It was surprising to me just how many of the banned books have immense literary value. The Color Purple, The Handmaid's Tale, The Kite Runner, etc. aren't random books that may be a little obscene, they're literary classics. In my opinion this is what makes it obvious that these bans were made in bad faith.
dfxm12 · 1h ago
Republicans have been transparent that they want to dehumanize brown people, women and other minorities. They've been transparent about their desires to censor media. They've been transparent about their disdain for access to education. Don't look at these things in vacuum. It's a systemic approach. They've long lost the benefit of the doubt; bad faith is to be assumed.
southernplaces7 · 1h ago
What a simplistic take on a much more nuanced set of issues and ideas than that from the Republicans and conservatives in general. "brown people"? What the hell does that generic, i'd say even coddlingly racist, label means specifically mean?
If you're in a grossly generic way referring to hispanics, african americans, Indian Americans and many distinct and complex others with less-than caucasian skin color, then i'd suggest you look at voting polls. A surprising number of people from these and other groups support conservative causes too. You going to claim they're all deluded idiots who need a progressive to tell them how they should think and vote?
Same for women. Millions of women are republican-leaning, or conservative in some way. It's not so idiotically simple as hur dur, the republs want to dehumanize women. Their politics on women's reproductive rights and other things are shitty in many ways, but they're more complex than your take.
All that said, this list of books proposed for bans is a laughable idiocy from people who really need to get their heads out of their asses. In the massively digitally interconnected 21st century, where nearly any information can be obtained at any time by nearly anyone, trying to ban things like "The Handmaid's Tale" or "The Kiterunner" for obscenity is absurd.
_kulang · 54m ago
I think lending credence to the idea that their politics are nuanced and complex is disingenuous. If you are going to make the claim that there is nuance, at least provide an example.
I’m sorry but singling out the “brown people” comment is a bit of a straw man in this case, as a “brown” person it kind of is really that simple. There really isn’t anything else to it, it is literally about the colour of the skin. Does it reduce countless cultures and experiences to nothing? Yes. But that’s sort of the point isn’t it.
Supermancho · 59m ago
> What a simplistic take on a much more nuanced set of issues and ideas than that from the Republicans and conservatives in general. "brown people"? What the hell does that generic, i'd say even coddlingly racist, label means specifically mean?
It's cut and dry. Plain racism, broadly and slowly applied. Don't try to notice, they hate that.
> All that said, this list of books proposed for bans is a laughable idiocy from people who really need to get their heads out of their asses.
Ah yes, the foolish "state policy don't matter because you can get it somewhere else". Treating the issue lightly, is part of the problem. Now there's 1 less source BY POLICY and the noose tightens. Weaponizing policy is something politicians are prone to do.
morkalork · 53m ago
I don't buy the whole "it's not illegal, just buy it from a bookstore yourself if it's banned from the library" argument after what happened with Steam and payment processors. What's next? "Just buy these books from a physical bookstore (not online) that is cash only because payment processors have booted the store off their platforms. Also, only old/used editions are available because publishers are afraid to print new runs. But it's not illegal so stop crying"
zeroonetwothree · 47m ago
I don’t think it’s fair to equate private action with state action. The latter is much more dangerous to freedom
AlexandrB · 25m ago
The latter often leverages the former to work around having to legislate things that are unpopular or unconstitutional. A great example is government agencies buying data from data brokers or the Twitter files where the government leaned on Twitter to downrank "wrong" ideas. With the proliferation of powerful near-monopolies - especially in tech - "the market" has little way to work around these kinds of problems, especially in the short term.
I guess my point is that both are dangerous to freedom, and ideally the government would do something to curtail corporate censorship instead of encouraging it. That's the whole idea of a "common carrier"[1].
I am not equating the two, I am pointing out the flaw in the logic of viewing each in isolation and rationalizing. Excusing state-level book bans in library with "you can just buy it yourself with your money instead" clearly ignores what has been happening in the private sector.
Arainach · 55m ago
> A surprising number of people from these and other groups support conservative causes too.
Plenty of people (including the vast majority of Republican voters) vote against their interests, yes. Whether it's single issue voting, misinformation, or a variety of causes, "some X vote for this group" does not mean that the overall group does not hate or work against X.
rayiner · 1h ago
Stop using “brown people” as human shields for your identity politics. This law was signed by a republican who overwhelmingly won reelection (by 20 points) among both white and hispanics and one of the diverse states in the country. It’s not about “dehumanizing brown people,” and it’s insulting to all the hispanics in florida—58% of whom voted for the governor who signed this—to frame it this way.
This law is about what books are in public libraries. It is a counter to the push by teachers to socialize brown kids into having “brown people” ethnic identity. I’m a brown person with brown kids and I’m also furious at the (mostly white liberal) teachers who want my kids to think of themselves as “brown people.” I don’t know if you have kids but this push is very strong right now, especially in blue states.
I want my kids to be socialized like I was, with an American identity shared with their white neighbors. I hate the idea that my kids would think that they have more in common with another ethnic Bangladeshi in Queens than they do with a random person in Appalachia. It’s a shallow, boring mindset and one that’s antithetical to personal success in American society. And frankly, all the “brown people identity” books for south asians are dreck written by losers who are still upset because some kid made fun of their lunch in elementary school. If my kids want to understand her roots, they can read a book about the Mughal Empire.
And it’s not just Florida. Trump won over 40% of asians and nearly 50% of hispanics last year. There is a larger debate amongst “brown people” themselves about how to socialize our kids and the liberal preference for identity politics is by no means universally accepted.
cosmicgadget · 51m ago
While I agree that no one should have their identity defined by their ethnicity, that does not describe many of these books. Perhaps none, it's presumptuous to say that an author writing about oppression wants to increase divisiveness.
Beyond that, there is no shortage of people in favor of book bans that absolutely believe in ethnically-defined identity.
rayiner · 44m ago
If you’re in a room full of white people and you’re reading a book about Chinese railroad workers, then you’re correct that’s not divisive. If you add some asian kids, and then treat the Asian kids indistinguishable from the white kids—everyone is a modern american reading about history—that’s also not divisive.
But what you have in schools today is an additional layer on top of that, where the non-white kids are treated differently than the white kids. The non-white kids are encouraged in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to identify with the oppressed people in the books in a way the white aren’t. At my kids school, they have racially segregated “affinity” groups to facilitate this. My daughter was invited to the weekly “black girl magic” lunch once a month (because I guess that’s the math for a half white half south asian kid). I know that sounds like something I just made up but it’s absolutely true.
This is because academics and authors who write this stuff really do believe in racial identity and solidarity. Specifically, they generalize african american racial identity and solidarity and politics to all non-whites. If you walk into a book reading for some of this stuff, you’ll find way more people promoting “brown people” ethnic identity and solidarity than you will find people promoting “white people” ethnic identity and solidarity at a Trump rally. The vast majority of both white and “brown” Trump supporters just want to go back to the 1990s where we didn’t “talk about race.”
TimorousBestie · 1m ago
> My daughter was invited to the weekly “black girl magic” lunch once a month (because I guess that’s the math for a half white half south asian kid).
> This is because academics and authors who write this stuff really do believe in racial identity and solidarity.
Beverly Bond, who holds the trademark, was an influencer avant la lettre. She wanted to make a brand—looks line like a clothing line, followed by a TV show, then a podcast.
I get that it’s tempting to blame everything on radical leftist academics or whatever but that’s not what happened here. This is simply capitalism.
Is your example here a bit oblique to the point? I see this more of a failing of the people to properly appreciate and discuss/process the contents of the book, and as well as, in my opinion, socially overcompensating for the diversity in the room?
I definitely see your point around a lot of people trying to be so inclusive, they end up being somewhat racist. But I see this more of a lack of proper cultural empathy/education -- go figure, Dunning-Kruger is everywhere all the time. But as you said,
> This law is about what books are in public libraries.
So why would we ban the books, rather than encourage reading them and having the more meaningful discussions focusing on heritage rather than identity?
As a slightly more abstract aside, identity anything to me is a slippery slope because it will always automatically encourage one to make assumptions; it's a mental shortcut to say Person A == Person B iff PersonA.identity == PersonB.identity. Given that education is hard, learning is hard, and life is hard, I think we need to at least emphathize and appreciate that teachers and the the education system in general need to often fall back on these sorts of mental shortcuts. But that's we need to really invoke our right, privilege, and duty of grassroots participation. Why not walk into that book club that's overcompensating and help them learn what is making you uncomfortable? You might be surprised at how ignorant they were of their own mistakes and that they're willing to learn from your perspective.
ethbr1 · 22m ago
I hear what you're saying, and agree with large parts of it. Ethnic background shouldn't override individual autonomy. But...
> The vast majority of both white and “brown” Trump supporters just want to go back to the 1990s where we didn’t “talk about race.”
... there's certainly a chunk of Trump supporters who would like to go back to the 40s and 50s version of US "not talking about race" (or the 1910s for not talking about women).
It'd be nice if the reasonable people from both parties could ignore their extremist wings, get to together, and realize they have more in common than different.
nobody9999 · 1m ago
[delayed]
UltraSane · 30m ago
I truly cannot fathom how anybody can listen to Trump talk for more than 5 minutes and read more than one of his moronic truth social posts and his constant lies and then still be a supporter.
ryandrake · 29m ago
You're (arguably correctly) nit-picking OP's choice of the phrase "brown people." We can debate whether it makes sense to lump "brown people" together or not for the purpose of describing Republicans' attitudes toward human rights, but it would probably be more accurate to just reword OP's statement in more general terms: "Republicans have been transparent that they want to dehumanize out-groups." The point would still stand, and we avoid the distraction of whether "brown people" exist as a distinct group.
rayiner · 24m ago
The problem with that rephrasing is that OP certainly meant to include hispanics (who are the largest group of “brown people”) in the country. And 58% of hispanics voted for the guy who signed this law.
The real dispute is what “dehumanize” means. Does it “dehumanize” my brown kids if schools shield her not fully developed brain from material meant to encourage them to develop “brown people” ethnic identity? I would argue it’s exactly the opposite: the constant stream of “ethnic studies” in schools these days is dehumanizing to brown kids.
tracker1 · 9m ago
I would argue that most Republicans don't give a flying fuck what race someone is, and doesn't feel it should make a difference in terms of political opinion or approach to solving issues. All the struggle sessions in the world won't actually change or fix anything other than to foster divide that has only increased in the past couple decades. A lot of it straight out of communist doctrine in order to tear down society.
This isn't to say that racism doesn't exist, but it's not nearly as big as most make it out to be, and there's far more anti-white hate than there is white racism today. White racism is absolutely outcast as a rule today and the typical Republican wants and has nothing to do with it.
didibus · 26m ago
If I understand, you're saying that you support banning common literary books in libraries? And likely so do most of Florida constituents, even Asians and Hispanic?
But I'm not able to square that with what you said about ethnic identity.
rayiner · 16m ago
Your confusion follows from your premise that this is about “banning.” This is about what books are made available to kids in school libraries. It’s a response to a trend in education, which has embraced teaching non-white kids to embrace ethnic identity and think of themselves as oppressed.
Florida Hispanics see these trends as well, and one reason they overwhelmingly supported DeSantis for re-election is that’s not the worldview they want their own kids to have. They don’t want their kids to think of themselves as “Hispanic” (which is an artificial political construct anyway) and have teachers assign them books about how Hispanics are “marginalized.”
jddj · 1h ago
Do you think the colour purple and the bluest eye should be banned from schools?
zeroonetwothree · 45m ago
Surely it depends on the grade, right? I wouldn’t want my 2nd grader reading them
davorak · 22m ago
Do we need the government to write a law and ban the color purple, and similar, from being taught in second grade? I am not a fan of the government doing that level of micromanagement in most circumstances.
tracker1 · 5m ago
Are you okay putting Penthouse magazine (or similar) in elementary schools?
I'm guessing you aren't... people have to draw lines somewhere on this. There's a difference between restricting by age, making available to all and actually assigning material to children. Not all materials are appropriate for elementary school libraries. And I'm not even talking about The Color Purple specifically.
Also, none of this stops a parent from buying a book for their children they feel is appropriate for their child.
TimorousBestie · 1h ago
> If my kids want to understand her roots, they can read a book about the Mughal Empire.
Do you really believe history books are immune from book bans? Historically speaking, they’re usually first against the wall.
You're talking about the guy and party that believe slavery was a good job training program. FFS, this isn't hard - they don't even bother with the dog whistles any more!
mjmsmith · 1h ago
Curious why you removed "sexual identity" after racial identity.
rayiner · 1h ago
Because I edited the post to make a more specific point with respect to what’s happening in Florida.
mlnj · 1h ago
Because their argument will be immediately defeated with the current push to remove gay-marriage from law.
ppqqrr · 58m ago
No offense, there’s conservatives who want to ban books because they understand the value of literature and education… you’re not it, you should try reading the books they’re trying to ban, because it’s you they’re trying to keep away from reading those books.
lern_too_spel · 1h ago
> Trump won over 40% of asians and nearly 50% of hispanics last year.
I can't find a single exit poll that says Trump won over 40% of the Asian American vote.
> I hate the idea that my kids would think that they have more in common with another ethnic Bangladeshi in Queens than she does with a random person in Appalachia.
Nobody is claiming otherwise. They're only saying that on the narrow topic of racism, Trump and many (though certainly not all) of his supporters will treat your daughter differently than they do a random light-skinned Appalachian.
Your point about hypothetical racist Trump supporters is wrong for two different reasons. First, I’ve been to Appalachia, and my wife is from rural Oregon, and nobody has ever treated me differently. My brother in law (part black, part Samoan, looks like the Rock) went to a Trump rally and Marjorie Taylor Green came to him to introduce herself. In practice, the people who draw attention to my skin color in embarrassing and demeaning ways are white liberals.
Second, building a “brown people” identity around the possibility that someone will occasionally treat you differently is bizarre. I don’t claim that my experience as a brown guy (who has spent a lot of time in the rural south and rural west coast) is universal. But if my family and I haven’t noticed it, that suggests a ceiling on how pervasive it could be. It’s positively grotesque to encourage kids to construct an identity that doesn’t reflect them as individuals, because someone, somewhere, might occasionally treat them differently based on skin color.
overfeed · 8m ago
You sound like you're old enough to have lived through the aftermath of 9/11, I'm glad to hear you didn't experience any racism due to your skin color.
FireBeyond · 1h ago
> won reelection (by 20 points) among both white and hispanics and one of the diverse states in the country
How did he do with African Americans?
tracker1 · 25m ago
A cursory search didn't really reveal this breakdown in the handful of articles I looked at. There is mention that black turnout was a bit lower than other racial groups though. Without specifics, most likely carried more black men than previous elections, while losing with more black women. This seems to be the overall trend in general regarding Republican and Democrat voting from what I've observed.
AlexandrB · 34m ago
> They've been transparent about their desires to censor media.
100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".
I don't really know who to vote for to stop stuff like this. No political party seems to be on the side of a principled defence of freedom of speech. Instead it's always about censoring your opponents and their ideas while you're in power.
