Tom Flanagan seems to support people's "right" to consume child pornography

While this has been a great week for seeing Stephen Harper's conservatives true colours (Senators, Porter, etc. links to follow) - essentially petty little hustlers desperately trying to dress up greed as some ideological higher calling...(“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith) there's darker stuff behind or beneath it all.

Tom Flanagan, Harper's so called ideological mentor and an incredible asshat in his own right, is so wrapped up in himself and what passes for a 'philosophy' of personal liberty etc. that he just seems incapable of realizing that child pornography IS child abuse. (and I'm talking about actual photos etc here, not drawings etc.)

Now whether eventually something entirely dark comes out about Flanagan personally, or as I guess I hope he's just stupid - that he really believes that his ideas concerning personal liberty excuse consumers of child porn from responsibility for child porn production, who knows? But here is the thing.

You have conservatives calling for mandatory minimums and all sorts of tough on crime initiatives for drug dealers and consumers etc, but then 'I'm not sure we should be putting people in prison because of the pictures they're looking at'.

I hope I'm missing some subtlety here - but I kind of doubt it. I think these conservatives (not all conservatives because there are plenty of excellent conservative ideas) THESE conservatives, are venal, selfish idiots - gusting close if not four sails to the wind of being evil.

Here you go...