"Books - Censorship, or Choice?"

 Fifty years ago today, the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam. It hardly seems possible that so much time has gone by. Troops that were not honored then should be remembered today with thanks and appreciation.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Books – Censorship, or Choice?”

March 29, 2023

 

“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all

subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

                                                                                                                             Justice William O. Douglas

                                                                                                                             Speech, Author’s Guild Council, NYC

                                                                                                                             December 3, 1952

 

The Left has the annoying habit of blaming the right for transgressions of which they are guilty, from weaponizing government to tabling stories that put them in a bad light, like Hunter Biden’s laptop. Cloaked in bogus virtue, with mainstream media in their corner, they leave no doubt as to the righteousness of their positions. They profess concern for the aged yet are unwilling to address the impending financial collapse of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – virtually a certainty in the next ten to fifteen years, unless action is taken. They claim to represent the poor yet propose and implement inflationary policies whose victims are the lowest income families.

 

The Left complains about censorship from the right, while they intimidate conservative college speakers, like commentator Charlie Kirk at the University of California Davis, Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford Law School and causing Mary Eberstadt, author of Primal Screams, to cancel this week’s talk at Furman University. In 2016, public figures as diverse as Barack Obama, Clarence Thomas, and Michael Bloomberg warned about political correctness gone awry. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) agreed: “One worrisome trend undermining open discourse in the academy is the increased push by some students and faculty to ‘disinvite’ speakers with whom they disagree from campus appearances.” Seven years later, the situation has worsened. People have the right to protest, but school and college administrators should promote diversity in speakers and in books, not cling to a partisan political ideology.

 

………………………………………………………..

 

Roughly 200,000 books are published in the United States each year. The Library of Congress holds approximately 50 million titles. The average public library contains about a million titles. According to a January 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center, 75% of American adults said they read at least one book in the past year. The average person, according to that study, reads twelve books a year. While women read about 50% more books than men, they cannot come close to reading everything published. Choices must be made. 

 

According to an article in last Friday’s The Wall Street Journal, the American Library Association (ALA) claimed that attempts to ban books in 2022 nearly doubled from a year earlier: “The organization found 2,571 titles were under scrutiny – most focused on or written by LGBT individuals and people of color.” On a positive note, according to an ABC news report on January 12, 2023, the ALA also said, “most book challenges fail to remove books from classroom or library shelves completely.” Censorship or efforts to ban books from the Left merits less attention. The same ABC report, which consisted of 1165 words, devoted 63 words to Progressive’s efforts to ban books, like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and several Dr. Seuss titles, all “in the name of anti-racism or progressive ideals,” books that not too long ago were considered classics of their genre.

 

It is the Left, which purports to be respectful, tolerant, and wise, that has purged “offensive” language from novels by Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and others. Such actions raise questions. Will the Bible be re-written to accord with woke sensitivities? Will Shakespeare, Milton, or Locke? Are “drag queen” story hours appropriate for elementary grade school students? Does the altering of words and/or the rephrasing of sentences by “sensitivity readers” and “inclusion ambassadors” provide a more honest rendering of our history? How deep and wide will political correctness take us? Is not our past part of who we are?  

 

When the ALA released their data last week, the Associated Press reported the story, with the headline “Record book ban attempts in 2022.” They wrote of a shift from individuals to conservative organized groups, “targeting a wide swath of books that don’t align with their political, religious or moral views.” Only The Wall Street Journal, of the papers I read, interviewed the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, one of the groups: “We say – write the book, print the book, sell the book; but if it does not have age-appropriate material for school children, don’t put it in school.” That seems a reasonable request. Is that logic present among those who would like to ban books that have been classics for generations? 

 

Censorship, in any form, is bad. Political propaganda should not substitute for literature in schools. Books that serve to divide should be considered carefully, especially among young readers. Books assigned in schools should be age appropriate but, most important, those selected should promote a love for reading. Not all will agree as to age appropriateness, and it will vary from one child to the next. But parents should be involved along with teachers. We make choices throughout our lives, and education should be aimed at helping people make better choices for themselves, their families, their communities, and their country.

 

In books, we have more choices than in most aspects of our lives. I consider myself relatively well-read and have kept track of books read for over twenty years – almost equally divided between fiction and non-fiction. As a general rule, I prefer dead authors of fiction and living writers of non-fiction. However, during those twenty years, three or four million books have been published, on top of the many millions of books already published; so, barely a dent has been made in what was and is available. Nevertheless, we read to learn, and we read to be entertained. The choices we make are important.

 

Perhaps these competing claims are part of a bigger problem – the United States appears to be pulling back from core values that once defined it. A recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal-National Opinion Research Center (NORC) revealed that tolerance for others, which four years ago was deemed “very important” by 80% of Americans, had fallen to 58 percent.  As for books, people’s tastes vary; what I read may not appeal to you. You should be able to read Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, and I should be able to read Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It is important to have choices; what is more important is that we read.

"A Fading Culture"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Fading Culture”

December 3, 2020

 

“It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting that way.”

                                                                                                Bob Dylan (1941-)

                                                                                                “Not Dark, Yet” 1997

 

The word culture stems from the Latin “colere,” to cultivate, nurture and grow. It encompasses many aspects of our lives, like music, art and literature, as well as ethnicities, religion and race. But when I write of culture, I refer to family, traditions like church and patriotism, and qualities like honor, manners, respect, humility, tolerance – universal values, acquired over time and required for civil behavior. They are expressed in axioms like the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments and turning the other cheek.