Note one massive difference: nobody was trying to make a law that Dahl’s books be sanitized or running around to libraries and getting his books banned. That was a publisher taking unilateral action changing works they own (for better or worse). I see a massive difference between the two things.
antifa · 15m ago
TIL that giving book buyers the choice between the classic uncensored version of a book and a revised version of a book with blatant antisemitism removed, a choice provided by a book publisher, is an example of the Democrats being almost as bad as Republicans.
ranger207 · 16m ago
Yeah, both parties are becoming more authoritarian. IMO the solution is a different voting system than first-past-the-post that allows multiple parties to exist to force different political factions to interact with each other and compromise. But until then though I'm going to vote for the lesser of two evils, since under FPTP not voting at all would not be acting against the greater of two evils.
add-sub-mul-div · 23m ago
It does matter and it is not a minor detail that the left is acting to help people and the right is acting to hurt people. You can always disagree with what the left does, but the left and the right are nowhere near equivalent in the big picture that actually matters.
archagon · 30m ago
Except these revisions were driven by the publisher and not the Democratic party, as far as I can tell. An entirely different scenario.
bilbo0s · 21m ago
I've been saying since Clinton when it started to become clear, that liberals and conservatives will eventually kill the ideals of this Republic. (And not only the ideals expressed in the First.) They've been chipping away for long enough that they now believe it is safe for them to chop.
These people are all dangerous in the extreme. It's just that the conservatives have unmasked themselves and displayed the extreme danger they represent to our ideals in the US in a far more open fashion than liberals.
burnte · 1h ago
They're offensive because they conflict with the ideals of modern conservative leadership: education is bad, hope is bad, kindness is bad. You can't encourage obedience without snuffing out the idea of dissent.
No comments yet
bigfishrunning · 2h ago
Yes, extremely bad faith. These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity, but they're not obscene.
zozbot234 · 1h ago
> These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity
Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.
throwanem · 1h ago
No, it isn't. The modern standard of obscenity in US federal law, the "Miller test," derives from a 1973 Supreme Court ruling in the eponymous Miller v. California.
I realize you're referring to some universal abstract theoretical concept of obscenity that doesn't apply or exist. The one I describe does, and I think that makes it more useful here.
zeroonetwothree · 41m ago
The Miller test doesn’t apply to content for minors though. So even here you are oversimplifying. Especially considering this post is about school.
ethbr1 · 17m ago
Why not? All three parts of the Miller test can be tailored to average reader age.
tomrod · 1h ago
Absolutely.
There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.
The people supporting this political wave tend to be extremely triumphalist in their personal religious zeal, unwilling to make compromises, and are iconoclastic and disrespectful to most outside their in-group.
Much like other iconoclasts and zealots, they rely on the pluralistic principle of toleration to force the paradox of tolerance to bend their way.
It's shame - pluralism is much more invigorating and no one forces lifestyles they disagree with onto dominionists.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
> There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.
Reading your comment, I feel like the word religion is misleading. You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology, despite it not having to do with a god, has been introduced into many layers of government and other institutions. All the things said here can be demonstrated for the religious right but also the non religious left. It’s less about religion in my opinions, and more about how politics is about winning by controlling institutions instead of supporting individual freedoms.
atmavatar · 34m ago
I challenge you to make a point-for-point, truly apples-to-apples comparison.
Fundamentally, there are a lot of Republican policies which attempt to force Christianity or at least Christian morals down our throats, whether it be forcing women to have children, or posting the ten commandments in schools and government buildings, banning pornography, or preventing gay marriage.
I'm rather curious what Democrat policies are equivalent in your mind that would make you try and "both sides" this. And I mean actual passed or proposed policies -- not just bullshit you see from Hollywood and other media.
alistairSH · 46m ago
If by "progressive ideology" you mean "tolerance for people not in the in-group", then sure, but that's not a bad thing.
btilly · 2h ago
There is a lot of evidence that engaging emotionally with literature will shift people's values. In a way that engaging with intellectual ideas does not.
These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.
That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.
tremon · 2h ago
Did the people pursuing these bans consider having empathy with the people who value these books, and try to understand why they value them?
Stop defending tyranny.
rmah · 1h ago
To me, it's disheartening to see this sort of knee-jerk reaction to the grandparent posting (and to see that post be down-voted). What btilly wrote is not a defense, it's reasonable and, more importantly, practical advice in combating tyranny. Moreover, IMO, if you actually want to reduce or put an end to tyranny, you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy. Empathy is not agreement, it's not sympathy, it is understanding. Screaming at others that they're bad people will not change anything. If anything, IMO, it causes them to dig their heels and makes change harder.
bilbo0s · 49m ago
Meh.
No need to have empathy for anyone who doesn't have empathy for others.
I mean, didn't Elon just finish saying that empathy is the problem?
Also,
>you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy.
Um, what we used to call that in the Marines, was "intel". Not "empathy". And that designation of the information you outlined made us surprisingly effective at combating opponents.
I know. Inappropriate since this is not a military issue.
Just sayin' tho'.
Anonbrit · 2h ago
You can have radical empathy with somebody while standing against and fighting every single thing they stand for. Indeed empathy /helps/ you fight better, because you can begin to fight root causes rather than fighting symptoms, and help people heal rather than just shouting them down.
You as an individual are not required to do this if you don't want to, but if a movement wants to be successful then a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success.
To have empathy with a view is not condoning it
tremon · 2h ago
Indeed. But demanding empathy as the only valid a counter-strategy is, which is what the GP was doing. Appeasement doesn't work if your opponent isn't following the rulebook.
From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.
LexiMax · 1h ago
The sort of understanding the GP is promoting doesn't have to be used empathetically.
It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.
wizzwizz4 · 1h ago
Correct: but giving them a thousand timeouts doesn't help, if you still need to give the thousand-and-first. It mitigates the immediate problem, but it also ties up your resources. Eliminating the problem at its root, if that's possible, is a more effective strategy: if we can take away the ability for the real bad actors to get loyal followers, by learning how to change those followers' minds, they won't have anywhere near as much power.
kelseyfrog · 1h ago
Exactly. The distal cause is that the Compromise of 1877 halted an unfinished Reconstruction. What I'm calling for is simple - the natural and final conclusion of Reconstruction. It might be 148 years late, but it's the antidote to the disease.
btilly · 1h ago
We live in a democracy. In a democracy, you don't get to deny people the vote simply because you view them as children. And, sadly, these "children" have around half the votes.
If you are personally not capable of attempting empathy, that's fair. As I said, it is frustrating and hard. But a political culture where nobody attempts empathy is what has allowed grifters playing up the resulting culture war to gain political power, and put themselves in a position to aim for a dictatorship. If everyone keeps doing the same old, same old, the totalitarian outcome is guaranteed.
I'll make this concrete. Right now, many in Trump's base are dissatisfied with the handling of the Epstein affair. As much as you may disagree with a random Republican, the odds are that your differences are not as important right now than winding up united against the idea of an authoritarian pedophile running the country. But if the only emotion that they get is anger about all of the areas where there is disagreement, they won't have anywhere to go but back to Trump.
Is that outcome really what you think is best?
fknorangesite · 1h ago
> We live in a democracy.
For now. And, if these would-be book-banners have their way, not for long.
zeroonetwothree · 37m ago
Didn’t they ban the books using democratically elected representatives that legally passed a valid law?
If anything we actually have the 1st amendment to stop democracies from going too far!
btilly · 1h ago
Reading exercise for you.
Re-read the comment that you replied to, and find out where I said the same thing.
Most of these would-be book-banners do not actually want to create a totalitarian state. They honestly believe that they live in a democracy that was hijacked in 2020. They are being walked into accepting dictatorship on the principle that you have to fight fire with fire. When you meet them with fire, you're confirming the world-views that make them useful tools for Trump and co.
vpribish · 2h ago
he's proposing that outrage is not the best way to oppose them - that we can be more clever and effective by knowing the enemy
tremon · 1h ago
But the GP didn't even identify the enemy correctly, so all that effort would be wasted. The people they're describing are mere tools, only required because of the existing democratic processes in the country. The enemy are the (insert your favourite label here) at the top of the media and political landscape pulling the strings. And I guarantee you, they aren't quite so bothered by the imagery in those books as they are bothered by freedom of thought in general. They are bothered by people that dare to speak truth to power. They are not bothered by appeasement strategies such as we people trying to understand the other people they've pitted against us.
btilly · 1h ago
No, I've identified the enemy perfectly well.
The actual enemy only has power because useful fools are willing to follow them. Treating those useful fools as enemies is a key part of the dynamic that grants the actual enemy power.
I am advocating learning how to talk with those useful fools, and assist them in finding paths away from being the power base for the actual enemy.
lern_too_spel · 56m ago
We live in a democracy. If the majority does something stupid, you have to convince them to stop doing that stupid thing. This means understanding how they came to do the stupid thing to begin with.
krapp · 2h ago
No. They consider empathy a sin, actually, especially empathy with people they consider sexually perverse.
I don't think changing their minds is a requirement. They are allowed to not like something, but they shouldn't be able to ban it.
ranger207 · 45m ago
Well, it's both. You need to ban book bans so that you can have the conversation in the first place, but you also need to change people's mind so that book bans never come up in the first place. It's a guardrail, and ideally we're not leaning on the guardrail
layer8 · 1h ago
You have to change their minds about what legitimates a ban, and about these specific things they don’t like not having the necessary legitimation. And that’s not an easy change, it needs to be grounded emotionally.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
They aren’t banning anything. You can still freely buy any of those books. They’re just changing what content public libraries spend money on. Not really much different from states deciding school curriculum.
tomrod · 1h ago
Isn''t it ironic that the dominant groups pushing the ban forward don't read their own religious literature (typically), nor is their literature compelling enough to guarantee sticky cohorts?
mlinhares · 1h ago
Sorry for the vocabulary here but this is bullshit. The people submitting the banned books here have stated multiple times they have never read most/all the books they have asked for banning and are being driven by lists built by political entities like Moms for America.
There is no genuine offense here, they don't even know what the books are about other than someone saying "its LGBT". It is just cynical manipulation and hate.
btilly · 1h ago
Yes. All that they know about these books is propaganda leading to outrage, and a protection that keeps their world-view from being exposed to contrary ideas.
As I said, their identity is such that they need to avoid engaging with these works to maintain it.
That doesn't mean that their outrage isn't genuine.
nerdjon · 2h ago
While I can understand the side that you are coming from. One of the biggest failures I have seen from my friends is demonizing anyone that may have voted for tump and these people, and refusing to have a conversation. Immediately labeling them as racist for example (which I don't think is necessarily untrue for many of them, but when we know there are black people that voted for Trump that argument as a blanket statement gets harder to make).
I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.
There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.
While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.
That being said...
It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.
So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.
JohnMakin · 1h ago
You can't have a rational conversation with a nazi. That is innately counterproductive. In fact, they are hoping you fall for that. I am not saying anyone who voted for or supports this current political climate is a nazi; but, often they will inadvertently espouse nazi/white nationalist ideals through sheer osmosis of the media they consume and are completely helpless to. By giving a platform for conversation you are also giving a platform for the things they believe. At this point it is too late - if you don't know by now, there is no helping you and no conversation to be had.
ranger207 · 25m ago
Authoritarianism, whether Nazism, Soviet Communism, or French Revolutionary Government, is the belief that some group knows best and everyone else should allow them to make decisions, and that furthermore incorrect beliefs should be stamped out. Not engaging with authoritarian beliefs only reinforces the belief that they're correct and everyone else is wrong; after all, from their perspective nobody's ever proved them wrong.
Related to that though is the fact that authoritarianism has slowly become more prevalent over the past few decades, and it's easier than ever for people to get into cliques and echo chambers that never challenge their beliefs. That's resulted in a decrease in skills in truly changing people's minds about things, since in an echo chamber it's easier to just kick out anyone who disagrees, and if you're kicked out it's easier to just create your own echo chamber that espouses your belief than to convince people in the other echo chamber. This naturally leads to authoritarianism where an echo chamber believes that they're right and everyone else's incorrect opinions should be suppressed. When that community pops out of their echo chamber and tries to change everyone else's beliefs, it's only natural for people to respond with the best way they've learned how: refuse to engage.
I absolutely understand the desire not to engage with Nazis. But, ignoring Nazis is definitionally not going to do anything to fix the root of the problem
I do grant that it is very hard. Just as it is hard to have a rational conversation with a cult member. But the fact that it is hard doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying.
Levitz · 1h ago
You can't possibly complain that any ideals you stand for get suppressed then, surely?
You are refusing democratic process and arguing that media deems people unable to partake in it. This is not even Nazi ideology, this goes way, way beyond Nazism in terms of authoritarianism.
JohnMakin · 43m ago
With all due respect, this is gibberish. Refusing to engage a nazi in conversation is hardly suppressing them in any way, shape, or form. Nor is it refusing any kind of "democratic process." It's also preferable you don't yell fire in a crowded theater or bomb on an airplane.
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
I can totally understand that they are being manipulated. I still have no interest in trying to de-program them. Cut them off, and let them live with their choices. They'll either figure it out eventually, or they won't.
People who are trying to harm my friends and family don't deserve any of my time and effort.
ranger207 · 41m ago
It's a prisoner's dilemma, or tragedy of the commons, or whatever-scenario-where-the-best-plan-is-coordinated-action-but-it's-difficult-for-individuals-to-do-so. Yeah a gay man shouldn't have to go to court to defend his marriage, but society's made up of individuals and their actions, and somebody's got to perform that action
nerdjon · 1h ago
I completely respect a personal choice of doing that, I mean I don't particularly want to engage with many of them either. Especially not when I can expect that I am going to likely be called a particular F word (I am a gay man).
My biggest issue is not the lack of contact, it is the demonizing. Using blanket terms like "if you voted for trump your racist, homophobic, sexist, etc" when I just simply don't think that is a valid blanket statement and is really just a "feel good" statement for us to justify not hearing why they might have done something.
I do think that we are actively pushing them to be more extreme with blanket statements like this and it isn't not actually helping.
We can keep calling them names all we want but the fact is they are still voters that are enabling what we all have to deal with. Either we acknowledge that or we just keep repeating the same pattern we have been repeating since at least the 70's. A little bit of progress followed by a regression.
btilly · 1h ago
They might not deserve it, but they will take rather more of your time and effort if you don't try to exert it until after ICE is breaking down doors and disappearing your friends and family without due process.
skrebbel · 2h ago
It's standard Trumpian negotiation. Ban lots of books, outrage ensues, courts get involved, some books get unbanned. But not all!
dfxm12 · 1h ago
Also par for the course: lots of wasted taxpayer money.
zeroonetwothree · 40m ago
I don’t think Trump was directly involved in this law? We don’t need to invoke his name merely as an epithet.
gosub100 · 2h ago
I'm frankly surprised that kids read books at all. With video games and smartphones and all this attention-draining junk, I would like to see how many books are actually read per 100 kids per month. I would be surprised if it even runs into the double digits.
nilamo · 1h ago
No bans are needed at all then. If "nobody" reads, then "bad" books can't hurt anyone.
bryanlarsen · 2h ago
Outliers skew averages. I know a couple of kids that read dozens of books per month.
whimsicalism · 2h ago
it doesn’t matter whether kids read books, all that matters is parents and how they vote.
also stats on book reading are notoriously cooked, look at how many books publishers claim the median American reads.
terminalshort · 2h ago
Why limit it to kids? My brain and attention span is so rotted from the internet that I find it immensely difficult these days too.
makeitdouble · 1h ago
> attention-draining junk
To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.
Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.
Der_Einzige · 1h ago
Most good books are subversive towards the goals of education. I couldn't believe when they unironically asked me to read "Pedegogy of the Oppressed" and than tried to give grades on it.
Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.
But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques
moritzruth · 20m ago
What's wrong with Percy Jackson? What YA books can you recommend?
philistine · 1h ago
I got an A for reading Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. I turned out ok, I read proper historians writing about horrific events, and my writing abilities are above average.
Properly defining how we educate children is tough.
piltdownman · 1h ago
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you seem unfamiliar with Wilde's work or his stated position on criticism - i.e. that only critical faculty enables any artistic creation at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Critic_as_Artist
Joyce's penchant for scatology in no way diminishes his canon's suitability for engagement via critical theory. If anything, the poststructuralist interdisciplinary approach is as natural a bedfellow for the interpretation of Ulysses of Finnegan's Wake as one could hope for.
To demean Eoin Colfer is another interesting hill to die on (Darren Shan?). Benny and Omar is a fantastic debut novel and a great introduction to class and cultural distinctions in the Islamic world as viewed through the eyes of a surly western teenager. The Artemis Fowl debut as well is a perfectly inoffensive fresh IP with an interesting take on putting a cyberpunk spin on Irish Mythology - although marred somewhat by an appalling cinematic adaptation.
To then cite Brian Jacques as a high-point, ploughing a furrow as he does in the foothills of mid-brow K-12 readership, only suggests to me somebody completely unfamiliar with the canons of Terry Pratchett or Philip Pullman. In any case, you seem to be conflating Young Adult Fantasy with the rich and well populated canon of Young Adult Fiction.
TimTheTinker · 2h ago
> these bans were made in bad faith
It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.
There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey -- get things that are far more innocent banned in a bid to sue and reverse all bans.
rideontime · 2h ago
A lot of things are "possible." Do you have any evidence to support this version of events?
TimTheTinker · 1h ago
Nothing specific. But generally, recent politics makes me believe that any "possible" version of events is an acceptable hypothesis to consider, no matter how egregious (and I mean this regardless of someone's political leaning).
Those with any form of power in very large measure (money, fame, political power, influence) ought not to be trusted implicitly.
jwally · 2h ago
Is the Bible still ok???
--------------------
Genesis 16:4 – “And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived…” (Abram and Hagar)
Genesis 29:23 – “…and he went in unto her.” (Jacob and Leah)
Genesis 30:4 – “…and Jacob went in unto her.” (Jacob and Bilhah)
Ruth 4:13 – “…and he went in unto her, and the LORD gave her conception…” (Boaz and Ruth)
Variants & related euphemisms
Genesis 38:16 – “…he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee…” (Judah and Tamar)
2 Samuel 11:4 – “And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her…” (David and Bathsheba)
Leviticus 18:6+ – “uncover nakedness” is repeated as a sexual euphemism.
Genesis 38:9 – “…when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground…” (Onan; explicit ejaculation reference).
rurp · 18s ago
Don't forget Ezekiel 23:20!
"There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
The bible doesn't always use archaic language or euphemisms.
danpelota · 2h ago
Ezekiel 23:20 - "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
dylan604 · 1h ago
These are okay, because it's not explicit and in your face. "unto her" is such outdated language that it is rather tame by modern standards. Actual reasoning I've been told by people that support banning of books.
Also, anytime you are to the point of asking if the words from the bible are 'ok', you've already lost the argument with the person you are talking to. The bible is infallible, so of course it is okay. You cannot use it as evidence against their point. Ever. It is a waste of breath on your part.
acephal · 1h ago
Don't forget the story in Judges where a Hebrew assasin stabs an obese Canaanite king in the gut and he shits himself but his guards outside the room were already used to him shitting himself so ignored the smell.
jwally · 58m ago
Judges 19–21. The account of the Levite and his concubine:
A Levite from the hill country of Ephraim goes to retrieve his concubine from her father’s house in Bethlehem.
On their return journey, they stop for the night in Gibeah, a Benjamite town.
The townsmen surround the house, demanding to “know” the man (sexual violence implied, similar to Genesis 19 with Lot).
The host refuses and offers his own virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine instead.
The mob abuses the concubine all night; she collapses at the doorway and dies by morning.
The Levite tells her to get up, sees she’s dead, then cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel to rally the tribes against Benjamin.
glitchc · 39m ago
Kite Runner and the Handmaids Tale talk about child sexual abuse. I'm not condoning the ban, just pointing out that these two are not the same thing.
Worth adding: Making the Bible available to common folk was also hotly contested at the time. The Puritans lost that fight and I suspect they will eventually lose this one too.
rsynnott · 1h ago
Oh, that's just the tame stuff.
Ezekiel 23:20: "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
(Somehow I find the need to involve two different equines particularly off-putting.)
bigfishrunning · 2h ago
I don't think the bible is in public school libraries -- if it is (as historical literature), it's probably unconstitutional to teach from it or promote it.
linotype · 2h ago
> it's probably unconstitutional to teach from it or promote it
The Constitution only applies if there are people able and willing to enforce it.
jwally · 2h ago
This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally.
This lets people at the top do whatever now since the eventual consequences (if any) are way out in the future and punitive to the gains they get now.
Its like being a bank robber with a Ferrari when the cops are stuck using horse-and-buggies.
komali2 · 1h ago
> This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally.
My hope is that this situation wakes Americans up to the fact that laws were always this way. I'm hoping this breaks the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice. In reality the legal system of the USA is enforced at the whim of incredibly biased cops, judges, and politicians. I really think a day in a county courthouse should be a requirement for all American kids so they can see just how arbitrarily sentencing is applied or how whether someone ends up in trial at all can hinge on whether a judge agrees or disagrees there was probable cause, and the judge will do like 20 of these hearings one after another.
Not to mention the fact that any black American can tell you that there's two justice systems in the USA: the one for white people, and the one for everyone else. Hence why so many black kids can tell you about when their parents gave them "The Talk," and no, it's not the birds and bees one, it's the one about how your white friends can get up to mischief that you can't and there's nothing you can do about it so don't bother getting mad about it, just keep your head down and never backtalk the cops.
chrisco255 · 1h ago
> never backtalk the cops
This is advice my parents gave me too. It's generally sound advice.
bryanlarsen · 2h ago
The bible is a crucial piece of literature reference. Pretty much every literary piece written before the middle of the 20th century assumed that their reader was also intimately familiar with the bible.
For example, a writer could call a woman a "Jezebel" without any expository context, assuming that the reader would know what that meant.
Thus the bible should be in every high school and higher education library.
graemep · 2h ago
It should be commonly taught as a work of literature. Ideally the KJV which has largely fallen out of favour (except with certain groups) as a religious translation because more recent translations are so much better (advances in scholarship, more discoveries of early manuscripts...) but which is beautiful as a work.
gorgoiler · 52m ago
It’s a sign of the times that the powers that be might make KJV, a labour of love and the apple of the author’s eye, come forth to fight the good fight and rake in some filthy lucre!
By the skin of their teeth, these wolves in sheep’s clothing’s days must be numbered, but if they keep on the straight and narrow, live by the sword, and go the extra mile, then lo and behold the first shall be last and every salt of the earth will be made a scapegoat from here to the ends of the earth!
after KJV, possibly with thanks to Bill (Shakespeare) also.
nemomarx · 2h ago
any Western literary piece. for translated novels from China you might want some other foundational texts on hand, or the Quran to complement Persian literature, or etc
But I don't see any reason a library can't have various books from antiquity, for reference at least. Probably multiple editions or translations of each too.
jeroenhd · 2h ago
TIL "Jezebel" is a reference to the bible.
Without the bible, people still have dictionaries if they don't understand words or references. Or they could use Google. I don't see why some books would be "too crucial" not to ban in a law banning books intended to protect kids.
If anything, I find it easier to defend a ban on religious books in (public) schools.
bryanlarsen · 1h ago
Typically biblical references are references to parables or lessons, not single words that can be easily looked up in a dictionary.
tomrod · 1h ago
> The bible is a crucial piece of literature reference.
We no longer live in the middle of the 20th century. Based on your bandwagon logic, we should also require the Quran, Torah, Shruti, Smriti, The Book of Mormon and associated volumes, the apocrypha, Watchhouse volumes from JWs, NIV, NRSV-CE, The Good Book [0], Buddhist texts, Holy Piby.
No. We don't need that. This is a misapplication of Chesteron's Fence to the late 18th century US culture. We all survived the 1950s to now and culture has, dramatically and mostly for the better, evolved.
The other religious texts you mentioned are not part of the western civilization canon and did not have much effect on western literature. Thus, while I think they should certainly be available in school libraries as they are important works, they need not be required reading.
On the other hand, in different areas with different cultural traditions, each of those books should be required reading as they were central to their literary tradition. And, one assumes, are.
To deny that contemporary American culture has its roots in European culture (i.e. western culture) is to deny reality. And honestly, it mystifies me why so many seem to want to be ignorant of their own cultural roots.
jjallen · 2h ago
The Ten Commandments are required to be posted on every public school wall in Texas. You would have guessed that that is also unconstitutional
SoftTalker · 1h ago
They are deemed to be secular, like Christmas.
Levitz · 1h ago
What's the secular reading of "You shall have no other gods before me" ? What?
I can understand that Christmas has mutated into a family reunion, a time for gathering with loved ones etc, even Santa Claus, name and all, has turned into the figure that brings presents, but even if I can understand "You shall not murder" as a secular rule, the ten commandments as a whole are really hard to take as such no?
SoftTalker · 45m ago
They are common to all Abrahamic religions, in spirit if not word-for-word. Hinduism also has its 5 principles and 10 disciplines which are broadly similar.
Perhaps "secular" is not the best description, but for anyone faithful to any of the major religions, these are going to be broadly shared principles, in addition to being the basis for most of our laws and social norms regarding individual behavior (don't kill, don't steal, etc.)
It's kind of like having "In God We Trust" printed on our currency. It's not a specific (i.e. Christian) God, at least that is the justification, and it's not seen as "respecting an establishment of religion" in the Constitutional sense.
dylan604 · 1h ago
The ten commandments are definitely not secular, but it is funny how up until the 1950s christmas was deemed a pagan religious holiday and was even listed this way in encyclopedias from that time. Then suddenly, it was listed as a christian holiday, except there is no reference about it in the bible with new testament references specifying to not keep that holiday. How these can be deemed the same is beyond rational thinking.
dragonwriter · 48m ago
> but it is funny how up until the 1950s christmas was deemed a pagan religious holiday and was even listed this way in encyclopedias from that time
Deemed by whom and in what encyclopedias? There are certainly religious groups who are historically recent offshoots of Western Christianity that viewed it that way in the 1950s, but the same groups do so today, nothing substantial has changed on that front since the 1950s. For the rest of Christianity, well, it was adopted as a Christian feast in the 4th century and has been treated as one since pretty consistently by most of Christianity. Certainly so in the largest branches of Christian in the US in the 1950s, which constituted between them the great majority of the population.
dylan604 · 40m ago
I had a copy of Britannica from the 50s that had this. It was picked up in one of those Books By The Yard for cheap.
epistasis · 2h ago
The Bible is commonly in public schools, as are other religious books.
Having a book available does not mean promoting it or establishing it as a religion.
zeroonetwothree · 34m ago
Surely not, while it would be unconstitutional to present it as the correct religious view it is totally fine to teach it as part of a general literary overview. It’s been far too important to Western literature to omit entirely.
dylan604 · 1h ago
You mean like the new Texas state law going into effect Sept 1 that says each class room must display the ten commandments and specifies the minimum size of the display would be unconstitutional. Also, unconstitutional by what definition? I'm guessing the current SCOTUS would not agree with your assessment.
jameshart · 2h ago
I would be shocked if any library didn’t have bibles in its collection. It’s crucial reference material.
projektfu · 1h ago
My public school library had several Bible versions, a couple Quran versions, and probably some Buddhist and Hindu texts of interest, though I didn't look for them. Why shouldn't they have these in the library?
jccalhoun · 1h ago
It was totally in my library when I was in high school in the late 80s but I was in a small school in the midwest.
asadotzler · 2h ago
You thought wrong. Visit a library sometime to see otherwise. Various Bibles can be found in many public libraries.
jwally · 2h ago
from the article:
>Since its passage in 2023, Florida schools have removed hundreds of books under House Bill 1069 (HB 1069). HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book.
krapp · 2h ago
Lol, of course the Bible is always OK, but you can find much worse.
And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. – Genesis 19:33–36.
And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her, Come lie with me, my sister. And she answered him, Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly. And I, whither shall I cause my shame to go? and as for thee, thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray thee, speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee. Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. – 2 Samuel 13:11–14
Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished. - Isaiah 13:16.
And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms. She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men. Then I saw that she was defiled, that they took both one way, And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity: And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them. So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister. Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth. - Ezekiel 23:11-21
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. – Numbers 31:18
It's OK because there's no gay stuff. Just good old fashioned heterosexual rape and incest, as God intended.
jwally · 2h ago
Deuteronomy 22:28–29.
“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”
Rapin' is ok if she doesn't belong to someone else (theft) and you have $50. Also HIS penalty is that HE has to marry HER.
FrustratedMonky · 2h ago
So for LOT. Is it ok if the daughters initiate it? What is the lessen here? Is it trying to make some point about, better to keep the family going if there aren't any other men around?
graemep · 2h ago
No, it does not endorse it, mere recounts it. Claiming it is endorsing incest is a bit like saying Agatha Christie endorses murder.
There does not seem to be a clear interpretation of this AFAIK. A lot of the other bits of Genesis have clear messages (e.g. the creation myth, the near sacrifice of Isaac, etc.) but not all necessarily. It might be that there were no other men and they were desperate for children.
komali2 · 2h ago
No, it's not ok. Contextually the daughters believe the world just ended because Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed so they think they need to re-seed the world, which one might consider a justification, but the etiological purpose is to describe the origin of the Moabites and the Ammonites, who are the historical enemies of Israel, and is supposed to show how these two enemy tribes have a shameful beginning (incest). So, it's bad what they did and ew look how gross the Moabites and Ammonites are.
epistasis · 3h ago
It's shocking how little opposition laws like get this from people who call themselves "free speech absolutists." Here we have straightforward censorship, by the government, yet it all flies under the radar.
The people who fight for free speech in these cases, devoting time and money to it, and have real meaningful effect, self-describe in more ordinary ways.
mlinhares · 3h ago
That's because they're not "free speech absolutists", they're fascists that want to force their own idea of what valid speech is on everyone else.
prox · 2h ago
If true they fit the exact definition of doublespeak.
steveBK123 · 3h ago
Yes, the same people that need the 2A right to guns to protect themselves from government tyranny also are totally fine with other forms of government tyranny.
