Thomas Sowell on Banned Books Week - BBW is "Shameless Propaganda ... Now Institutionalized With a Week of Its Own"

Thomas Sowell wrote about the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week" calling it "National Hogwash Week." As the media rebroadcast ALA propaganda uncritically, let us remember "Banned Books Week" is total propaganda. No book has been banned in the USA for many decades; what with the Internet, it is nearly impossible now. See "Hogwash is Happening," by Thomas Sowell, Washington Times, 3 October 1994.

Even a former ALA Councilor said, emphasis mine:

It also highlights the thing we know about Banned Books Week that we don't talk about much--the bulk of these books are challenged by parents for being age-inappropriate for children. While I think this is still a formidable thing for librarians to deal with, it's totally different from people trying to block a book from being sold at all.

Here are choice quotes from Thomas Sowell, emphasis mine:

• "The kind of shameless propaganda that has become commonplace in false charges of 'censorship' or 'book banning' has apparently now been institutionalized with a week of its own."
• "False charges of banning or censorship are so common that they are seldom challenged for evidence or even for a definition."
• "To call a book 'banned' because someone decided that it was unsuitable for their particular students or clientele would be to make at least 99 percent of all books 'banned.'"
• "If the criterion of censorship is that the objection comes from the general public, rather than from people who run schools and libraries, then that is saying the parents and taxpayers have no right to a say about what is done with their own children or their own money."
• "[O]ther books in the display were pure propaganda for avante-garde notions that are being foisted onto vulnerable and unsuspecting children in the name of 'education.'"
• "No one calls it censorship if the collected works of Rush Limbaugh are not put into libraries and schools in every town, hamlet and middlesex village. It is only when the books approved by the elite intelligentsia are objected to by others that is it called censorship. Apparently we are not to talk back to our betters."
• "Those who are spreading hysteria about book banning and censorship know that they are in a war, but too many of those who thoughtlessly repeat their rhetoric do not."

See also:

• "Censorship Propaganda is Just So Much Hogwash," by Thomas Sowell, The Seattle Times, 5 October 1994.
• "Banned Books Week: Smoke Screen of Hypocrisy," by Linda Harvey, WorldNetDaily, 23 September 2005.
• "Banned Books Week," by Norma, Collecting My Thoughts, 9 October 2007.
• "The Real Library 'Censors,'" by Dr. Judith Reisman, WorldNetDaily, 16 September 2008.
• "How Anti-Censors, 'Censor' the Truth About Censorship or ... Looking for Nazis in All the Wrong Places," by Tomeboy, Tomeboy, undated.
  
• "'Left' Out - Liberal Censors You Never Hear About," by Tomeboy, Tomeboy, undated.
• "You Gotta Buy'em to Ban'em," by Tomeboy, Tomeboy, undated.
• "The Book Banners Hollywood Ignores," by Michelle Malkin, TownHall.com, 17 September 2008.
• "The ALA Celebrates BBW!," by Annoyed Librarian, Annoyed Librarian, 1 October 2007.
• "Banned Books Week," by Sean Lindsay, 101 Reasons to Stop Writing, 4 October 2007.
• "Banned Books Week? Are You Kidding? It's a Fraud!!!," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries.org, undated.
• "Book Banning Myths," by Nancy M. Czerwiec, Illinois Family Institute, 4 October 2007.
  
• "Meet Your Local Book Burner," by Tom Giffey, Leader-Telegram, 24 September 2008.
• "Partisan UT Prof Hijacks 'Banned Books Week,'" by Reid Ahlbeck, Toledo Free Press, 26 September 2008, exclusively online.
• "25 Banned Books That You Should Read Today." "This list ... tells you where you can read them all for free online." [NOTE: How can they be "banned" when they are free to read online anytime, anywhere?]
• "'Banned' Books Week Strikes Again," by Annoyed Librarian, Annoyed Librarian, 29 September 2008.
• "Banned Books Week, 2008," by Dennis, The Recliner Commentaries, 30 September 2008.
  
• "Banned Books Week Hypocrisy Publicized," by Robert Kent, The Friends of Cuban Librarians, 30 September 2008.
• "Banned Books High School Update," by Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Institute, 1 October 2008.
• "'Banned Books Week' Stokes the Fire," by Cal Thomas, Muskegon Chronicle, 22 September 1995. (Look a little down the page to find this.)
• "Good News: Students Challenge Library Policies, Ask for Equal Viewpoint Representation," by Focus on the Family, CitizenLink, 2 October 2008.
  
