The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Francis:

Dave Luckett wrote:
For my part, I regret I did not manage to meet those high ideals. I have spanked my son, in the manner above, about twice.

On the other hand, my Quaker friend described him as the "gentlest and politest young man I know", so something must have gone right.

Of course children who have been regularly beaten are gentle and polite while there is still someone in authority near them. They are too scared of being beaten to be otherwise.

The litmus test is in what happens to a child in the years after they leave home and cease having direct and immediate authority watching over them. And what they do to those they have authority over.

You may have done well- but gentleness and politeness can be evidence of terror every bit as much as evidence of being well brought up.

Graydon wrote:
If you look up 'tulip church', complete with positively sweet flower logo, the 't' is 'Total Depravity'.

Which is a doctrine that comes down to 'kids start evil, and if you don't beat them enough they will always be evil'.

And, given Total Depravity (when not misinterpreted), beating them will not stop them being evil. All Total Depravity should say is that everyone's a sinner - which is as good an incentive to not consider yourself the master of someone else as I can think of. Note that "Entire Sanctification" should not be able to coexist with "Total Depravity" - one of the things the TULIP theology should guard against is such hubris.

(And IMO Entire Sanctification ("[Foo] can do no wrong") is far and away more dangerous than Total Depravity ("No one can ever be perfectly good"))

And I can't believe I'm defending Calvinism.

On the 2nd item, I predict that Cory Doctorow will beat the immortal Gene Wolfe, because of the amount of open-sourcing downloads of Cory's work. The analogy is to the Jazz artist who won a Grammy this year for a work that was only distributed on the internet.

The Baen approach?

*hides from the incoming rotten vegetables*

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