NickC25 · 2h ago
As long as the tyrants are on "their" "side" , 2A gun nuts love government tyranny, and the right to commit tyranny.
mindslight · 2h ago
I'm not really a fan of either party, so I tend to dwell on the most glaring irrefutable examples that shine through groupthink biasing.
Government agents summarily executed Breonna Taylor in retaliation for Kenneth Walker exercising his natural right to night time home defense. This was the exact scenario the 2A enthusiasts always grandstand about - "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away", "From my cold, dead hands", etc. Any yet the response from the sheer majority of supposed 2A enthusiasts? Utter fucking silence, if not outright support for the jackboots.
epistasis · 1h ago
This is shown throughout history too. When the Black Panthers were around the NRA was strongly in support of gun control.
antonymoose · 2h ago
By your logic, the government should be forced to purchase firearms and make them freely available to the citizens.
The government deciding standards for content it purchase is neither tyranny nor fascism. You are free to purchase as much controversial or sexually explicit material as you see fit.
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
Public schools have librarians who are trained in pedagogy. The librarians and teachers already know what books are appropriate for kids. This is state legislators and the governor trying to prevent kids being exposed to ideas they don't personal like.
SilverElfin · 54m ago
> Public schools have librarians who are trained in pedagogy. The librarians and teachers already know what books are appropriate for kids.
This training means nothing. Critical pedagogy is just code for biasing the books in libraries towards the left. It isn’t even a hidden agenda - the ALA has been open about it. This “pedagogy” isn’t about what’s appropriate for kids. It’s about using a public institution and its funds to push one side’s ideas.
So sure, the state may be trying to prevent kids from being exposed to ideas they don't personally like. But it is to counter the librarians and their organizations, who are trying to only expose kids to ideas they personally like.
epistasis · 23m ago
Pedagogy and critical pedagogy are two very different things. And critical pedagogy seems to be a very rare thing, why are you bringing it up and then adding a hyper-political slant to it?
Substituting one term for another and railing against the substituted term is a very weak argument.
SilverElfin · 10m ago
Critical pedagogy is not rare, but very common. I am bringing it up because the ALA pushes and practices it, as do most individual librarians in cities, whose personal politics aligns with the ALA, and whose libraries are members of ALA. That’s why public libraries in cities have a disproportionate amount of progressive biased books visible when you walk in, and virtually nothing from other ideologies.
xnx · 2h ago
Almost without exception, people who loudly proclaim to be one thing: free speech absolutist, anti-tax, heterosexual, small government, "tough on crime" are exactly the opposite.
zeroonetwothree · 30m ago
Well, maybe in practice. You could consider it an example of the law of unintended consequences.
Although I would apply it equally to the other political side as well. “Diversity” = everyone has to think like me, “inclusion” = exclude certain groups and so on
gosub100 · 2h ago
Universities saying they're "diverse" until some students started promoting terrorist and acting anti-Semitic.
root_axis · 2h ago
"Free speech absolutist" is a self-described label for partisan censors. Honest people understand that there's no such thing as absolute free speech.
No comments yet
whimsicalism · 2h ago
i don’t support this law at all, but i think it is pretty obvious that there is a difference between free speech and governmental discretion in what is taught in school. free speech doesn’t require that schools stock the “Bell Curve” or Mein Kampf for instance
Sprocklem · 1h ago
This is a strange framing. These laws are neither about what is taught in schools nor what books schools are required to stock, but rather restrictions on what books schools may chose to make available to the children. The government is not limiting the free speech of the authors, but these laws are the government limiting access to the authors' free speech, which is at least related to free speech, even if you don't buy that it is an restriction of free speech per se.
I do, however, think it is also worth noting that there is value in critically discussing the ideologies espoused by "The Bell Curve" and "Mein Kampf", since both ideologies persist and continue to have influence on American politics today.
whimsicalism · 47m ago
You’re motte-baileying to ‘related to free speech’. By the standard you are setting, any curriculum-setting is free speech related, so clearly not an impermissible state action.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 2h ago
What flew under the radar? It was challenged in court and struck down. The system seems to work no? How else should it work?
epistasis · 1h ago
I am contrasting the difference between 1) those who paid attention and took action, the normal type of free speech defenders, and 2) self-described "absolutists" who have no problem with this sort of vaguely defined restriction on speech.
zeroonetwothree · 29m ago
Why do you think absolutists have no problem with this law? Did you just make that up?
I for one do not support the law and I would consider myself 99% an absolutist.
steveBK123 · 2h ago
Would be preferable to not see administrations repeatedly try obviously blatantly unconstitutional moves. Don't need to be a constitutional law expert to see the problem here.
Is driving 100mph down the highway OK as long as you slow down right before the known speed trap? The system worked?
ModernMech · 1h ago
Remember the part of the book where "love" is really "war" and "freedom" is really "slavery"? It's like that. "Absolute free speech" is really "only party-approved speech".
terminalshort · 2h ago
I completely disagree with this law, but I don't understand how this is a free speech issue. AFAIK the law isn't restricting anyone's right to freedom of speech because under this law anyone in FL is free to own, publish, buy, sell, read, or stock any book in any privately owned library.
It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free. It seems to me like compelled speech to require the government to stock certain books. As this pertains to schools, I don't understand how the government doesn't have the same right to control the curriculum as it does in any other case. e.g. it is not a violation of a teacher's right to free speech to order them not to teach flat earth theory in public schools because that teacher is an employee and not on their own time. Same as my employer can restrict my speech while on the job without violating my rights.
SoftTalker · 1h ago
Yes. Obviously there are books that are inappropriate in elementary school libraries. Different criteria may apply to high-school libraries. But the point is these are curated collections no matter what. Nobody is prevented from reading what they want to read outside of that.
My high school library didn't offer much popular paperback fiction, but I could have found that at the county public library, or at any bookstore or most general retail stores.
School libraries have limited space, funds, and are constantly making decisions about what is age-appropriate and of educational value.
epistasis · 2h ago
Your first and second paragraphs are in opposition to each other. The government is setting strict rules about what sort of books are allowed with this law. It's not a mere selection of the many books, but a strict ban of certain types of books based on their content. When the government establishes laws like this, they must be in accordance with our constitution above all, and that sort of strict criteria on banning certain types of books disagrees with the first amendment and the legal tradition around it.
Similarly, you are also wrong about this compelling the government to stock certain books, that's not on the table at all.
terminalshort · 1h ago
But no books are banned. The government is allowed to set school curriculum in every other case, so why not this one? If you don't like government school rules set by the government, then who gets to set them? I don't think you have a good answer to this.
You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question, which in this case is the state whose budget and laws are controlled by the legislature.
epistasis · 43m ago
> The government is allowed to set school curriculum in every other case, so why not this one? If you don't like government school rules set by the government, then who gets to set them? I don't think you have a good answer to this.
There is a very very good answer here: the constitution.
You are not even responding to the constitutionality claim here, and have refused to even acknowledge the core aspect of this entire case! It seems a bit rude to say "you don't have an answer" when you ignore the point again and again.
The government can set laws, curriculum, etc. But it must be in accordance with the constitution.
It seems that in the last year or so, many people think that the government can do whatever it wants, that there's no constitution, that there's no limits on government power. This is fundamentally anti-American, and against everything that the entire country was founded on.
> You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library.
I'm not dancing around that fact at all. It's a government employee, the school librarian. Guess what, government employees are also subject to restrictions in how they act, as set by the constitution and other laws. When the "other laws" conflict with the constitution, like the one that's the subject of this post, the constitution wins.
Budgetary power is not the ultimate law of the land, it's the constitution. This also seems to have been forgotten in the past year.
nozzlegear · 1h ago
> You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be?
It's the school librarian, who purchases books from their vendor lists. Depending on the school, the school board might vote to put a selection policy in place for the librarian. A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
terminalshort · 1h ago
That may be your preference as to how it should be done, and I see no problem with that. But if your approach is constitutional, so is Florida's. The librarian is an agent of the same government that is controlled by the legislature. If he can decide what books get in and which don't, so can the legislature.
> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
dfxm12 · 1h ago
> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
No.
terminalshort · 1h ago
if (!banned_books.contains(book) {
library.add(book)
}
if (allowed_books.contains(book) {
library.add(book)
}
It's the same. (Well, not quite. Yours is much more restrictive.)
ModernMech · 1h ago
For these kinds of matters we we tend to set community-approved guidelines and then allow the community to enforce them. This is because we trust our community to best uphold the standards of the community.
What's being done here is a top-down effort by certain political forces to insert themselves into this community-lead governance. They don't want the community to set local standards; they would rather those standards be dictated by the governor, or by some party-approved commission appointed by him.
> Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question
Agreed, but Republicans think this person should be the governor of the state, and Democrats think this person should be someone local from the community. Ironically, it's Republicans who are styled as the party of small government.
terminalshort · 1h ago
What you are saying makes sense, but I am only commenting on this in relation to freedom of speech. The government is the government whether it is local or state. So in terms of freedom of speech this is the same thing. In terms of the constitution, local governments are completely subject to the authority of the state government. There is no sharing of power like at the federal/state level.
epistasis · 58m ago
A law must abide by the constitution.
Community norms are not laws, and are much more flexible, have no government enforcement mechanisms, and don't have the weight of the legal system behind them.
These are very different things when it comes to freedom of speech!
Levitz · 37m ago
That looks like the mother of all slippery slopes to me. I'd be very, very careful around the idea that some workers of the government don't have to abide by the constitution.
epistasis · 31m ago
I'm confused, who here is saying that some workers of the government don't have to abide by the constitution? Certainly I have never said that!
ModernMech · 1h ago
I think it all has to do with impact. The point of the first amendment is so that the government cannot create policy to chill speech it doesn't like. That's why we all appreciate it.
A small branch library making autonomous choices about what books to store behind its walls with backing of the local community doesn't stand to chill speech across the state or nation, so the first amendment protection to free speech isn't really implicated. If some podunk town doesn't want to put books about trans kids on the shelves, that's not going to chill speech about trans people across the state or nation.
But when the governor sets policy that no libraries shall have books about trans people, then that's going to chill speech and the first amendment is implicated. Therefore it's unconstitutional, despite flowing from the same derived power source. That's my view anyway, I'm not a lawyer.
mindslight · 18m ago
"I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to increase it to the size where it can go into your bathroom and drown you in the bathtub"
nozzlegear · 1h ago
> It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free.
The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't kosher is that taken to its extreme, the government could ban all books that aren't the King James Bible without explicitly adopting a pro-King James Bible policy. And if that's the only kind of book they stock in the library, then children who want to check out books are going to be reading literature with a certain kind of slant to it.
Replace the King James Bible with whatever you personally wouldn't want kids to be reading, e.g. the Quran or the Kama Sutra.
terminalshort · 1h ago
> The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't
But there isn't any other choice except to not have school libraries at all. The library is owned by the government and the books are paid for by government funds. Somebody has to decide what goes in the library and what doesn't. Who would that be other than the government?
benmmurphy · 1h ago
if the government is running a library it shouldn't be able to engage in view point discrimination. for example it shouldn't be able to remove all books by Democratic presidents while keeping books by Republican presidents or vice versa. the weird thing is the state via an accidental conspiracy between librarians has arguably been engaging in view point discrimination. even though this has not been legislated, or commanded by the executive and is probably in contradiction with what the current executive wants it should not be allowed either.
SilverElfin · 49m ago
Libraries are already engaging in viewpoint discrimination though. That’s what this change to policy is trying to correct (whether it is effective at that or not). Librarians and their activist organizations are choosing to disproportionately stock and feature books aligned to progressive ideology, to bolster their personal political goals. This isn’t an accidental conspiracy - it’s literally what the ALA pushes libraries and librarians to do. They just label it in ways that make it sound academic, like “critical pedagogy”.
slibhb · 1h ago
It is notably weird to react to this article by criticizing "free speech absolutists". Who are the people you're criticizing? Be specific. Free speech absolutists are mostly principled people who want to defend civil liberties while getting flak from the right and left.
An example of this is FIRE -- which was massively criticized by progressives for suing colleges over anti-conservative speech codes, DEI statements, etc. But FIRE has behavred in a princicpled manner and has sued conservatives and the Trump administration over civil liberties violations.
zeroonetwothree · 25m ago
I’m really happy FIRE still exists now that the ACLU has abandoned all semblance of principles. I can’t imagine them litigating the Skokie case today.
QuadmasterXLII · 1h ago
Scott alexander and Zvi were the saddest cases- had a lot of respect for them a while back.
Oh and musk of course but I think that's ketamine poisoning, not long-planned betrayal.
zeroonetwothree · 25m ago
I don’t follow those people extensively but have they actually come out in favor of this Florida law? I would be surprised
epistasis · 20m ago
> Free speech absolutists are mostly principled people who want to defend civil liberties
If this were true, where were they on this clear case of government censorship?
Check out this thread, and the single person admitting to be an "absolutist" seems to have no opposition to this law at all, and merely wants to defend limits to speech.
Free speech "absolutists" are the least principled defenders of free speech, but they may have extremely right-wing principles they are trying to defend. Others here have given examples of high-profile "absolutists" but I'm talking about those I encounter online mostly, such as in this thread.
kstrauser · 1h ago
> Free speech absolutists are mostly principled people who want to defend civil liberties
I genuinely laughed out loud here. As a Mastodon operator, when I see another new instance describe itself as “free speech absolutists”, it means they’re about to fill up with 2 things: Nazis (as in, literally swastikas and “Jews are oppressing me!” memes) and drawings of Japanese 8 year olds in lingerie.
Every. Single. Time.
zeroonetwothree · 27m ago
Seems like your worldview is a bit skewed by the places you choose to hang out online.
kstrauser · 12m ago
Never been a moderator, have ya?
I want to keep my hangouts pleasant, and sometimes that means looking at the unpleasant parts so that you can put a wall between them and myself and my friends.
komali2 · 2h ago
Aaaagh! I feel your frustration but I myself am frustrated at this dance Americans still play at that there are constitutionalists there, or people interested in "maintaining the institutions" or "free speech." There are only two kinds of politicians in America: neoliberals who are looking for opportunities to commodify the State or people in it, and fascists (or baby fascists) interested in achieving Christian nationalist or white nationalist goals by any means necessary.
Even the word "libertarian" doesn't mean "anarchist" in America as it does everywhere else, to refer to the most far-left you take take political ideology. Instead it refers to a deeply right-wing ideology obsessed with corporatocracy.
epistasis · 26m ago
There are plenty of constitutionalists, and reducing the entire polity to either neoliberal or fascists ignores the reality of the country. Further, by trying to ignore the existence of the large number of us who do want to defend the constitution, you hasten it's demise by emboldening those who are seeking to destroy it.