• "Banned Books, Chapter 2; Conservative Group Urges Libraries to Accept Collection," by Michael Alison Chandler, The Washington Post, 3 October 2008.
• "Banned Book Week and Intelligent Design Part 1: Darwinist Law Professor Supports Library Censorship of Pro-ID Books," by Casey Luskin, Evolution News & Views, 3 October 2008, criticizing "Evolution and the Holy Ghost of Scopes: Can Science Lose the Next Round?," by Stephen A. Newman, Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 8.2, Spring 2007.
• "'Censors' Are So Scary," by Annoyed Librarian, Library Journal, 6 October 2008.
  
• "'Some 'Censorship' is Good," by Annoyed Librarian, Library Journal, 8 October 2008.
• "Humberto Fontova, the Media's 'Book Banning' Claims, and the ALA's Opposition to the 'Right to Apply Accuracy' in Public Schools," by Dan Kleinman, SafeLibraries, 17 February 2009.
• "'Librarians 'Censor' Statutory Rape Book," by Annoyed Librarian, Library Journal, 23 February 2009.
• "A Pet Peeve," by Doug Archer, OIF Blog [ALA], 17 June 2009.
• "Therapy: Part 2," by Lauren, The Barnes Family, 27 June 2009. See also "Romance Novels Pornography for Women," by Adrienne, Adrienne Bone, 27 June 2009.
• "Banned Books Week and the ALA," by Dennis Ingolfsland, The Recliner Commentaries, 4 August 2009.
• "US Libraries Hit Back Over Challenges to Kids Books," by Sara Hussein, Agence France-Presse [AFP], 6 September 2009:
  
  
  

  Kleinman accuses the ALA of hyperbole in celebrating Banned Books Week. "The whole purpose of Banned Books Week is to provide this kind of misinformation," he said. "The ALA misleads people into thinking that if you keep an inappropriate book from a child that is considered censorship. It is not."
  

  
  
  
  
• "Finding Censorship Where There Is None," by Mitchell Muncy, Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2009.
  
  

  In the common-law tradition, censorship refers specifically to the government's prior restraint on publication. None of the sponsors claim this has happened; the acts they have in mind are perpetrated by private citizens. Yet the cases on the map almost all involve ordinary people lodging complaints with school and library authorities. Before Banned Books Week began in 1982, such behavior was known as petitioning the government for a redress of grievances.
  ....
  There's something odd about a national organization with a $54 million budget and 67,000 members reacting so zealously against a few unorganized, law-abiding parents whose efforts, by any sensible standard, are hopelessly ineffective. The ALA's members have immeasurably more power than the "censors" they denounce to decide what books are available in our communities, but this power is so familiar it's invisible. Why do parents' public petitions constitute censorship, while librarians' hidden verdicts do not? A spokesman for the ALA once tackled this question in the Boston Globe: "The selection criteria that librarians use may not always be what everybody wants. I don't see that it's a real problem." Move along, folks, nothing to see here.
  

  
  
  
• "Chicago Tribune's Julia Keller Endorses ALA's Banned Books Week," by Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Institute, 28 September 2009.
• "Celebrate 'Banned' Books Week!," by Annoyed Librarian, Library Journal, 30 September 2009.
  
  

  The ALA's definition of censorship has no relationship whatsoever to what everyone else in the entire world understands by the word. It's incoherent and self-serving.
  

  
  
  
• "Gay Reversal Advocates Say School Libraries Banning Their 'Ex-Gay' Books," by Diane Macedo, FOX News Network, 22 October 2009.
  
  

  Calls from Foxnews.com to Caldwell-Stone were directed to American Library Association Media Relations Manager Macey Morales, who asked for more information about PFOX's allegations and then failed to return follow-up e-mails and phone calls.
  

  
  
• "American Library Association Silent as Libraries Ban Books About Ex-Gays," by Wintery Knight, Wintery Knight, 28 October 2009.
  
  

  The American Library Association refused to do anything about the book banning. This is actually predictable behavior for them – they are a left-wing advocacy group.
  

  
  
  
• "It's Not Censorship, It's Parenting! Removing Books That are Inappropriate For Our Kids is Not the Same as Banning Books," by Erin Manning, MercatorNet.com, 18 November 2009. THIS IS THE BEST EXPLANATION EVER FOR WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION!
  

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