I’m not sure I entirely agree with your position on this, but nor do you need a lecture about word choices and your fathers methodology etc. I’ve worked in child protection for a long time and I think moving away from the smackings are a good idea - not because a light tap on the buttocks damages children beyond repair - but because there are parents who fail to stop at that line. There are better ways.

Having said that, parenting has become very permissive. If your teenage son tells you they’re planning to go and police a riot, you say no. That shouldn’t be up for debate. No matter how helpful they think they might be, no matter how long they’ve been a cadet, they will get out of their depth and don’t have the life experience to deal with it.

Watching the videos, I have concluded Rittenhouse acted within the law. However in my country, the laws would’ve had him in jail for manslaughter. Likely 12 years behind bars. America has become too permissive a parent with its gun wielding citizens and too hard a parent with its traffic violations and minor drug offences.

In short, if the US itself were a parent, we’d start child protection proceedings because the punishments and the crimes are out of whack, the children are confused and the laws make little or no sense.