If you had written this comment, minus the last two grafs, you&#x27;d have made the same point more persuasively and without crossing the line into a personal attack.<p>The modal incivility on HN is probably caused by people commenting on issues that they believe are important enough to override the civility norms on HN. Everyone has issues like this. Coming from a very large very Irish very Catholic family, I find it helpful to think about pro-life activism when issues like this crop up for me. I&#x27;ll wager you don&#x27;t think that people who believe abortion is murder should be allowed to prosecute that argument uncivilly here. The same applies to things we believe too.<p>Aside: I agree with you about hitting children, but (a) corporal punishment is quite common in Europe, and, particularly, in the UK, and (b) the norms against spanking are still new, and it will take a few more generations before you can draw conclusions about how good a parent someone is by whether they believe in spanking.