Anton's Ideas

A British mp today asked that a book advocating excessive corporal punishment in a chapter on how parents should discipline their children be banned because it included appalling examples of child abuse. I am not adding to the popularity of the book by naming it, but I do hope Amazon withdraws it from sale asap. However,I sincerely hope that this subject does not become a religious issue but remains what it is “an issue about whether corporal punishment of any kind at any age can be defended in law when the recipients cannot defend themselves.” If we stick to this issue then the book in question is already advocating that certain people should break the law and as such the selling of it is also a crime. I cannot imagine that most people who work for Amazon would not voluntarily refuse to sell the book anyway if they knew what it advocated. A couple of days ago I was saddened to read that a judge could not defend an abused Pakistani girl on the most obscure technical legal grounds I have ever read. No parent or any other person has the right to torture anybody, and mentally that is what corporal punishment is. The real tragedy of this sort of literature, indeed of any medium which encourages people to hurt others, porn sites are the worst, should be closed down. NOT on religious grounds but on humanitarian grounds. Why have a law which tells us what our civil rights are and then not enforce them? How many people regret the abuse practised by ‘celebrities’ while at the same time doing nothing to stop them? We can all point fingers, but that is not enough. Remove all books and films which pander to the depraved. The law already spells out what such depravity is! And already brands advocates of it as criminals.