James Dobson split the baby

Crash Course subscribers can join the conversation. Click the speech bubble icon at the top of this email to comment or tap the heart to like this post.

The news, in brief …

• “TOTAL VICTORY”: Trump’s $500M fine overturned as fraud case continues

  The penalty was found to be "excessive" by a New York appeals court. Read more.

• Former Eric Adams advisers accused of bribery

  One Adams associate reportedly handed a reporter money inside a half-eaten bag of potato chips. Read more.

• House Democrats demand answers on Trump-Paramount “bribe”

  The accusation comes after an alleged "side deal" between Trump and the media company. Read more.

• Judge: Trump’s former attorney Habba has been illegally serving as top N.J. prosecutor

  A New Jersey judge found that Trump's former defense attorney was serving as the state's top prosecutor illegally. Read more.

• Lil Nas X arrested, hospitalized after reportedly wandering streets of Los Angeles in his underwear

  The rapper reportedly struck an officer several times. Read more.

• Health workers say RFK Jr. has endangered their lives

  More than 750 federal health employees are urging HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to stop spreading falsehoods. Read more.

• Canadians aren’t coming to America anymore

  There has been a massive drop in the number of Canadians visiting the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office. Read more.

Make me smarter …

DC’s Hoagie Hero is a decorated veteran. Trump & Co. don’t care

Sean Dunn fought fascism with a Subway sandwich — and there's more to his story. Read more.

Corporal majority

Authors have been using cruelty to children to generate cheap heat for thousands of years.

The Dursleys’ inherent monstrousness is quickly sketched in the “Harry Potter” series by the way they treat the titular boy wizard. We know Mr. Bumble is a despicable oaf because his powerlessness in life leads him to rain down horrible punishments on the orphans of “Oliver Twist.” Jonathan Swift’s modest proposal is taught to high schoolers nearly three centuries after its publication because the horror of suggesting infants as entrees is so obvious.

At least it should be, if you don’t believe the suffering of children holds a kernel of cosmic justice. Conservative kingmaker James Dobson was one such reader.

The founder of Focus on the Family died on Thursday at the age of 89. Before that, he spent decades pushing for church involvement in political matters, irrevocably tying the modern right-wing to evangelical Christianity. Using the sway guaranteed by his broadcasting and publishing empire, he made it so that aversion to LGBTQ rights, abortion and feminism were the animating force of the Republican Party. But the ability to make or break ascendant GOP stars wasn’t Dobson’s true passion. His first love, and the frequent subject of his most popular books, was the corporal punishment of children.

Many mid-century Americans were phasing beatings out of their philosophy of child-rearing, thanks to the work of pediatricians like Dr. Benjamin Spock. Dobson’s 1970 book “Dare to Discipline” stood athwart history yelling “spank!” While Dobson admitted that parents should never strike their child in anger, he wrote that the “deliberate premeditated application of minor pain to a small child” was an acceptable way to teach right and wrong. His prescriptions were oddly specific, noting that “the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause genuine tears.”

There’s an ancient story about looming harm against an infant, one that sprouted up time and again in folklore before its most famous rendition was written out in the Old Testament. In the story, two women are both claiming to be the mother of a newborn. They bring their dispute before a local magistrate, who can see no solution other than cutting the baby in half. The first woman agrees that going home with half a child is only fair. The second panics, begging the judge to hand over the baby to the other woman, rather than killing a child. In the version starring King Solomon, the wise ruler realizes that the woman who would rather give the child away than see it come to harm must be its mother and rules in her favor.

Dobson was firmly in the former woman’s camp, willing to dig in his heels at every turn, even when it would cause grievous harm to others. His fellow evangelical, the former Attorney General C. Everett Koop, begged Dobson to stop spreading homophobic screeds full of misinformation about AIDS to his followers. Dobson declined.

His radio programs were one of the first beachheads established in America’s forever culture war, telling millions of listeners that they needed to be suspicious of their countrymen, who were painted as saboteurs looking to undermine the values of good, Christian homes. In helping build up the Christian right in his own vengeful, paranoid image, Dobson gave us the gleeful hatred of “Don’t Say Gay” bills and a Supreme Court willing to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In the late ‘60s, the former pediatric psychologist saw babies coming into a world that was more progressive on the rights of minorities and women. Rather than learning to live with it, he set out on a path to divide the country down the middle. In the schismatic US of 2025, where conceptions of reality depend on whether you live in bullish blue states or recalcitrant red ones, we can see Dobson holding up a bloody stump in victory.

What do you think? Does Dobson bear responsibility for the modern right? Was he merely cashing in on a movement? Who are your guys when it comes to the great American divide? Click the speech bubble icon up top to sound off in the comments.

Support our bold journalism: Become a Salon member today.

Before you go …

Chaplain detained by ICE was not the same after solitary confinement, friends say

Imam Ayman Soliman, who faces the threat of deportation to Egypt, claims he was punished for observing his faith. Read more.

ALSO FROM SALON