I don't agree with calling anarchy the most far-left ideology, just as I don't agree with calling Marxism the most far-left ideology, because this isn't a one-dimensional axis. The meaning of words is continuously shifting in language, especially with something as slippery as political ideologies, which themselves are continually changing. We must make the words the tools of our communication, instead of our communication the tool of the words.
terminalshort · 2h ago
There is no philosophical difference between libertarianism and anarchism, only a difference in how they predict people will behave in the absence of centralized authority.
jltsiren · 1h ago
In my experience, it's easy to find major philosophical differences between libertarianism and anarchism. For example, you could ask people if they believe that private property is an authoritarian idea.
terminalshort · 38m ago
I'm not saying you couldn't find philosophical differences between individuals who call themselves "libertarian" or "anarchist." But those differences are irrelevant. Absent a state all property is private property, and who owns what is down to might makes right. Whether you call that "authoritarian" or not just comes down to whether or not you still consider a man with a gun robbing you an "authoritarian" if he's not acting on behalf of a formal government.
But this is, of course, only if you take their claims that they want to abolish the state seriously, which I don't on either side. In reality these people do nothing but describe the state that they want when asked to go into detail. The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous because we are a social animal that when left to our own devices, forms states. The concept of a stateless human society makes about as much sense as cows forming a republic.
komali2 · 1h ago
There's a huge philosophical difference! American libertarians are highly focused on individualism and zero-sum behavior and thinking, whereas anarchism is a collective ideology focused on mutual aid or even communism (e.g. Kropotkin's Anarchist Communism).
Libertarianism is an application of right-wing ideology subtracting the State. Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies, but for another example, just because Nazism advocated for nationalizing industries doesn't mean it has anything beyond that in common with Marxist Leninist Communism which advocates for the same.
zeroonetwothree · 23m ago
You are thinking only of one type of anarchism, ie the socialist type. There is also individualist anarchism. Which would be closer to libertarianism (although libertarians would support some state activity so it’s somewhat different).
terminalshort · 1h ago
> Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies
Yes, that's the philosophy. All the rest of what you said is just listing different predictions of what will happen after you get rid of the state. Once you get rid of the state, there is no authority to enforce the "mutual aid or communism" so that isn't a political philosophy. It's just a prediction of what will people will do under their own free will in the absence of a compelling authority.
graemep · 2h ago
liberal commodification and Christian nationalism are both contradictions in terms.
In the UK and I understand libertarianism to mean an extreme free market position, usually in the belief that markets will fix problems unregulated. I think the UK definition is less extreme than the US one but on similar lines.
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
Are they really extreme free market though? Do they want to get rid of limited liability so that the owners of a business are actually responsible for the harms they cause?
graemep · 1h ago
Depends what you mean by extreme free market. I mean anti-regulation, particularly anti-competition regulation, and opposition to state funding or anything.
laurent_du · 2h ago
Using taxpayers money to corrupt minors is not "free speech".
No comments yet
poplarsol · 2h ago
All of these books are freely available if you would like to spend your own money on them, as opposed to public funds.
lesuorac · 2h ago
Public funds are our money. They are literally our tax dollars.
Also, "removing" books means the money was already spent. So it's just about whether we should waste money or not by tossing items in good condition.
bigfishrunning · 2h ago
Public funds are your money, but also the money of those who don't agree with you.
Cerium · 2h ago
This is why I'm ok with the fact that the library has some books I like and agree with and many that I don't care about, and some I don't agree with.
epistasis · 2h ago
Our constitution is the first agreement we have on how to settle any disagreement. It can be changed, it enough people agree.
morkalork · 2h ago
A government cannot function if every person who doesn't like something gets veto on spending. Pick any topic and you'll be able to find half a dozen special interest groups against spending money on it.
perihelions · 2h ago
The amount of public money lost litigating the losing side of this lawsuit surely dwarfs the costs of the books involved? I say again, losing side, because this failed law was very clearly unconstitutional all along—the proponents went out of their way to transfer this taxpayer money to law firms, for a stunt.
tremon · 2h ago
I think it's not a stunt but a strategy. They probably always planned to bring this case all the way to beef supreme court, so that they can neuter the First Amendment entirely.
epistasis · 2h ago
What does that point have to do anything?
They are also available in schools, because the judge here enforced the US constitution.
The article is about Florida politicians trying to censor books in public schools, literal government censorship.
bigfishrunning · 2h ago
I think the problem with these laws is that they're too general. I think we can all agree that there are topics that should not be in elementary school libraries -- I don't think my 7 year old needs to be reading about oral sex for instance, regardless of the gender or sexuality of the participants. The real problem is the nature of the wording of "pornographic", which is poorly defined as "I know it when i see it", and stretched by disingenuous people with an agenda.
As a "Free Speech Absolutionist", I think as much material as possible should be in public libraries, including material that some people object to. I also think that school libraries should be curated to what is appropriate for the audience. The rub here is defining what is "appropriate". Silencing minority literature is bad. Also allowing my elementary school kids to check out "the turner diaries" is bad. There needs to be a balance.
epistasis · 2h ago
In what way would you consider yourself an "absolutist" with views like these? It seems that free speech has quite a few limitations in your view.
bigfishrunning · 2h ago
Let's take the opposite approach -- should schools stock back-issues of "Hustler" magazine? What about the "Anarchists Cookbook"? should we print it and put it on the shelf of a middle school?
You can say whatever you want, that doesn't make it a good idea to stock a school with it.
epistasis · 2h ago
I'm asking about "absolutist" and it's meaning. You replied with something different, about which books should or should not be in a school library.
What does "absolutist" mean to you if you think that limits to what's in a library are a "good idea"?
Remember, I'm not talking about whether there should be limits or not, I'm asking about your self-description of "absolutist" and why absolutism still has fuzzy definitions of what is allowed or not.
bigfishrunning · 2h ago
There's a difference between allowing you to say something and hiring you to say it to my kids.
epistasis · 1h ago
Got it, you have made that abundantly clear (and not that it matters but I agree.)
Again: how is your belief in this compatible with being an "absolutist"?
I don't know how I can phrase this more clearly, yet you repeatedly doge the question.
bigfishrunning · 1h ago
You are allowed to say absolutely whatever you want, Write it down, and sell that material without fear of repercussion. I don't know how to be more clear about this.
epistasis · 35m ago
The government banning your book from a school library is clearly a repercussion. That's what free speech has always been about, limit the ability of the government to enact repercussions.
What is "absolute" about this?
Do you want your own speech to be absolutely free of repercussions to you, be they government or not? Is that it? I really have trouble trying to put some sort of consistent framework in this, unless it's dividing the world into two classes of people: those who will not experience repercussions and those who will experience repercussions for their speech.
ModernMech · 1h ago
You are both completely clear yet not understanding one another.
Let me try to break the deadlock: epistasis is getting at the fact that you can't call yourself an "absolutist" on free speech because your position is not absolute, but qualified -- all speech is free except speech you find problematic, which shall be regulated. That's pretty much everyone's definition of free speech, not an absolutist take.
An absolutist would say there should be absolutely no content-based restrictions on what is in the library regardless of the ages of the patrons. Hustler, Anarchist Cookbook, whatever. They might justify that by saying "free speech is so important we can't place any limits on it. If you as a parent find the idea your child might access speech you find distasteful, it's up to you to prevent your child from seeing it, not the library or the government".
> without fear of repercussion
Let's say you write a book about being a kid and finding it uncomfortable to grow up who you are. You're free to write it, free to talk about it, free to to sell it. But then the government adds your book to a list of books they deem "pedophilic and a danger to children."
Do you think you would be free from repercussions from the government publishing your book on the harmful to kids list? Can free speech thrive in such an environment?
komali2 · 2h ago
There's not really anything in the anarchist cookbook that isn't everywhere on the internet at this point, or even youtube.
wnoise · 2h ago
Topics? No, I don't agree with that. Almost any subject can be treated in an age-appropriate manner.
A 7-year-old doesn't need to read about nearly any topic. Excluding any mention of all of those subjects from the school library leaves a nearly empty library.
For that heavy-handed of a response to be _legally mandated_ requires not just "no need", but some strong evidence of harm. Mentions of sex, oral or otherwise, doesn't actually have much evidence of harm. Certain treatments of it might -- but that's not what the law targets, nor can effectively target. It covers mere mentions or small bits of explicit language, even where that is necessary for the effect of the book. These can and do make parents profoundly uncomfortable, though, and that is worth taking into consideration.
I would think that the usual approach of professional librarians curating based on their own judgement, subject to some oversight from the local school boards to take into account these valid discomforts, but largely baseless fears would be a far better approach.
alistairSH · 2h ago
My (completely inadequate) test... would the people banning books in FL (or wherever else) apply those same rules to the Bible? If not, they're not interested in protecting the children from explicit, but rather forcing their religious ideology on the rest of us.
fknorangesite · 2h ago
Of course - nothing you've said here is controversial. But anyone looking at this issue with honesty knows perfectly well that silencing minority literature is exactly the point.
Any other claims are bad-faith "won't somebody please think of the children" nonsense.
Project 2025 defines all transgender content as inherently pornographic. These censors are not being subtle about their true aims.
bigfishrunning · 2h ago
The point I'm trying to make is that panicing about book bans is not how you combat these bad-faith actors. It's defining rules to satiate their stated aims, and force them to bring their other motives to light, thus nullifying their arguments.
UncleMeat · 2h ago
Their stated aims are banning any visibility of trans people in all media.
Levitz · 2h ago
Aren't public schools part of government? This looks like a bizarre state of affairs to me if the government can't regulate speech from the government.
Say someone in the police department takes the public stance, as a police officer, that black people are subhuman degenerates, is any pushback from the government a first amendment issue? Note this is an ideological stance and doesn't involve any of their duties.
EDIT: I should have done better than to comment this without the very relevant input from the article. Better late than never I guess:
>A second key component of this ruling is on whether or not regulating books in school libraries constituted “government speech.” Officials for the state argued that they were empowered to make decisions about the materials in those collections because it constituted “government speech” and thus, was not subject to the First Amendment.
>Judge Mendoza disagreed.
>“*A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all.* Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints,” he wrote. While parents have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” the government cannot then “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”
Emphasis mine. This is frankly even weirder to me. If the government made a blanket, content-based prohibition of any material with a black character, that wouldn't express any intentional government message at all? Really?
epistasis · 2h ago
Stocking a book in a library is not speech from the government. If it were, we couldn't have religious books in school libraries, but we do.
poplarsol · 2h ago
If stocking a book is not speech then it is not a restriction on speech to decide not to stock a book.
epistasis · 1h ago
Any individual decision, no. A systematic bias over many decisions could be a restriction on speech. (Edit: some systematic biases over the decisions are restrictions on speech that are unconstitutional, but not all.)
A law of the sort that was struck down is clearly an unconstitutional restriction on speech.
Levitz · 29m ago
On whose speech?
It seems more and more that the elephant in the room here is that schools are part of government, but they overwhelmingly lean the opposite side of the administration and they want to exercise their speech through their positions, but the government doesn't want to allow that.
Private individuals would of course enjoy first amendment protections on speech, but if you are government you don't get your speech restricted by government, that's just government. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
n4r9 · 2h ago
> freely ... spend your own money
Come on, now.
Levitz · 2h ago
Freely as in freedom, not as in free beer.
n4r9 · 1h ago
Yes but we're talking about books for school libraries. IMO you're still restricting kids' freedoms by forcing them to pay for something that was previously free. Especially impoverished and/or neglected kids.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
This story doesn’t have anything to do with free speech, because it isn’t a book ban. It’s about what public libraries spend money on and put on their shelves. You can still buy these books yourself, so clearly they aren’t banned or censored. Why can’t the state decide what to keep in libraries they fund?
Let’s not pretend the default situation is uncensored. Librarians are mostly politically skewed to the left, as is their organization (ALA). Walk into libraries in most cities and you’ll find books on the main shelves pushing political ideas from one side, associated with movements like DEI, BLM, LGBTQ, etc. But you won’t find the other side on those shelves.
And that’s the issue. Public money is being used by activist librarians, who practice “critical librarianship”, to basically censor the other side. Changes to public libraries are intended to correct that bias.
tracker1 · 16m ago
I'm surprised at the books mentioned in the article. While potentially inappropriate for elementary aged children are probably more than okay for teens and high school aged. The restrictions themselves without context, review requirements or any rigorous standards is likely excessive.
That said, there are definitely examples of books that have been put into school libraries that can be considered obscene, that you can't post screenshots of on Facebook or other social media platforms, or quote or otherwise read into a school board or city council meeting. Such as graphically depicting a minor student giving fellatio to a teacher. That are wholly inappropriate in any school setting.
And that isn't to restrict a parent who decides to allow their child access to this kind of material, if deemed mature enough to handle it. Only in that it doesn't belong in a public or school library. They simply aren't meant for children. Aside, I'm even open to an "adult" section of libraries that do offer mature content access/storage for adults, such as Playboy, which has a history of decent journalism.
DudeOpotomus · 2h ago
At no time in human history have the people who banned books been on the good side.
Levitz · 2h ago
You might want to look up how denazification efforts worked post ww2.
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zeroonetwothree · 21m ago
It seems like every side wants to ban content nowadays. It’s really quite sad. One side wants to ban books with two men kissing and the other books that use the wrong pronouns.
Although if that’s what you meant then I agree.
guywithahat · 2h ago
Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive", while republicans were the ones who opposed book banning in schools. One would argue at least banning (often recently written) books with adult content/porn makes sense, saying a classic is "culturally insensitive" and banning it is just another word for political indoctrination
DudeOpotomus · 17m ago
Associating good vs evil with politics and perhaps worse, political party's themselves is a problem.
Why do people associate these disparate things? Because they've been trained to...
Sadly, this tribalism is at the root of most of our civil disagreements these days.
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
Political parties seem irrelevant here. Let educators rather than politicians decide which books should be in a school library.
Which laws did Democrats pass calling for books to be removed from schools? I admit I'm not always paying attention, but I don't remember any.
guywithahat · 1h ago
> Let educators rather than politicians decide which books should be in a school library
We already don't do this though, between state laws, federal laws, and the department of education. I am fine getting rid of the department of education though since it seems you're opposed to it too.
And it was 20 years ago, you'd have to look up the specific policies. The point is acting like this is the first time people have tried banning books from young children in school is ignorant of all recent history
glitcher · 31m ago
Making a claim and supporting it by effectively saying "go look it up yourself" is hardly compelling. It might be accurate, or perhaps not incorrect but misleading.
This smells a lot like the old "both sides do bad stuff" argument, which often gets over applied to pretend there is no difference in magnitude of the egregiousness when two sides do similar bad stuff.
potato3732842 · 23m ago
>We already don't do this though
And even if we did it would still go to shit because "educators" is not an representative cross section of the population and their choices would be ideologically skewed and/or subject to industry circle jerks and fads.
zeroonetwothree · 20m ago
Generally institutions have more Democrats serving in them (I suppose it’s a culture fit thing) so it’s less needed for them to pass explicit laws vs just issuing organisational memos or other internal orders.
prox · 1h ago
Banning should be an extreme measure only applied in some extremely limited form for the shortest duration possible, if ever. For instance when the book is directly being used to institute violence or hate. While porn should be restricted, it should be in the hands of parents, not the state. Same with abortion, a deeply personal matter, not in the hands of the state or whatever some church things, just because they think they are right. Justice should be blind, not carry a bible or creed.
