With a few missteps and bouts of cluelessness, the NFL is finally cleaning up its act when it comes to domestic violence among its ranks. But we as a society have a long way to go to eradicate the idea of domestic violence in word and deed, and some of it is so endemic and, dare we say, so casual, that we may never get there.

Why? The U.S. has a violent history. We began our national life with a bloody revolution, did it all again a few years later, and then nearly destroyed ourselves and our democratic experiment with a great civil war. We committed genocide on the native peoples who had inhabited the land when we arrived.

Throughout our short history, we’ve been fighting with someone, and we’ve had quaint notions about carrying the fight to our own homes.

Until the 1970s, domestic violence was not even considered a crime. The police may come to the house, send one of the partners out for a walk to cool down, lecture the other on how not to “provoke” him when he gets back, and that was that. Few were arrested, fewer still convicted.

Children are still not protected from domestic violence at home, even though it is very well known that corporal punishment is a poor substitute for discipline throughout a child’s growing up years. Children who are modeled corporal punishment — that is, they are beaten or slapped or “spanked” by their parents — grow up to do the same thing to their kids, usually. Kids who get hit learn to do things when parents aren’t looking. They don’t internalize the message that what they did was a bad thing.

How can you internalize such a message when all around you, people are casually violent?

This morning, ironically, while discussing the NFL situation on CBS This Morning on Thursday, anchor Gayle King ad libbed that her boyfriend was complaining, “When do we get football back?”

What she said was remarkable. “I hit him over the head,” she said.

Say what?

Now, she probably meant that she hit him with the TV guide or the newspaper. But this is an example of violence so casual in American society that we don’t even notice it, not even when discussing the subject seriously.

It was so casual that King didn’t even notice it, nor did any of the anchors around the table.

How do we combat such pervasive violence as a subtext for our whole culture? It’s a tough situation, because we have such an ingrained idea that what happens in a man’s — or a woman’s — castle is nobody else’s business.

First, we take all instances of domestic violence, regardless of the age of the victim, seriously. We need to outlaw child corporal punishment and establish reliable laws against domestic partner violence that doesn’t rely on the willingness of the victim to testify. We should ask parents to take positive parenting classes, while they’re waiting for their baby to be born, before bad habits get set in stone. We make sure that advocates and therapy, if needed, are provided to the victim throughout the process.

We must set higher consequences for domestic violence. If you would be likely to face a six month jail sentence if you slugged a neighbor or hit a neighborhood child, the same should apply to your own home. Domestic violence convictions (and in the pretrial period as well) means a loss of job and home, maybe, guns, certainly, unsupervised time with the children, likely.

And then we try something that we should never have let go of in America, to try to stem all those casually violent encounters.

Etiquette. Teach children never to lay a hand on another person. Teach them appropriate ways of greeting a friend. Model those behaviors. Teach them to use their courteous words. And teach them that it’s OK to cut direct someone who is unrepentent.

If Gayle King had stiffened and said in an icy tone, “I BEG your pardon!” to her friend who was in her eyes making light of domestic violence in the NFL, the lesson might have lasted longer.