyle choices into the state. Now they have set their sites on the last remaining bastion of anti-egalitarian sentiment: the family. Once parents cannot legitimately discipline their children without authorization from the state, their war will largely be won. The only people who will be surprised at that point will be the ones who haven’t been paying attention.