No, how about you fuck off.
You being abused doesn't make my opinion invalid, especially when I was abused too.
Humans do not deserve to be treated like animals. Do you seriously not see the problem with your line of thinking? Seriously? They do not become afraid of playing with fire, they become afraid of you. The person who they know is hurting them. It doesn't instill "fear or respect" for fire, it instills fear and disrespect of you.
There are people with downs syndrome that don't know that. Just like every other human being on the planet didn't know that at some point in their lives. And both of my examples are completely apt, and you fail to answer the question which you know is more about principle than specifics.
What the fuck would you do in those situations? I do not believe that you would beat them until they felt that they would get hurt for not doing what they were doing. The fact that you see fit to attack younger people when you wouldn't do that to older people is a pretty disgusting distinction to make.
Your mother spanked you, that doesn't make it okay.
Your father spanked you, that doesn't make it okay.
Also, for someone whose willing to pull the "politically correct" card, you seem pretty fucking eager to not even think about the possibility that I was abused too. That my dad was a chronic alcoholic who raped my mom, terrorized the entire family, and was more than willing to beat his oldest son until I got too tall to have to take his bullshit.
I like to believe that these kinds of experiences are not the norm, that lives like your's and mine are not indicative of how things should be or how they are. It's a lot fucking easier to treat people like people, than have to even consider treating them like he treated me. So when you say shit like " a couple smacks on the ass" with the flippancy of someone who doesn't give a fuck, it gets to me. That's exactly the kind of shit he would say to me when I dared to question why I had to sit through his beatings. And you know what? I screamed my ass off.