Books Are to Read, Not Ban

 

As a child, I was taught that books are wonderful things that could take you to different places and expose you to many ideas – thanks, Mom and Dad. I was taken to the public library in Reading by my Dad who wanted me to take out books and find pleasure and education in them as he did. When I saw movies of Nazis burning books I couldn’t understand why anyone would do that. 


We are in the midst of a frenzy to ban books these days. As the article notes, this has been politicized as everything is now to divide our nation further. The ostensible reasons are not to harm children by exposing them to ideas that parents believe they should not be exposed to –  sexuality, curse words, gender issues, race. I still have to ask Why?  I think that I see some answers but they are excuses to me rather than answers.


I believe first that a main driver is fear. As Viet Thanh Nguyen notes, “Book banning doesn’t fit neatly into the rubrics of left and right politics.” While this is true, the overwhelming number of challenges to books are indeed coming today from the right-wing who repeat the mantra that allowing children to read the books they want to be banned will harm the children, make them feel bad or demeaned, and are really meant for political indoctrination. What they really seem to fear is the loss of prominence of white Christians and the possibility that exposing their children to different ideas will accentuate that. Fear is a primal emotion and propagandists are masters of whipping it up to their advantage. Fear is driven by Type 1 thinking at the limbic level. It is fast, reflexive, and prone to error as opposed to Type 2 thinking, the slow, critical evaluation that takes work and is done by the frontal cortex. It is sadly all too easy for demagogues to create a blizzard.


Another driver is ignorance. I think this is tied to the general anti-intellectualism that has characterized the United States since its founding. Isaac Asimov said it best:


Remember the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925? The fundamentalist religion group just wanted that old-time religion and the Bible. No fancy reading or thought for them.


Fear. Ignorance. There are probably other reasons. Margan suggested book banning as a topic in our Current Events group here at MonteCedro. I have more homework to do. I was happy to see two things from Pennsylvania as I started to look into this topic. In York County, high school students struck back at the adults who were trying to ban books and limit their education. And in Kutztown, a group of teens has come together to create the Kutztown Banned Book Club, to read and discuss books that some (so-called) adults want banned to prevent poisoning young minds. Lisa Corrigan has written a nice summary – wedge issues like book bans are just another way that people who are out to divide us divert our attention from their erosion of democracy, 


Ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Never ban books.

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