As someone that was lovingly disciplined growing up, I definitely see the place for it. I never felt abused and grew up to be a really non-violent person. Heck, I've never even been in a fight in all my life.
BUT ... if the discipline isn't administered with love, then it has a better chance of becoming abuse. The key is BALANCE (something too many people lack in so many aspects of their lives). If you cut it out completely, kids often don't grasp the importance of limits. If you do it too much ... well, we all know the many traumatic results of that.
It just takes balance, folks. Sure, easy to say, hard to do. But when radical interpretations of what is too much (or too little) start to become state policy, then the ability for parents to discipline their children to the proper degree can be limited and thus generational issues with proper boundaries start bubbling to the fore.
