0:04 - The Brutality of Parenting
0:32 - A Father's Cruelty
8:01 - The Impact of Child Abuse
11:18 - Redefining Punishment
16:18 - The Cycle of Abuse
18:31 - Advocating for Children's Rights
In this episode, I delve into a deeply troubling situation captured on video, where a father publicly disciplines his son in a manner that I find to be unequivocally abusive. Through a detailed analysis of the footage, I aim to uncover not just the immediate act of violence, but the broader societal implications that such interactions entail. The father, wearing a mask, smacks his son on the bare leg with a cupped hand, a move designed to maximize pain and shock. I emphasize the utter brutality of this act, comparing it to the behavior that would be condemned if exhibited in the context of a relationship with a partner, showing a glaring double standard when it comes to how society treats children.
As I break down the reactions of the children involved, it becomes evident that the little girl displays a disconnection from the scene, attempting to avert her gaze from the trauma unfolding before her. She appears to seek a way to intervene or appeal to her father, highlighting a tragic sense of helplessness that many children feel in such situations. It’s important to highlight that this incident is not an isolated example, but rather a reflection of the systemic issue of child abuse that is often overlooked due to societal norms and expectations around parenting. I argue that the dynamic in public spaces, where other adults express impatience and disapproval of energetic children, compounds the pressure on parents, pushing them toward violent disciplinary methods out of humiliation.
Throughout our discussion, I confront the justifications often provided for physical punishment, questioning the societal conditioning that leads some to accept such treatment as standard parenting. I reflect upon the fact that a child's energetic behavior is part of their natural development, and that the expectations placed on parents can lead to tragic outcomes. The punishment, I contend, is not an effective discipline method but a desperate act rooted in the father's sense of alienation and loss of authority under public scrutiny.
I further analyze the psychological ramifications of such punitive measures on children, noting how such experiences can instill a lasting fear and mistrust in authority figures. This cycle of violence, both verbal and physical, permeates into adulthood, affecting how individuals interact with one another and how they parent their own children. The absence of empathy from the father may signal a larger cultural issue where children are often seen as burdens rather than individuals deserving of respect and understanding.
Addressing the differing societal responses to parental discipline and the implications of verbal abuse versus physical, I highlight how the current climate of tolerance towards certain types of parental control leaves vulnerabilities in our society. This raises critical questions about accountability and the need for societal intervention in cases where children are treated as expendable entities in their parents' frustrations.
Closing the discussion, I underscore the importance of modeling self-discipline and empathy as a parent or guardian. It’s through demonstrating these qualities that children can learn how to navigate their own emotions and behaviors without resorting to aggression or humiliation. Engaging in dialogue surrounding these complex issues is vital to fostering a culture that values the dignity and integrity of all individuals, particularly the most vulnerable among us—our children.
[0:01] All righty, well, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
[0:04] Get ready for something brutal, fairly brutal. So this is, I assume, a father. You have two children, and they're in, of course, some store. And you have the girl here looking to the left in the striped shirt. She knows what's coming. You have the father in a mask. You have the son trying to initiate physical contact with the father, perhaps to look for empathy for what is coming next.
[0:33] And I want you to listen to these sounds.
[0:40] So that sound, just for those of you who've not been hit, so he is looking for the leg, the fleshly part of the leg, and the father, at least in my view, is cupping his hands in order to create maximum pain and shock. In the child, right? In his son. So he's not, you know, lightly swatting on the buttocks where the clothing is, where the trousers are, the pants, but he is instead cupping his hand. That's why you get that shock sound. He's cupping his hand in order to inflict maximum pain on the bare skin of the son. Let's look at it again. Listen.
[1:22] Okay. So then he just drags his son up. now of course this is the child's face is in agony that this big asshole, is showing what a tough guy and a bully he is by smacking hard on bare skin in public a child who was approximately 20 of his size and weight, And the girl has completely disconnected because, and she's looking at the injury because she doesn't want to have what's happening next to her. Sit your ass down. All right, so sit your ass down. So let's look at it again and look at the girl this time. Okay.
[2:14] So she does seem to say something here. I don't know exactly what it is, but you see the girl is looking away. The sounds, she looks over, won't look directly at it, looks at it directly. And then you can see that she tries to say something to the father, as in stop or help. I don't know exactly what that is. And you see she flinches here when the father comes over. Thing. Now, what's very strange is that he's saying to her, sit your ass down, which is a harsh thing to say to a toddler when she is in fact already sitting. So what's happening here is that this father is telling his children that they must stay in control. So sit your ass down means that the kids were probably, you know, maybe they're stuck in the DMV or some government office or something like that. This looks like a fairly bland place. So the father has something to do here and pay taxes or registration or renewing his driver's life, something like that, right? And the kids are bored and running around.
