Troubling message on book banning
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Warning to parents who dare challenge the massive public school bureaucracy: “We will silence you. We will use your money to do it, and we will enlist other taxpayer-funded organizations to help us.”
This is the true message of Banned Books Week (BBW), promoted at your public library with taxpayer dollars.
During BBW your library prominently displays “banned” books with posters declaring “Celebrate Your Freedom to Read” and “Censorship Causes Blindness.”
The American Library Association’s (ALA) Web site asserts that BBW “celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.”
Really? So why then are Fairfax County Public School libraries refusing donations of books which bring balance to the homosexual debate?
Evidently, not everyone is “Celebrating their Freedom to Read.”
The Washington Post reports that the books did not meet school standards and offended a minority group, making them unacceptable for young readers.
So let’s get this straight. A parent expressing concern about a book not meeting meet their standards or offending them is, according to ALA’s Web site, expressing “judgmental overtones.” A parent challenging a book is engaging in “public attack,” and a parent succeeding in having a book removed is committing “censorship.” As for the book, it is “banned," which in library double-speak means that the library will promote it to children.
But libraries refusing books? That’s tolerance.
Is there even a shred of intellectual honesty here?
This is not just about books. How much of a say do you have in your public schools? Are you afraid to question or disagree? If taxpayer-funded opposition of book challengers, or book donators for that matter, is any indication, maybe you should be.
The First Amendment guarantees our right to dissent without fearing retaliation by the government. Tyrannies use the people’s resources to suppress dissent. The real purpose of BBW is to convince you that public dissent is censorship and government denigration of public dissent is freedom.
Dear friends, if we can no longer distinguish between freedom and tyranny is there still hope for freedom?
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