I usually don't comment on Canadian current events because followers outside Canada aren't interested and don't know much about it.
A few days ago we had well known academic and politically active mouth piece, Tom Flanagan, make a very unfortunate statement. He wondered out loud if people should be put in jail because of pictures they look at. He was referring to pornographic material and in particular pictures of children. He had made a similar statement three years ago but this time it was videoed and put on you tube. It went viral. He was dropped as a commentator from CBC. He was dropped by the Wild Rose Party from being an advisor. The Conservative party of Canada dropped him from any activity. At one time he was prime minister Harper's chief of staff.
Now such a statement is just wrong in many ways. People should go to jail for looking at pornographic pictures involving children as children have to be harmed in order to get the pictures.
Now some academics have jumped to Tom Flanagan's defence trying to say that he was raising the topic to bring about discussion of the issue. Not on this one . It's just completely illogical.
Professors and teachers use the procedure of throwing out challenging ideas to get their students to think about issues. This was the wrong topic to be used for discussion stimulation.
What is really sad is that Tom Flanagan has written a very strong article defending himself.
I hope we've seen the last of Tom Flanagan and that others will think twice about opening their mouths with similar unthinkable ideas.