[3:31] And what's happening is the father is, it's this kind of, I don't know the circumstances, it's just my guess, right? But there's kind of like the way that child abuse happens, and this is to me straight up child abuse, because you couldn't do this to any adult. And you certainly, you couldn't do this to an adult with limited cognitive abilities, right? So if this man had a daughter who was 20 years old and mentally handicapped, he could not smack her in this kind of way. It's only children. So generally, the way this happens is the children are running around. The children are, quote, out of control, which just means being children. I mean, they lack consequentialist thinking. So the children are out of control. And what happens is the other abusers in the environment, the other abusers in the environment, they start signaling through impatience, through looking at the kids, through whispering. They start to transfer to the father the sense of humiliation. Oh, your kids are okay. These kids are out of control. The kids are running around. And rather than showing some sympathy for the father and rather than saying, well, kids will be kids and all of that. You know, like when I used to fly a lot, sometimes you'd have a kid who was really restless and so on. And I would always try to make sure that the parent of the child knew that I understood and sympathized and did not expect great behavior or quote great behavior on the part of the child because he's a child.
[5:01] So when the kids are running around, you give a smile to the parents. Yes, kids run around. We understand and we should take delight in their enthusiasm and their energy and so on. But what the abusers in the environment do is they signal, and again, I'm not talking about this situation in particular, but just in general, what they do is they signal.
[5:21] That they view the father as a bad father for, quote, letting his children run around. So then the father goes and enacts this based upon the impatience. Like this kind of abuse, of course it happens at home and all of that, but this kind of abuse in social situations is usually the result of the children running around and other people expressing hostility and impatience to the children running around, the father being humiliated and then punishing the children. It's a collective situation. All child abuse is collective, unless perhaps it's just someone in the woods in the middle of nowhere with a kid. But all child abuse is collective, certainly in public. And it's very, very important when you see these kinds of situations escalating to say to the man, it's tough for kids, you know, when they're stuck. I'd like to run around too, you know, so that he doesn't feel like his kids are, quote, bad and he needs to punish them because of the disapproval of the parents, right? So the children are, quote, out of control and the father reacts by being out of control.
[6:23] And this is a desperately humiliating situation for the father, not just because of the social stuff, but because his children aren't listening to him. And why are the children not listening to him? Because he's terrifying and violent, right? So this is a really tragic situation. How is it good parenting to cup hand, hard smack, your little toddler in public on his bare skin? How is that good parenting? And you see, in society, if this was a man hitting his girlfriend, there would be no question. He would be immediately up on charges, and he would go straight into the legal system, right?
[7:07] But because they're helpless and dependent little children, right, they're being smacked in public. And also, what the children are learning from this, which is a lesson they will never forget, what the children are learning in this, is that society won't step in to help them, that bullies run the world and good people might give them sympathetic glances, but they can't do anything, won't lift a finger. And that's what the children will learn, that society is brutal on the helpless and dependent and trapped, and that physical violence is the way to solve problems. And he will get, the kids, they will get immediate compliance, but kids rebel, in particular boys, right? So this is another archetypical situation, right? Where the boy obviously has been rebelling or is disobedient. The girl is just sitting there because she's more susceptible to the violence being smaller. And so she is compliant because the boy is being hit.
[8:01] And that's a very common thing. And again, if we look at Kirk.
[8:10] Sit your own thing. So that's very strange too. Sit your ass down. So the boy gets hit, right? Again, just breaking my heart to see the agony in this boy's face. So the boy is getting smacked really hard. I mean, that's a huge blow. I mean, imagine somebody cupped hands, and he doesn't even have hair to break the blows on his skin, right? So cupped hands hitting absolutely bare skin, somebody four to five times your size. I mean, that's a strong hit, right? So the boy is smacked really, really hard. And the girl is simply told something. Sit your ass down, right? The boy is smacked and the girl is verbally threatened, right? And that's, again, quite a common thing. This is one of the reasons why boys end up more physically aggressive and girls end up more verbally aggressive is that the boys often receive more physical aggression and the girls receive more verbal threats and aggression, which is why they grow up to become mean girls who spread rumors and defame people and so on, right? So that is the situation. It's absolutely appalling. It's monstrous. And it is something that it's honestly, it's good for these kids that this is recorded because they will grow up and they will see this behavior. They will see this behavior. Now, I don't know when this is. It seems a little bit past the time where people should be wearing masks.
[9:39] But, and this does not look like a man who exercises, right? And therefore, he also may have less physical confidence and therefore would be more aggressive. So let's look at some of the comments. What you call this abuse or good parenting, nobody knows the context there. Did they run out into the street? Was there another danger they got into and weren't listening to him? So then the big question is, okay, well, why would kids run out into the street, right? Why would kids run out into the street? It's a very, very important question. So when I was, when my daughter was this age, she was very, she was very close. I remember one time, uh, I was at the mall with my wife, uh, a very crowded mall. And, um, we were looking at, it was in Toronto at the Eaton Center where they have this big giant fountain and we were looking at the fountain and I turned around to show my daughter the fountain and she had gotten separated from us. Uh, you know, it was like, I don't know, 10, 10, 15 feet away. She had gone to some, you know, this kind of thing can happen. And she was like half in tears because she couldn't see us for like five seconds.