It should appear evident, and a pretty apolitical stance, but here we are.
archagon · 28m ago
Can you be more specific? What books were being banned on the state level for being culturally insensitive?
tgv · 2h ago
Banning Mein Kampf was not on the bad side of history. It's rarely black and white.
asadotzler · 1h ago
Which books on the list covered in this article are equivalents of Mein Kampf in mid-century Germany? I'll save you the effort. The answer is "none of them." That makes it pretty black and white for me. There's not some massive overlap here that makes it all shades of gray. The two situations and the works of literature are entirely different and the Germany case is an abberation, an exception, and hardly a good basis for drawing global conclusions. It is black and white. Either you're for or against the wholesale banning of books or you're for it. Countering with "but this one time in this one place" is hardly convincing.
fabian2k · 1h ago
It's not actually banned in Germany. Though I think the only edition you can buy here is annotated, which does seem like a good idea.
hulium · 1h ago
It was essentially banned via copyright for a long time. The only reason that it is available now is that 70 years have passed since the authors death.
Barrin92 · 1h ago
Being German I think it's important to point out that possession of Mein Kampf or reading it was never banned, the idea wasn't to hide some evil esoteric secret knowledge from the German people, to a large extent it was a pragmatic decision because the state did not want Neo-Nazis to benefit financially from the sales of Hitlers legacy, so they just held on to the copyright and didn't print it. There are now since 2016 annotated academic versions of it.
Also you have to have a very cartoonish view of people think we're like the Hulk and turn green the moment you come across a copy of Mein Kampf, denazification was a broad cultural project, not a binary thing about one text.
The primary struggle with that book is actually reading it because it's simply horrid. If you wanted to prevent Germans from turning to nationalism you'd probably have taken Thomas Mann's political writings off the shelves.
nerdjon · 2h ago
Well... it is nice to get some good news on this front but I can't shake that this is likely short lived given the federal government right now...
There is less and less any reason for them to try to hide their true intentions and can just be more open with their blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, etc etc.
Side note: was quite surprised to see a reference to Cloud Atlas. While not surprised given the entire point of that book, it makes me wonder how much these people are actually reading these books and what that looks like.
antonymoose · 2h ago
Well it’s not over yet, this will likely go through many rounds of back and forth appeals since it’s not clear what obligation Florida has to the public in policing content it purchases. It’s not as if they banned you from buying the books, after all.
epistasis · 2h ago
Seems like they could rely on the librarian to make decisions, then if there's a problem have the administration deal with it, and escalate as normal...
Rather than big government via vague laws that allow random people to control everything in schools.
Starman_Jones · 4m ago
They could do that. That would be an effective way to protect children while also respecting the children's First Amendment rights. Instead, well...
"Foreseeable consequences are intended consequences."
duxup · 1h ago
The other route, rather than ban books is to threaten librarians with prosecution so they do the job for legislators, perhaps just out of fear:
There is a high likelihood this ruling gets overturned. The title and the article use the term “book ban” but gloss over what’s actually happening which is legally significant:
> HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book
Florida cannot ban private libraries from stocking books with sexual content. But librarians are government employees buying books and maintaining libraries with government money. The state can direct its employees what kinds of books to make available for the same reason any private entity can do so.
This might be different if libraries were neutral venues for authors to come present about their books. In that case you might have a case about viewpoint discrimination. But the first amendment can’t force the government to buy particular books and make them available to the public.
CalChris · 37m ago
> Florida cannot ban private libraries from stocking books with sexual content.
From the statute, "As used in this subsection, the term “school property” means the grounds or facility of any kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, junior high school, or secondary school, whether public or nonpublic."
jmull · 1h ago
> The state can direct its employees what kinds of books to make available for the same reason any private entity can do so.
The first amendment cannot force the government to buy specific books, but it can force the government not to not buy specific books.
And sure, that's weird, but it's just how the First Amendment works.
rayiner · 32m ago
No that’s not how the first amendment works. You’re thinking of situations where the government offers a platform to the public and can only impose viewpoint-neutral restrictions on access to the public forum. So the government couldn’t operate a government-owned sales platform for books and discriminate based on viewpoint.
Could the government direct librarians to purchase only Bibles, with explicit bans on purchasing the Quran?
fknorangesite · 1h ago
> remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,”
Where "sexual content" includes the mere existence of LGBTQ people at all.
anonnon · 1h ago
Children don't read books anymore anyway, and probably get exposed to inappropriate material on their screens regardless of their parents' (and educators') best efforts, so laws like this seem somewhat quaint.
However, it is pretty funny how parents not wanting their minor children exposed to sexually explicit material when they send them to public schools gets reduced by the left to
> HECKIN' BOOK BAN! CENSORSHIP!
They're not even worried that their zeal to expose children to material parents deem illicit might be construed as a form of "grooming."
I also wonder how many of the leftists crying censorship supported efforts to deplatform the KarenFarms or other legal websites because of wrongthink.
dinfinity · 1h ago
Ignore the insanity of banning books for a second. What about the Victorian-era insanity of preventing children from being exposed to the mere concept of sex and labeling it 'obscenity'?
On one hand we want kids to learn about consent, what 'normal sex' is like and all that, but simultaneously there is this idiotic push to prevent them from encountering any of it until they are 18. If we don't want kids to see bad porn, we need to ensure that there is lots of good porn available, and not just some boring sex ed bullshit. I mean actual benign everyday sex that kids can safely watch and learn from because otherwise they will never see it anywhere else (it's not like they regularly watch their parents or other people do it).
You have to be incredibly regressive to think 18 is somehow a good cutoff for this.
rsynnott · 1h ago
> HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book.
... So, that would be approximately every great work of literature, every important religious text... I mean, what does this leave? This seems _incredibly_ broad; even when censorship of books for obscenity was routine, there was pretty much always a getout for "yeah, but it's Proper Serious Literature".
Like, what books are on the curriculum for English students in Florida? Just the Very Hungry Caterpillar?
> It also allowed parents or county residents to raise objections to material, which then would need to be removed within five days of the objection and remain unavailable until the book was formally reviewed.
Again, wtf? Surely this would allow anyone sufficiently motivated to just run a DOS attack.
xrd · 2h ago
This is not just a few rogue FL citizens trying to ban books. This is spearheaded by the Florida government itself. The education commissioner is Anastasios Kamoutsas, appointed by DeSantis. Given that a culture war is a great way to market yourself to voters, expect appeals.
guywithahat · 2h ago
Maybe, but at the same time there is a serious issue with adult/sexual content in fictional books with no real historical or scientific value. Saying kids have to have access to books about how to perform bj's is a losing argument. If a parent wants their kid to have access to such books they should buy them themselves (although I'd like to think CPS would give them a ring), and we shouldn't conflate what's obscene for an 6 year old to what's obscene for a 30 year old
JohnMakin · 1h ago
The Bible has tons of sexual content, yet something tells me the same parents appealing to get these books removed take no issue with that one.
whimsicalism · 2h ago
i was a voracious reader as a child (and still largely am) and can’t remember ever touching a school library (most of the books stocked were stupid). wonder if this is different in Florida
treetalker · 1h ago
I, for one, am shocked — shocked! — that the Florida Legislature and the DeSantis administration would violate the Constitution of the United States of America. Clearly some rogue agent in the library deep state must be to blame.
chrisco255 · 1h ago
They didn't violate the constitution. There was no ban on books, there was an exclusion of specific titles from school libraries (which is nothing new), which are run by the State of Florida. There is no obligation that schools carry any particular book at all. If I write a book, I cannot compel my book to be carried by the state in school libraries.
amanaplanacanal · 1h ago
This judge just ruled that they did violate the Constitution. You are arguing a case that was already decided.
e44858 · 1h ago
Maybe the judge was wrong. Let's see if this ruling gets appealed.
briandw · 2h ago
Very few people that I talk to are truly in favor of free speech as a principle. They are either in favor of free speech in cases like this, where christians are banning books that they like, and not in favor when it’s about political correctness (misgendering, banning words, hate speech etc) or vice versa.
Free speech for me and not for thee seems to order of the day.
Refreeze5224 · 1h ago
Only fascists ban books.
chrisco255 · 1h ago
This isn't a book ban, you can still buy these on Amazon, in Barnes & Nobles, borrow from local libraries, etc.
cosmicgadget · 12m ago
"You can just buy in to freedom of expression!"
Yes, this is not as bad as a making the books illegal.
If you're in a grossly generic way referring to hispanics, african americans, Indian Americans and many distinct and complex others with less-than caucasian skin color, then i'd suggest you look at voting polls. A surprising number of people from these and other groups support conservative causes too. You going to claim they're all deluded idiots who need a progressive to tell them how they should think and vote?
Same for women. Millions of women are republican-leaning, or conservative in some way. It's not so idiotically simple as hur dur, the republs want to dehumanize women. Their politics on women's reproductive rights and other things are shitty in many ways, but they're more complex than your take.
All that said, this list of books proposed for bans is a laughable idiocy from people who really need to get their heads out of their asses. In the massively digitally interconnected 21st century, where nearly any information can be obtained at any time by nearly anyone, trying to ban things like "The Handmaid's Tale" or "The Kiterunner" for obscenity is absurd.
I’m sorry but singling out the “brown people” comment is a bit of a straw man in this case, as a “brown” person it kind of is really that simple. There really isn’t anything else to it, it is literally about the colour of the skin. Does it reduce countless cultures and experiences to nothing? Yes. But that’s sort of the point isn’t it.
It's cut and dry. Plain racism, broadly and slowly applied. Don't try to notice, they hate that.
> All that said, this list of books proposed for bans is a laughable idiocy from people who really need to get their heads out of their asses.
Ah yes, the foolish "state policy don't matter because you can get it somewhere else". Treating the issue lightly, is part of the problem. Now there's 1 less source BY POLICY and the noose tightens. Weaponizing policy is something politicians are prone to do.
I guess my point is that both are dangerous to freedom, and ideally the government would do something to curtail corporate censorship instead of encouraging it. That's the whole idea of a "common carrier"[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
Plenty of people (including the vast majority of Republican voters) vote against their interests, yes. Whether it's single issue voting, misinformation, or a variety of causes, "some X vote for this group" does not mean that the overall group does not hate or work against X.
This law is about what books are in public libraries. It is a counter to the push by teachers to socialize brown kids into having “brown people” ethnic identity. I’m a brown person with brown kids and I’m also furious at the (mostly white liberal) teachers who want my kids to think of themselves as “brown people.” I don’t know if you have kids but this push is very strong right now, especially in blue states.
I want my kids to be socialized like I was, with an American identity shared with their white neighbors. I hate the idea that my kids would think that they have more in common with another ethnic Bangladeshi in Queens than they do with a random person in Appalachia. It’s a shallow, boring mindset and one that’s antithetical to personal success in American society. And frankly, all the “brown people identity” books for south asians are dreck written by losers who are still upset because some kid made fun of their lunch in elementary school. If my kids want to understand her roots, they can read a book about the Mughal Empire.
And it’s not just Florida. Trump won over 40% of asians and nearly 50% of hispanics last year. There is a larger debate amongst “brown people” themselves about how to socialize our kids and the liberal preference for identity politics is by no means universally accepted.
Beyond that, there is no shortage of people in favor of book bans that absolutely believe in ethnically-defined identity.
But what you have in schools today is an additional layer on top of that, where the non-white kids are treated differently than the white kids. The non-white kids are encouraged in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to identify with the oppressed people in the books in a way the white aren’t. At my kids school, they have racially segregated “affinity” groups to facilitate this. My daughter was invited to the weekly “black girl magic” lunch once a month (because I guess that’s the math for a half white half south asian kid). I know that sounds like something I just made up but it’s absolutely true.
This is because academics and authors who write this stuff really do believe in racial identity and solidarity. Specifically, they generalize african american racial identity and solidarity and politics to all non-whites. If you walk into a book reading for some of this stuff, you’ll find way more people promoting “brown people” ethnic identity and solidarity than you will find people promoting “white people” ethnic identity and solidarity at a Trump rally. The vast majority of both white and “brown” Trump supporters just want to go back to the 1990s where we didn’t “talk about race.”
> This is because academics and authors who write this stuff really do believe in racial identity and solidarity.
Beverly Bond, who holds the trademark, was an influencer avant la lettre. She wanted to make a brand—looks line like a clothing line, followed by a TV show, then a podcast.
I get that it’s tempting to blame everything on radical leftist academics or whatever but that’s not what happened here. This is simply capitalism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Girl_Magic
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Bond
I definitely see your point around a lot of people trying to be so inclusive, they end up being somewhat racist. But I see this more of a lack of proper cultural empathy/education -- go figure, Dunning-Kruger is everywhere all the time. But as you said,
> This law is about what books are in public libraries.
So why would we ban the books, rather than encourage reading them and having the more meaningful discussions focusing on heritage rather than identity?
As a slightly more abstract aside, identity anything to me is a slippery slope because it will always automatically encourage one to make assumptions; it's a mental shortcut to say Person A == Person B iff PersonA.identity == PersonB.identity. Given that education is hard, learning is hard, and life is hard, I think we need to at least emphathize and appreciate that teachers and the the education system in general need to often fall back on these sorts of mental shortcuts. But that's we need to really invoke our right, privilege, and duty of grassroots participation. Why not walk into that book club that's overcompensating and help them learn what is making you uncomfortable? You might be surprised at how ignorant they were of their own mistakes and that they're willing to learn from your perspective.
> The vast majority of both white and “brown” Trump supporters just want to go back to the 1990s where we didn’t “talk about race.”
... there's certainly a chunk of Trump supporters who would like to go back to the 40s and 50s version of US "not talking about race" (or the 1910s for not talking about women).
It'd be nice if the reasonable people from both parties could ignore their extremist wings, get to together, and realize they have more in common than different.
The real dispute is what “dehumanize” means. Does it “dehumanize” my brown kids if schools shield her not fully developed brain from material meant to encourage them to develop “brown people” ethnic identity? I would argue it’s exactly the opposite: the constant stream of “ethnic studies” in schools these days is dehumanizing to brown kids.
This isn't to say that racism doesn't exist, but it's not nearly as big as most make it out to be, and there's far more anti-white hate than there is white racism today. White racism is absolutely outcast as a rule today and the typical Republican wants and has nothing to do with it.
But I'm not able to square that with what you said about ethnic identity.
Florida Hispanics see these trends as well, and one reason they overwhelmingly supported DeSantis for re-election is that’s not the worldview they want their own kids to have. They don’t want their kids to think of themselves as “Hispanic” (which is an artificial political construct anyway) and have teachers assign them books about how Hispanics are “marginalized.”
I'm guessing you aren't... people have to draw lines somewhere on this. There's a difference between restricting by age, making available to all and actually assigning material to children. Not all materials are appropriate for elementary school libraries. And I'm not even talking about The Color Purple specifically.
Also, none of this stops a parent from buying a book for their children they feel is appropriate for their child.
Do you really believe history books are immune from book bans? Historically speaking, they’re usually first against the wall.
I wonder what PragerU has to say about it.
https://www.prageru.com/search?q=Book+ban
I can't find a single exit poll that says Trump won over 40% of the Asian American vote.
> I hate the idea that my kids would think that they have more in common with another ethnic Bangladeshi in Queens than she does with a random person in Appalachia.
