Which brings me back to my original problem with this type of PC gone nuts approach... why isn't the petitioning of websites that advocate child abuse, suicide, making a bomb and so forth, also being petitioned?
Since when are they not?
Amazon is a distributor, and this book is a product. Bloom's thread is protesting the product and the distributor for selling the product, not the Entire Internet or The Entire Amazon.com Ever or The Whole Entire World...lol. Just a book, and a request for the distributor of that book to recall its distribution or at least display a warning that they do not endorse child abuse. Will they recall it? Unlikely. Will people be exposed to the truth behind this book? Almost definitely. It's a win-win situation to me, regardless of the outcome.
No different than the shit done daily with stuff people just named. Videogames, newspaper articles, people above talking about Subway and puppy mills - people petition and boycott every day.
Also.... you sincerely underestimate people's stupidity if you think that a potential parent couldn't pick up that book and think "Gee, this sounds easy, all I have to do is beat the shit out of my kids and they will be disciplined and they will love me! Awesome!" Some parents are just that f*cking retarded. Running a PTSD resource I assume you'd be familiar with the antics of people's ridiculously retarded parents by now :p
I don't really have an opinion about whether or not the book should or should not be sold. Like people say, it's a book, information should always be free and on the internet there is tons of information about anything in the world. I would hope that any website informing people of how to covertly and easily abuse their children in any way would be brought to light via petition or otherwise, yeah, whether or not it got shut down? Could care less, but as long as people know about it and about how f*cked up it is, that's just an evolution of information IMO.
I do think that this thread and Bloom's petition and people's subsequent outrage are perfectly valid and reasonable responses, just like someone has the right to read a book and buy a book and write a book and sell a book, people have the right to give their opinions, refuse to endorse, and be subsequently outraged by it. Because they raise awareness as to the subject matter of that book and hopefully will allow people to see that the methods it contains are ridiculous.
If a bunch of people boycotted that material because it was outrageously disgusting and horrible, at least it is out there what this book truly represents and people will be less inclined to buy it and "Try it out".