‘I’m with the banned books,’ and other things liars say

Idaho News 6 reports that Concerned Citizens of Meridian wants to abolish Meridian’s library district. This all sounds radical to me — but they already proposed four totally normal things, and it doesn’t look as though the current district will honor them.  Those four things are as follows, in their words:

1. Place inappropriate material for minors in a secure location with procedures that only allow parents to check out such materials for their own children.
2. Require financial transparency by the library board.
3. Bring back public discourse as indicated in the current bylaws.
4. Place the library under the oversight of the Ada County Commissioners.

This led to a backlash by liberals, who said this amounted to a “banning” of books — even though the 50 books in question remained, and the concerned parents in Meridian just wanted to see where their tax money is going.  And this backlash is happening all over the nation.  Parents don’t like their kids reading gay smut or anti-white propaganda, the libraries don’t listen, and the liberals cry Nazi and double down on the gay stuff.  Thus the movement for “banned books” that keeps showing up in the media.

But whenever someone tells me he’s “for the banned books,” I like to ask which ones? and where?

Once you ask which ones, the obvious thing about all these lists of “banned books” is they’re bestsellers — the first sign, to most people, that the book hasn’t been banned.  But the next most obvious thing, once you ask where, is that the books they claim are “banned” are bought with public money for children.

What this means, essentially, is that a so-called “banned book” to them is the polar opposite of banned.  It’s effectively mandatory.  It means the state took money from you to buy books, that you don’t like the books, and that your kids should be forced to read them behind your back.  If the majority of parents in your district disagree, the objection itself constitutes a ban.  If this is the case, and parents aren’t allowed to object, we ask, whom are the libraries working for?  And why are they not accountable to the public?

What liberals never mention is that most books — in fact, 99.99% of all books — aren’t carried by children’s libraries for three reasons.  Most usually 1) because the books aren’t good enough, 2) because the kids aren’t old enough, and 3) because people don’t like what’s in them.  To be a good librarian is to follow these three criteria, and if you don’t follow them, nobody will read books from your library.  If your money comes from donations, that’s a tragedy.  If the money comes from taxpayers, it’s an atrocity.

But the last reason I think the “banned books” movement is disingenuous is because there are plenty of books that actually have been banned across the world, and these books are never featured in the banned book sections.  Mein Kampf was banned for 70 years in Germany, for instance*; the KGB raided homes and hanged a woman to keep Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago from getting published; and the Bible, historically the most banned and burned book of all time, is never featured in these halls of fame for underdogs.  People died to share the Bible.  Nobody has even gone to jail for giving Gender Queer, the “most widely challenged book of 2022,” to children.  But people should have.

Lastly, consider this: if you want to buy gay books for other people’s kids, and teach about them positively, you might get problems from the parents.  But according to the ACLU’s Statement on the Bible in Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide, if you buy the Bible for public schools and you promote it, you will get problems from both the ACLU, a well funded left-wing political organization, and the federal government.

What does this mean?  That so far from being “pro-books,” they have the best of both worlds.  None of their books is actually banned.  They ban teaching the things they hate.  They force teaching the things they love.  And all the while, they pretend they’re against the thing they clearly are.

Jeremy Egerer is the author of Prejudices – a collection of troublesome essays on Substack.  Email him at [email protected] to get a free copy of his essays or to see what he says next.

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