People who believe spanking is “child abuse” make no sense when they try to defend that view. Witness Joy Behar on CNN:

Did you catch the inconsistency?

To justify her biblically incorrect argument that all spanking is child abuse, Behar played the emotionally charged, how-dare-you-spank-a-baby trump card: “Now what could a 1-year-old possibly do to deserve being spanked?” The implication is that children are too young to ever do anything worthy of “bruising physically or psychologically.”

But in the next breath, she perverted the famous Rene Descartes quote “I think; therefore, I am” to make a conflicting point about parent-child communication. She said parents need to “think” before they spank and lift their minds rather than their hands.

Come again? A 1-year-old is too young to be spanked but can “think” on the same level as Descartes? He or she can intellectually learn right from wrong? Talk about a disconnect from reality. It’s frightening to think that Behar used to be a school teacher.

Her radical views on spanking are consistent, in a wacky way, with her wild accusation that home-schooled children are “demented.” But that just means you can add Joy Behar to the list of reasons why we home-school.

As for discipline in the home, I’ll heed God’s Word rather than the rantings of an unhinged talk-show host.

The key is not to shun discipline altogether but to do it only when necessary, only out of love and never in haste.