Nobody is claiming otherwise. They're only saying that on the narrow topic of racism, Trump and many (though certainly not all) of his supporters will treat your daughter differently than they do a random light-skinned Appalachian.
Your point about hypothetical racist Trump supporters is wrong for two different reasons. First, I’ve been to Appalachia, and my wife is from rural Oregon, and nobody has ever treated me differently. My brother in law (part black, part Samoan, looks like the Rock) went to a Trump rally and Marjorie Taylor Green came to him to introduce herself. In practice, the people who draw attention to my skin color in embarrassing and demeaning ways are white liberals.
Second, building a “brown people” identity around the possibility that someone will occasionally treat you differently is bizarre. I don’t claim that my experience as a brown guy (who has spent a lot of time in the rural south and rural west coast) is universal. But if my family and I haven’t noticed it, that suggests a ceiling on how pervasive it could be. It’s positively grotesque to encourage kids to construct an identity that doesn’t reflect them as individuals, because someone, somewhere, might occasionally treat them differently based on skin color.
How did he do with African Americans?
100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".
I don't really know who to vote for to stop stuff like this. No political party seems to be on the side of a principled defence of freedom of speech. Instead it's always about censoring your opponents and their ideas while you're in power.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl_revision_controvers...
These people are all dangerous in the extreme. It's just that the conservatives have unmasked themselves and displayed the extreme danger they represent to our ideals in the US in a far more open fashion than liberals.
No comments yet
Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.
I realize you're referring to some universal abstract theoretical concept of obscenity that doesn't apply or exist. The one I describe does, and I think that makes it more useful here.
There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.
The people supporting this political wave tend to be extremely triumphalist in their personal religious zeal, unwilling to make compromises, and are iconoclastic and disrespectful to most outside their in-group.
Much like other iconoclasts and zealots, they rely on the pluralistic principle of toleration to force the paradox of tolerance to bend their way.
It's shame - pluralism is much more invigorating and no one forces lifestyles they disagree with onto dominionists.
Reading your comment, I feel like the word religion is misleading. You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology, despite it not having to do with a god, has been introduced into many layers of government and other institutions. All the things said here can be demonstrated for the religious right but also the non religious left. It’s less about religion in my opinions, and more about how politics is about winning by controlling institutions instead of supporting individual freedoms.
Fundamentally, there are a lot of Republican policies which attempt to force Christianity or at least Christian morals down our throats, whether it be forcing women to have children, or posting the ten commandments in schools and government buildings, banning pornography, or preventing gay marriage.
I'm rather curious what Democrat policies are equivalent in your mind that would make you try and "both sides" this. And I mean actual passed or proposed policies -- not just bullshit you see from Hollywood and other media.
These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.
That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.
Stop defending tyranny.
No need to have empathy for anyone who doesn't have empathy for others.
I mean, didn't Elon just finish saying that empathy is the problem?
Also,
>you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy.
Um, what we used to call that in the Marines, was "intel". Not "empathy". And that designation of the information you outlined made us surprisingly effective at combating opponents.
I know. Inappropriate since this is not a military issue.
Just sayin' tho'.
You as an individual are not required to do this if you don't want to, but if a movement wants to be successful then a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success.
To have empathy with a view is not condoning it
From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.
It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.
If you are personally not capable of attempting empathy, that's fair. As I said, it is frustrating and hard. But a political culture where nobody attempts empathy is what has allowed grifters playing up the resulting culture war to gain political power, and put themselves in a position to aim for a dictatorship. If everyone keeps doing the same old, same old, the totalitarian outcome is guaranteed.
I'll make this concrete. Right now, many in Trump's base are dissatisfied with the handling of the Epstein affair. As much as you may disagree with a random Republican, the odds are that your differences are not as important right now than winding up united against the idea of an authoritarian pedophile running the country. But if the only emotion that they get is anger about all of the areas where there is disagreement, they won't have anywhere to go but back to Trump.
Is that outcome really what you think is best?
For now. And, if these would-be book-banners have their way, not for long.
If anything we actually have the 1st amendment to stop democracies from going too far!
Re-read the comment that you replied to, and find out where I said the same thing.
Most of these would-be book-banners do not actually want to create a totalitarian state. They honestly believe that they live in a democracy that was hijacked in 2020. They are being walked into accepting dictatorship on the principle that you have to fight fire with fire. When you meet them with fire, you're confirming the world-views that make them useful tools for Trump and co.
The actual enemy only has power because useful fools are willing to follow them. Treating those useful fools as enemies is a key part of the dynamic that grants the actual enemy power.
I am advocating learning how to talk with those useful fools, and assist them in finding paths away from being the power base for the actual enemy.
There is no genuine offense here, they don't even know what the books are about other than someone saying "its LGBT". It is just cynical manipulation and hate.
As I said, their identity is such that they need to avoid engaging with these works to maintain it.
That doesn't mean that their outrage isn't genuine.
I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.
There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.
While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.
That being said...
It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.
So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.
Related to that though is the fact that authoritarianism has slowly become more prevalent over the past few decades, and it's easier than ever for people to get into cliques and echo chambers that never challenge their beliefs. That's resulted in a decrease in skills in truly changing people's minds about things, since in an echo chamber it's easier to just kick out anyone who disagrees, and if you're kicked out it's easier to just create your own echo chamber that espouses your belief than to convince people in the other echo chamber. This naturally leads to authoritarianism where an echo chamber believes that they're right and everyone else's incorrect opinions should be suppressed. When that community pops out of their echo chamber and tries to change everyone else's beliefs, it's only natural for people to respond with the best way they've learned how: refuse to engage.
I absolutely understand the desire not to engage with Nazis. But, ignoring Nazis is definitionally not going to do anything to fix the root of the problem
I do grant that it is very hard. Just as it is hard to have a rational conversation with a cult member. But the fact that it is hard doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying.
You are refusing democratic process and arguing that media deems people unable to partake in it. This is not even Nazi ideology, this goes way, way beyond Nazism in terms of authoritarianism.
People who are trying to harm my friends and family don't deserve any of my time and effort.
My biggest issue is not the lack of contact, it is the demonizing. Using blanket terms like "if you voted for trump your racist, homophobic, sexist, etc" when I just simply don't think that is a valid blanket statement and is really just a "feel good" statement for us to justify not hearing why they might have done something.
I do think that we are actively pushing them to be more extreme with blanket statements like this and it isn't not actually helping.
We can keep calling them names all we want but the fact is they are still voters that are enabling what we all have to deal with. Either we acknowledge that or we just keep repeating the same pattern we have been repeating since at least the 70's. A little bit of progress followed by a regression.
also stats on book reading are notoriously cooked, look at how many books publishers claim the median American reads.
To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.
Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.
Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.
But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques
Properly defining how we educate children is tough.
Joyce's penchant for scatology in no way diminishes his canon's suitability for engagement via critical theory. If anything, the poststructuralist interdisciplinary approach is as natural a bedfellow for the interpretation of Ulysses of Finnegan's Wake as one could hope for.
To demean Eoin Colfer is another interesting hill to die on (Darren Shan?). Benny and Omar is a fantastic debut novel and a great introduction to class and cultural distinctions in the Islamic world as viewed through the eyes of a surly western teenager. The Artemis Fowl debut as well is a perfectly inoffensive fresh IP with an interesting take on putting a cyberpunk spin on Irish Mythology - although marred somewhat by an appalling cinematic adaptation.
To then cite Brian Jacques as a high-point, ploughing a furrow as he does in the foothills of mid-brow K-12 readership, only suggests to me somebody completely unfamiliar with the canons of Terry Pratchett or Philip Pullman. In any case, you seem to be conflating Young Adult Fantasy with the rich and well populated canon of Young Adult Fiction.
It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.
There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey -- get things that are far more innocent banned in a bid to sue and reverse all bans.
Those with any form of power in very large measure (money, fame, political power, influence) ought not to be trusted implicitly.
--------------------
Genesis 16:4 – “And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived…” (Abram and Hagar)
Genesis 29:23 – “…and he went in unto her.” (Jacob and Leah)
Genesis 30:4 – “…and Jacob went in unto her.” (Jacob and Bilhah)
Ruth 4:13 – “…and he went in unto her, and the LORD gave her conception…” (Boaz and Ruth)
Variants & related euphemisms
Genesis 38:16 – “…he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee…” (Judah and Tamar)
2 Samuel 11:4 – “And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her…” (David and Bathsheba)
Leviticus 18:6+ – “uncover nakedness” is repeated as a sexual euphemism.
Genesis 38:9 – “…when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground…” (Onan; explicit ejaculation reference).
"There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
The bible doesn't always use archaic language or euphemisms.
Also, anytime you are to the point of asking if the words from the bible are 'ok', you've already lost the argument with the person you are talking to. The bible is infallible, so of course it is okay. You cannot use it as evidence against their point. Ever. It is a waste of breath on your part.
A Levite from the hill country of Ephraim goes to retrieve his concubine from her father’s house in Bethlehem.
On their return journey, they stop for the night in Gibeah, a Benjamite town.
The townsmen surround the house, demanding to “know” the man (sexual violence implied, similar to Genesis 19 with Lot).
The host refuses and offers his own virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine instead.
The mob abuses the concubine all night; she collapses at the doorway and dies by morning.
The Levite tells her to get up, sees she’s dead, then cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel to rally the tribes against Benjamin.
Worth adding: Making the Bible available to common folk was also hotly contested at the time. The Puritans lost that fight and I suspect they will eventually lose this one too.
Ezekiel 23:20: "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
(Somehow I find the need to involve two different equines particularly off-putting.)
https://oklahoma.gov/education/newsroom/2025/march/despite-c...
The Constitution only applies if there are people able and willing to enforce it.
This lets people at the top do whatever now since the eventual consequences (if any) are way out in the future and punitive to the gains they get now.
Its like being a bank robber with a Ferrari when the cops are stuck using horse-and-buggies.
My hope is that this situation wakes Americans up to the fact that laws were always this way. I'm hoping this breaks the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice. In reality the legal system of the USA is enforced at the whim of incredibly biased cops, judges, and politicians. I really think a day in a county courthouse should be a requirement for all American kids so they can see just how arbitrarily sentencing is applied or how whether someone ends up in trial at all can hinge on whether a judge agrees or disagrees there was probable cause, and the judge will do like 20 of these hearings one after another.
Not to mention the fact that any black American can tell you that there's two justice systems in the USA: the one for white people, and the one for everyone else. Hence why so many black kids can tell you about when their parents gave them "The Talk," and no, it's not the birds and bees one, it's the one about how your white friends can get up to mischief that you can't and there's nothing you can do about it so don't bother getting mad about it, just keep your head down and never backtalk the cops.
This is advice my parents gave me too. It's generally sound advice.
For example, a writer could call a woman a "Jezebel" without any expository context, assuming that the reader would know what that meant.
Thus the bible should be in every high school and higher education library.
By the skin of their teeth, these wolves in sheep’s clothing’s days must be numbered, but if they keep on the straight and narrow, live by the sword, and go the extra mile, then lo and behold the first shall be last and every salt of the earth will be made a scapegoat from here to the ends of the earth!
after KJV, possibly with thanks to Bill (Shakespeare) also.
But I don't see any reason a library can't have various books from antiquity, for reference at least. Probably multiple editions or translations of each too.
Without the bible, people still have dictionaries if they don't understand words or references. Or they could use Google. I don't see why some books would be "too crucial" not to ban in a law banning books intended to protect kids.
If anything, I find it easier to defend a ban on religious books in (public) schools.
We no longer live in the middle of the 20th century. Based on your bandwagon logic, we should also require the Quran, Torah, Shruti, Smriti, The Book of Mormon and associated volumes, the apocrypha, Watchhouse volumes from JWs, NIV, NRSV-CE, The Good Book [0], Buddhist texts, Holy Piby.
No. We don't need that. This is a misapplication of Chesteron's Fence to the late 18th century US culture. We all survived the 1950s to now and culture has, dramatically and mostly for the better, evolved.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Book_(book)
On the other hand, in different areas with different cultural traditions, each of those books should be required reading as they were central to their literary tradition. And, one assumes, are.
To deny that contemporary American culture has its roots in European culture (i.e. western culture) is to deny reality. And honestly, it mystifies me why so many seem to want to be ignorant of their own cultural roots.
I can understand that Christmas has mutated into a family reunion, a time for gathering with loved ones etc, even Santa Claus, name and all, has turned into the figure that brings presents, but even if I can understand "You shall not murder" as a secular rule, the ten commandments as a whole are really hard to take as such no?
Perhaps "secular" is not the best description, but for anyone faithful to any of the major religions, these are going to be broadly shared principles, in addition to being the basis for most of our laws and social norms regarding individual behavior (don't kill, don't steal, etc.)
It's kind of like having "In God We Trust" printed on our currency. It's not a specific (i.e. Christian) God, at least that is the justification, and it's not seen as "respecting an establishment of religion" in the Constitutional sense.
Deemed by whom and in what encyclopedias? There are certainly religious groups who are historically recent offshoots of Western Christianity that viewed it that way in the 1950s, but the same groups do so today, nothing substantial has changed on that front since the 1950s. For the rest of Christianity, well, it was adopted as a Christian feast in the 4th century and has been treated as one since pretty consistently by most of Christianity. Certainly so in the largest branches of Christian in the US in the 1950s, which constituted between them the great majority of the population.
Having a book available does not mean promoting it or establishing it as a religion.
“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”
Rapin' is ok if she doesn't belong to someone else (theft) and you have $50. Also HIS penalty is that HE has to marry HER.
There does not seem to be a clear interpretation of this AFAIK. A lot of the other bits of Genesis have clear messages (e.g. the creation myth, the near sacrifice of Isaac, etc.) but not all necessarily. It might be that there were no other men and they were desperate for children.
The people who fight for free speech in these cases, devoting time and money to it, and have real meaningful effect, self-describe in more ordinary ways.
Government agents summarily executed Breonna Taylor in retaliation for Kenneth Walker exercising his natural right to night time home defense. This was the exact scenario the 2A enthusiasts always grandstand about - "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away", "From my cold, dead hands", etc. Any yet the response from the sheer majority of supposed 2A enthusiasts? Utter fucking silence, if not outright support for the jackboots.
The government deciding standards for content it purchase is neither tyranny nor fascism. You are free to purchase as much controversial or sexually explicit material as you see fit.
This training means nothing. Critical pedagogy is just code for biasing the books in libraries towards the left. It isn’t even a hidden agenda - the ALA has been open about it. This “pedagogy” isn’t about what’s appropriate for kids. It’s about using a public institution and its funds to push one side’s ideas.
So sure, the state may be trying to prevent kids from being exposed to ideas they don't personally like. But it is to counter the librarians and their organizations, who are trying to only expose kids to ideas they personally like.
Substituting one term for another and railing against the substituted term is a very weak argument.
Although I would apply it equally to the other political side as well. “Diversity” = everyone has to think like me, “inclusion” = exclude certain groups and so on
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I do, however, think it is also worth noting that there is value in critically discussing the ideologies espoused by "The Bell Curve" and "Mein Kampf", since both ideologies persist and continue to have influence on American politics today.