 

The United States has faults, but its good qualities outshine its bad. As a nation of courageous and independent individuals, we are unafraid to speak of past and present evils, like slavery and bigotry. We should, as well, be as quick to acknowledge our accomplishments: A Constitutional government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” comprised of laws, not men; our system of free-market capitalism, which has done more to eradicate poverty than any system of state redistribution; educational opportunities not available to most of the world – two thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 22 are in college. To believe that race is systemic is to be seduced by accusations of white guilt and to disbelieve facts; a Pew Research survey found that 91% of Americans either shrug off or applaud interracial marriage. We are the most desired nation for migrants, with 21% naming the U.S., in a study done by the World Economic Forum in 2017. (Germany was second with six percent.)

 

As a nation, we are blessed with natural resources and favorable climate, but they alone do not account for our success. The crucible has been a culture that valued aspiration, risk-taking, hard work and self-reliance. It was a culture, based on a Judeo-Christian heritage, enmeshed in the traditional family and traditional values. Our universities were designed to allow the intellectually gifted to expand their minds, explore and debate ideas, to learn the “hows” and “whys” of thinking, not what to think. Students were challenged, not coddled. The concept of “safe places,” or the idea that the classroom was a place to claim victimhood and air grievances were alien to those who saw their role as imparting knowledge, to form better citizens, to help the Country grow and prosper. 

 

Fundamental to the success of our culture has been the nuclear family. Its decline has been accompanied by dysfunction and cultural deterioration. Today, according to statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, 19.7 million American children (25%) grow up in households without a father. For Blacks, the number is 65%. Those children bear a disadvantage. In a recent issue of “First Things,” Mary Eberstadt, essayist and author of How the West Really Lost God, wrote: “Absent fathers predict higher rates of truancy, psychiatric problems, criminality, promiscuity, drug use, rape, domestic violence, and other less optimal outcomes.” Her conclusions are confirmed by sociologists and organizations like the National Fatherhood Initiative. While divorce, at times, is s the right answer, we should promote family values.

 

Immigration is integral to our culture. The United States is largely composed of immigrants, initially from Western Europe, with slaves from Africa brought here against their will. More recently the majority of immigrants have come from Latin America and Asia. Inherent to what is the United States has been the willingness of immigrants to adapt to American “cultural norms.” This does not mean, as some claim, that immigrants are supposed to deny their past. But it does recognize that assimilation is critical to future success. The preference of “woke” progressives is for a segregated, “salad bow” approach, with competing and contrasting identities, rather than a melting pot, with its motto of E Pluribus Unum. To succeed, immigrants must learn our language, culture and customs, while adding their bit to it. Yet, cynical politicians, viewing them as a source of votes, urge them to emphasize victimhood, rather than to encourage the independent spirit that brought them to this Country. To deny them the opportunities the United States offers is demeaning and unfair, as it makes more difficult the climb up the economic ladder, and it is untrue to the culture that has made the United States a success. 

 

In its place, we have developed a “woke” counterculture that idolizes political correctness, eradicates history, cheers white guilt and victimization of minorities; it divides people and discourages heroism. It is a culture seeded in universities, nurtured by mainstream and social media, reaped by “woke” politicians and fed on by organizations like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It is a culture that allows politicians to milk the public purse for private gain. It permitted the Biden family to become rich off of Ukraine and China. It was behind the lies and the subterfuge in the Obama Administration, which weaponized our intelligence agencies to spy on, and attempt to destroy the Trump Administration, beginning in late 2016. It was behind the failed Mueller investigation and the impeachment of Donald Trump. It is a culture that brooks no dissent and allows no debate. Its followers are seductive, articulate and intelligent. But they are ruthless in their self-righteousness and will lie and cheat to achieve their goals. As well, and which may bring their downfall, they have become insufferable, cultural snobs. Is it any surprise that trust in government has collapsed?  Is it a surprise that so many question the outcome of November’s election?

 

At age sixteen, George Washington copied out 110 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” While many of the rules are dated and have little applicability today, what they have is a consideration for the feelings of others, rather than the self-righteousness that permeates society today. As such, they are intrinsic to our culture. They proclaim our respect for others and, in turn, give us the gift of self-respect and heightened self-esteem. I would not expect young people today to copy those rules, but they should be aware of them and of what prompted the young George Washington to copy them.

 

This cultural slide has been fed by a confederacy of snobs in academia, and in social and mainstream media. Corrupt politicians/bureaucrats and their corporate accomplices have created a government of oligarchs. Mr. Trump is a man whose many flaws are well publicized, but whose virtues – loyalty, directness, tenaciousness – go unreported. Our cultural slide is manifest in attitudes toward him: The hatred for Mr. Trump by Progressives is not based on damage he might inflict on democracy, but fear of what he would uncover in “draining the swamp.” The media does not mock him for the policies he pursued, but because he called them out for the toadies they are. Academia do not dismiss him for his ideas, but because his speech is blunt and coarse. Mr. Trump is not the cause of this cultural decline. He is a consequence. Where is respect for the office? Where is tolerance for a diversity of opinions? Where are the manners that allow us to live civilly? Where is honor? “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting that way.”