[10:56] So your kids want to stay close. Why do they want to run away, right? Why do they want to run away? Kids are naturally programmed to stay close. I mean, it's like ducklings, right? They're programmed to be kind of like ducklings. And ducklings want to stay close.
[11:18] So why are they why do they want to run away because they fear and hate you so it's a vicious circle right uh too much and in public one swat is enough to get his attention okay so you always know when people have a bad conscience when they redefine words right that is a smack it is a hard smack it is a hit that is not just a swat all right so you they have to write this is why they have to redefine them. They have to say spanking rather than hitting in someone, right?
[11:52] And then they say, and someone says, I personally had parents that use corporal punishment. It should be who used, but anyway. I personally had parents that use corporal punishment, and I'm now 40 years old, and I can sit here and say that I truly believe what they did was 100% right. And I feel that parents that don't discipline their children in that way and just put a kid in the corner is why we have the society we have today. Right. Right. Right. Well, I don't accept that. It's not making an argument. That is somebody who has, in my view, a trauma bond with abuse. And see, corporal punishment, right? They don't say hitting children.
[12:47] All right. Somebody says my single mother never put her hands on any of her kids and after 47 years we will all be going out to dinner for the 500th time of the family all seven of her kids love her and respect her for what she did for us and what she didn't do to us lovely right, yeah and of course this if this is what he does in public what might he do at home, well says someone well it certainly didn't address the problem and all it did was allow him to show that he can be a bully oh is that grandpa is that grandpa how old is this guy it's hard to tell with the face mask but uh yeah it could be grandpa could be grandpa, and of course you're sowing the seeds for the next generation of hitting children right my mom hit us my brothers and me turned out all right today you have complete sissies.
[13:44] Well, I think that the signification of a lot of kids these days is the verbal abuse that they experience in schools, right? The verbal abuse tends to weaken. I mean, physical abuse can make kids have a harder shell, so to speak. It's not healthy, of course, but verbal abuse really undermines the entire personality, which is why I consider verbal abuse worse than physical abuse and the verbal abuse that the kids experience in schools and have for the last couple of generations. You know, your ancestors were murderers and genociders and climate change is going to kill you all. And if you're a boy, you're toxic. Like all of that, just absolutely vicious verbal abuse has weakened people's core, particularly the boys. So it's not a lack of physical abuse. In the past, physical abuse was associated with cultural pride.
[14:46] So the boys and the men in society were respected, the ancestors were respected, the culture and the country were respected, and so there was physical abuse, but verbal praise and pride. So now you have no physical abuse and caustic verbal abuse, particularly in government-run institutions or government-mandated curricula, you have this intense sort of half-soul-destroying verbal abuse. And so that's why people have become, quote, weaker, so to speak.
[15:23] I'd call it none of my business. Okay, well, that's fine. You can say that what parents do to their children is none of your business. And what that means is that you're going to grow up in a society full of people who've been physically or emotionally or in other ways abused as children. And so you can say, hey, it's none of my business. It's none of my business. That's fine. I don't think it's, but it is going to become your business when these kids grow up because these are the kids who you're going to rely on to take care of you when you get old, right? So if you're 40 and this kid is like, I don't know, three or four or five, then when you are 80, that kid's going to be in his 40s and he's going to be paying taxes and taking care of you when you get old. Is he going to want to do that? Right?
[16:18] In Germany, you will be prosecuted for this. Yes, but of course, then in Germany, you have the absolute verbal abuse assault on the German population as a whole, as children.
[16:33] So, I don't think there's enough here to say I would have been taken out to the car. This should not be a public action. Also, was it from anger? That would be wrong. There's a wrong way and a right way. Yeah, so apparently there's a right way to hard smack your children on a bare leg repeatedly. And of course, it's out of anger. The parent is out of control and complaining and punishing the children for being out of control. So it's completely hypocritical. That was a bit excessive, but I get it.
[17:08] Oh, so. And of course, what's going to happen is when the, if this is the father or the grandfather or whatever, when that person gets old, they will also further condemn the child, right? So the person's going to get old. This is, let's say it's the father, right? Father's going to get old. And then the father is going, or the parent or whoever, right? The father is going to say to the kids, you got to take care of me. The kids are going to be hesitant. And then there's going to be more tirades of verbal abuse because the children won't be doing, quote, the right thing and won't be shouldering their responsibilities and doing what's right, and it just doesn't end. It just never ends. So...
[17:57] Saying no with firmness is much more useful. So what you need to do as a parent, right, as a caregiver to a child, a parent or grandfather, right, what you need to do is model self-discipline. If you want the children to be disciplined, if you want the children to have self-discipline, then you need to model self-discipline to the children, for the children, right? If you don't model self-discipline for the children, then you can't really blame the children for doing what you're doing and acting out of impulse, right?
[18:32] So this is really tragic. And I got to tell you, man, I mean, as a guy who's been working on defending the rights and bodily integrity of children for like 40 years plus.
[18:48] It's pretty tough. it's pretty tough to see where society is still at and how much further there is to go but, we do what we can to move the conversation forward and it's hard to see it's hard to see all right freedom.com hope you'll check out the show thank you so much bye.
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