I for one do not support the law and I would consider myself 99% an absolutist.
Is driving 100mph down the highway OK as long as you slow down right before the known speed trap? The system worked?
It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free. It seems to me like compelled speech to require the government to stock certain books. As this pertains to schools, I don't understand how the government doesn't have the same right to control the curriculum as it does in any other case. e.g. it is not a violation of a teacher's right to free speech to order them not to teach flat earth theory in public schools because that teacher is an employee and not on their own time. Same as my employer can restrict my speech while on the job without violating my rights.
My high school library didn't offer much popular paperback fiction, but I could have found that at the county public library, or at any bookstore or most general retail stores.
School libraries have limited space, funds, and are constantly making decisions about what is age-appropriate and of educational value.
Similarly, you are also wrong about this compelling the government to stock certain books, that's not on the table at all.
You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question, which in this case is the state whose budget and laws are controlled by the legislature.
There is a very very good answer here: the constitution.
You are not even responding to the constitutionality claim here, and have refused to even acknowledge the core aspect of this entire case! It seems a bit rude to say "you don't have an answer" when you ignore the point again and again.
The government can set laws, curriculum, etc. But it must be in accordance with the constitution.
It seems that in the last year or so, many people think that the government can do whatever it wants, that there's no constitution, that there's no limits on government power. This is fundamentally anti-American, and against everything that the entire country was founded on.
> You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library.
I'm not dancing around that fact at all. It's a government employee, the school librarian. Guess what, government employees are also subject to restrictions in how they act, as set by the constitution and other laws. When the "other laws" conflict with the constitution, like the one that's the subject of this post, the constitution wins.
Budgetary power is not the ultimate law of the land, it's the constitution. This also seems to have been forgotten in the past year.
It's the school librarian, who purchases books from their vendor lists. Depending on the school, the school board might vote to put a selection policy in place for the librarian. A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
No.
if (allowed_books.contains(book) { library.add(book) }
It's the same. (Well, not quite. Yours is much more restrictive.)
What's being done here is a top-down effort by certain political forces to insert themselves into this community-lead governance. They don't want the community to set local standards; they would rather those standards be dictated by the governor, or by some party-approved commission appointed by him.
> Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question
Agreed, but Republicans think this person should be the governor of the state, and Democrats think this person should be someone local from the community. Ironically, it's Republicans who are styled as the party of small government.
Community norms are not laws, and are much more flexible, have no government enforcement mechanisms, and don't have the weight of the legal system behind them.
These are very different things when it comes to freedom of speech!
A small branch library making autonomous choices about what books to store behind its walls with backing of the local community doesn't stand to chill speech across the state or nation, so the first amendment protection to free speech isn't really implicated. If some podunk town doesn't want to put books about trans kids on the shelves, that's not going to chill speech about trans people across the state or nation.
But when the governor sets policy that no libraries shall have books about trans people, then that's going to chill speech and the first amendment is implicated. Therefore it's unconstitutional, despite flowing from the same derived power source. That's my view anyway, I'm not a lawyer.
The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't kosher is that taken to its extreme, the government could ban all books that aren't the King James Bible without explicitly adopting a pro-King James Bible policy. And if that's the only kind of book they stock in the library, then children who want to check out books are going to be reading literature with a certain kind of slant to it.
Replace the King James Bible with whatever you personally wouldn't want kids to be reading, e.g. the Quran or the Kama Sutra.
But there isn't any other choice except to not have school libraries at all. The library is owned by the government and the books are paid for by government funds. Somebody has to decide what goes in the library and what doesn't. Who would that be other than the government?
An example of this is FIRE -- which was massively criticized by progressives for suing colleges over anti-conservative speech codes, DEI statements, etc. But FIRE has behavred in a princicpled manner and has sued conservatives and the Trump administration over civil liberties violations.
Oh and musk of course but I think that's ketamine poisoning, not long-planned betrayal.
If this were true, where were they on this clear case of government censorship?
Check out this thread, and the single person admitting to be an "absolutist" seems to have no opposition to this law at all, and merely wants to defend limits to speech.
Free speech "absolutists" are the least principled defenders of free speech, but they may have extremely right-wing principles they are trying to defend. Others here have given examples of high-profile "absolutists" but I'm talking about those I encounter online mostly, such as in this thread.
I genuinely laughed out loud here. As a Mastodon operator, when I see another new instance describe itself as “free speech absolutists”, it means they’re about to fill up with 2 things: Nazis (as in, literally swastikas and “Jews are oppressing me!” memes) and drawings of Japanese 8 year olds in lingerie.
Every. Single. Time.
I want to keep my hangouts pleasant, and sometimes that means looking at the unpleasant parts so that you can put a wall between them and myself and my friends.
Even the word "libertarian" doesn't mean "anarchist" in America as it does everywhere else, to refer to the most far-left you take take political ideology. Instead it refers to a deeply right-wing ideology obsessed with corporatocracy.
I don't agree with calling anarchy the most far-left ideology, just as I don't agree with calling Marxism the most far-left ideology, because this isn't a one-dimensional axis. The meaning of words is continuously shifting in language, especially with something as slippery as political ideologies, which themselves are continually changing. We must make the words the tools of our communication, instead of our communication the tool of the words.
But this is, of course, only if you take their claims that they want to abolish the state seriously, which I don't on either side. In reality these people do nothing but describe the state that they want when asked to go into detail. The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous because we are a social animal that when left to our own devices, forms states. The concept of a stateless human society makes about as much sense as cows forming a republic.
Libertarianism is an application of right-wing ideology subtracting the State. Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies, but for another example, just because Nazism advocated for nationalizing industries doesn't mean it has anything beyond that in common with Marxist Leninist Communism which advocates for the same.
Yes, that's the philosophy. All the rest of what you said is just listing different predictions of what will happen after you get rid of the state. Once you get rid of the state, there is no authority to enforce the "mutual aid or communism" so that isn't a political philosophy. It's just a prediction of what will people will do under their own free will in the absence of a compelling authority.
In the UK and I understand libertarianism to mean an extreme free market position, usually in the belief that markets will fix problems unregulated. I think the UK definition is less extreme than the US one but on similar lines.
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Also, "removing" books means the money was already spent. So it's just about whether we should waste money or not by tossing items in good condition.
They are also available in schools, because the judge here enforced the US constitution.
The article is about Florida politicians trying to censor books in public schools, literal government censorship.
As a "Free Speech Absolutionist", I think as much material as possible should be in public libraries, including material that some people object to. I also think that school libraries should be curated to what is appropriate for the audience. The rub here is defining what is "appropriate". Silencing minority literature is bad. Also allowing my elementary school kids to check out "the turner diaries" is bad. There needs to be a balance.
You can say whatever you want, that doesn't make it a good idea to stock a school with it.
What does "absolutist" mean to you if you think that limits to what's in a library are a "good idea"?
Remember, I'm not talking about whether there should be limits or not, I'm asking about your self-description of "absolutist" and why absolutism still has fuzzy definitions of what is allowed or not.
Again: how is your belief in this compatible with being an "absolutist"?
I don't know how I can phrase this more clearly, yet you repeatedly doge the question.
What is "absolute" about this?
Do you want your own speech to be absolutely free of repercussions to you, be they government or not? Is that it? I really have trouble trying to put some sort of consistent framework in this, unless it's dividing the world into two classes of people: those who will not experience repercussions and those who will experience repercussions for their speech.
Let me try to break the deadlock: epistasis is getting at the fact that you can't call yourself an "absolutist" on free speech because your position is not absolute, but qualified -- all speech is free except speech you find problematic, which shall be regulated. That's pretty much everyone's definition of free speech, not an absolutist take.
An absolutist would say there should be absolutely no content-based restrictions on what is in the library regardless of the ages of the patrons. Hustler, Anarchist Cookbook, whatever. They might justify that by saying "free speech is so important we can't place any limits on it. If you as a parent find the idea your child might access speech you find distasteful, it's up to you to prevent your child from seeing it, not the library or the government".
> without fear of repercussion
Let's say you write a book about being a kid and finding it uncomfortable to grow up who you are. You're free to write it, free to talk about it, free to to sell it. But then the government adds your book to a list of books they deem "pedophilic and a danger to children."
Do you think you would be free from repercussions from the government publishing your book on the harmful to kids list? Can free speech thrive in such an environment?
A 7-year-old doesn't need to read about nearly any topic. Excluding any mention of all of those subjects from the school library leaves a nearly empty library.
For that heavy-handed of a response to be _legally mandated_ requires not just "no need", but some strong evidence of harm. Mentions of sex, oral or otherwise, doesn't actually have much evidence of harm. Certain treatments of it might -- but that's not what the law targets, nor can effectively target. It covers mere mentions or small bits of explicit language, even where that is necessary for the effect of the book. These can and do make parents profoundly uncomfortable, though, and that is worth taking into consideration.
I would think that the usual approach of professional librarians curating based on their own judgement, subject to some oversight from the local school boards to take into account these valid discomforts, but largely baseless fears would be a far better approach.
Any other claims are bad-faith "won't somebody please think of the children" nonsense.
Project 2025 defines all transgender content as inherently pornographic. These censors are not being subtle about their true aims.
Say someone in the police department takes the public stance, as a police officer, that black people are subhuman degenerates, is any pushback from the government a first amendment issue? Note this is an ideological stance and doesn't involve any of their duties.
EDIT: I should have done better than to comment this without the very relevant input from the article. Better late than never I guess:
>A second key component of this ruling is on whether or not regulating books in school libraries constituted “government speech.” Officials for the state argued that they were empowered to make decisions about the materials in those collections because it constituted “government speech” and thus, was not subject to the First Amendment.
>Judge Mendoza disagreed.
>“*A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all.* Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints,” he wrote. While parents have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” the government cannot then “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”
Emphasis mine. This is frankly even weirder to me. If the government made a blanket, content-based prohibition of any material with a black character, that wouldn't express any intentional government message at all? Really?
A law of the sort that was struck down is clearly an unconstitutional restriction on speech.
It seems more and more that the elephant in the room here is that schools are part of government, but they overwhelmingly lean the opposite side of the administration and they want to exercise their speech through their positions, but the government doesn't want to allow that.
Private individuals would of course enjoy first amendment protections on speech, but if you are government you don't get your speech restricted by government, that's just government. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
Come on, now.
Let’s not pretend the default situation is uncensored. Librarians are mostly politically skewed to the left, as is their organization (ALA). Walk into libraries in most cities and you’ll find books on the main shelves pushing political ideas from one side, associated with movements like DEI, BLM, LGBTQ, etc. But you won’t find the other side on those shelves.
And that’s the issue. Public money is being used by activist librarians, who practice “critical librarianship”, to basically censor the other side. Changes to public libraries are intended to correct that bias.
That said, there are definitely examples of books that have been put into school libraries that can be considered obscene, that you can't post screenshots of on Facebook or other social media platforms, or quote or otherwise read into a school board or city council meeting. Such as graphically depicting a minor student giving fellatio to a teacher. That are wholly inappropriate in any school setting.
And that isn't to restrict a parent who decides to allow their child access to this kind of material, if deemed mature enough to handle it. Only in that it doesn't belong in a public or school library. They simply aren't meant for children. Aside, I'm even open to an "adult" section of libraries that do offer mature content access/storage for adults, such as Playboy, which has a history of decent journalism.
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Although if that’s what you meant then I agree.
Why do people associate these disparate things? Because they've been trained to...
Sadly, this tribalism is at the root of most of our civil disagreements these days.
Which laws did Democrats pass calling for books to be removed from schools? I admit I'm not always paying attention, but I don't remember any.
We already don't do this though, between state laws, federal laws, and the department of education. I am fine getting rid of the department of education though since it seems you're opposed to it too.
And it was 20 years ago, you'd have to look up the specific policies. The point is acting like this is the first time people have tried banning books from young children in school is ignorant of all recent history
This smells a lot like the old "both sides do bad stuff" argument, which often gets over applied to pretend there is no difference in magnitude of the egregiousness when two sides do similar bad stuff.
And even if we did it would still go to shit because "educators" is not an representative cross section of the population and their choices would be ideologically skewed and/or subject to industry circle jerks and fads.
It should appear evident, and a pretty apolitical stance, but here we are.
Also you have to have a very cartoonish view of people think we're like the Hulk and turn green the moment you come across a copy of Mein Kampf, denazification was a broad cultural project, not a binary thing about one text.
The primary struggle with that book is actually reading it because it's simply horrid. If you wanted to prevent Germans from turning to nationalism you'd probably have taken Thomas Mann's political writings off the shelves.
There is less and less any reason for them to try to hide their true intentions and can just be more open with their blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, etc etc.
Side note: was quite surprised to see a reference to Cloud Atlas. While not surprised given the entire point of that book, it makes me wonder how much these people are actually reading these books and what that looks like.
Rather than big government via vague laws that allow random people to control everything in schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/north-dakota-books-obs...
> HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book
Florida cannot ban private libraries from stocking books with sexual content. But librarians are government employees buying books and maintaining libraries with government money. The state can direct its employees what kinds of books to make available for the same reason any private entity can do so.
This might be different if libraries were neutral venues for authors to come present about their books. In that case you might have a case about viewpoint discrimination. But the first amendment can’t force the government to buy particular books and make them available to the public.
From the statute, "As used in this subsection, the term “school property” means the grounds or facility of any kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, junior high school, or secondary school, whether public or nonpublic."
Not according to the constitution.
And sure, that's weird, but it's just how the First Amendment works.
The books stocked in government libraries is more like the government speech doctrine: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/government_speech. The government itself is allowed to have a viewpoint.
Where "sexual content" includes the mere existence of LGBTQ people at all.
However, it is pretty funny how parents not wanting their minor children exposed to sexually explicit material when they send them to public schools gets reduced by the left to
> HECKIN' BOOK BAN! CENSORSHIP!
They're not even worried that their zeal to expose children to material parents deem illicit might be construed as a form of "grooming."
I also wonder how many of the leftists crying censorship supported efforts to deplatform the KarenFarms or other legal websites because of wrongthink.
On one hand we want kids to learn about consent, what 'normal sex' is like and all that, but simultaneously there is this idiotic push to prevent them from encountering any of it until they are 18. If we don't want kids to see bad porn, we need to ensure that there is lots of good porn available, and not just some boring sex ed bullshit. I mean actual benign everyday sex that kids can safely watch and learn from because otherwise they will never see it anywhere else (it's not like they regularly watch their parents or other people do it).
You have to be incredibly regressive to think 18 is somehow a good cutoff for this.
... So, that would be approximately every great work of literature, every important religious text... I mean, what does this leave? This seems _incredibly_ broad; even when censorship of books for obscenity was routine, there was pretty much always a getout for "yeah, but it's Proper Serious Literature".
Like, what books are on the curriculum for English students in Florida? Just the Very Hungry Caterpillar?
> It also allowed parents or county residents to raise objections to material, which then would need to be removed within five days of the objection and remain unavailable until the book was formally reviewed.
Again, wtf? Surely this would allow anyone sufficiently motivated to just run a DOS attack.
Yes, this is not as bad as a making the books illegal.