Who Are the Book Banners: Librarians

Who Are the Book Banners?: 

September 23-29 is the ominously and inaccurately named Banned Books Week established by the book-banning American Library Association (ALA) to suggest that book banning is prevalent in America and very scary.

Although the ALA named it Banned Books Week, it acknowledged in the “about” section of the Banned Books Week website that it’s not really about books that have been banned à la Fahrenheit 451 or even asked to be banned. It’s centrally about books that have been challenged, which is a horse of an entirely different and far less dark color. A book is challenged when the appropriateness of it in some context is questioned.

Of course, the book banners at the ALA hope that no one notices the book banning they do through de facto book-banning protocols called Collection Development Policies (CDPs) that coincidentally align with the “progressive” biases of many librarians. (FYI, the field of library science is decidedly not ideologically diverse; it’s dominated by “progressives.”)

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Parents who object to the inclusion of texts in libraries, sections of libraries, or classrooms due to obscene language, sexuality, or highly controversial messages are not engaging in inappropriate censorship. All educators evaluate curricular materials for objectionable content, including language, sexuality, and controversial themes. The irony is that when librarians and teachers decide not to select a text due to these elements, the choice constitutes an exercise in legitimate text-selection, but when conservative parents engage in it, they are tarred with the label of censor and book banner.

Continue reading "Who Are the Book Banners?" by Laurie Higgins at Illinois Family Institute here.

#BannedBooksWeek? Here’s @ALALibrary colluding to censor and blacklist @CommonSense Media Book Reviews:https://t.co/iurJSojYUF#censorship #BannedBooks #BannedBooksWeekUK #alamw19 #alaac19 #LibrariesTransform #FundLibraries #SaveLibraries #edchat #edtech #parents #parenting pic.twitter.com/crson02K1M

— Dan Kleinman (@SafeLibraries) September 26, 2018

And let me add that ALA actively censors and blacklists the one means parents and educators have to evaluate school and home reading material for the potential for inappropriate material, namely, Common Sense Media Book Reviews: YALSA Board of Directors Meeting, Intellectual Freedom Committee Report, 29 August 2013.

"Who Are the Book Banners?"

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ALA, Elena Kagan, Book Banners All

US Supreme Court candidate Elena Kagan supports book banning.  See:

• "Kagan's Own Words: It's Fine if the Law Bans Books Because Government Won't Really Enforce It," by Elena Kagan and the US Supreme Court, Breitbart.tv, 28 June 2010
• "Elena Kagan and Book Banning," by Senate Republican Communications Center, The Leader Board, 17 May 2010
• "Will Elena Kagan Allow Books to be Banned?; Understanding the Supreme Court Nominee's Chilling Argument in Citizens United," by Daniel Shuchman, Reason Magazine, 29 June 2010 (Audio Version MP3):

The justices subjected [Kagan’s deputy, Malcolm L.] Stewart to a series of stark hypothetical situations testing the extent of the censorship power that the Obama Administration viewed as constitutionally permissible.  ....  '[W]e could prohibit publication of the book,' Stewart replied.  ....  Given the skeptical questioning at the prior hearing, Kagan seems to have made the tactical decision to back off from her office's initial claims and opted to craft a less controversial way of getting the justices to accept significant restrictions on free speech.

What has the American Library Association [ALA] done about this?  This advocacy of banning?  This censorship?  This significant restriction on free speech?  Nothing.  Silence.  That is a sure sign the ALA endorses the banning of the kind of books Elena Kagan supports banning. 

Let a parent oppose a book containing bestiality in a public school and the ALA immediately speaks out claiming the parents are racist.  But Cuba burning books?  Of Martin Luther King, Jr.?  Or jailing Cuban librarians?  No problem.  Elena Kagan supporting the banning of books by not opposing a law that allows it?  Silence.  Tacit approval.  The ALA evidences by its silence that it too supports book banning.  Keep this in mind the next time the ALA interferes with your own community libraries or public schools.

The ALA/Kagan book-banning bond was foreshadowed.  Both make falsity look true then fool people nationally.  In Elena Kagan's case, she falsified medical claims about abortion and those false claims were presented as the truth and affected a US Supreme Court decision on partial birth abortion.  See:

• "Kagan's Abortion Distortion; How the Supreme Court Nominee Manipulated the Statement of a Medical Organization to Protect Partial-Birth Abortion," by Shannen W. Coffin, National Review, 29 June 2010
• "Kagan's Influential Medical Opinion," by Shannen Coffin, National Review, 2 July 2010

In the ALA's case, it falsifies claims about "censorship" that it presents as the truth, then creates "Banned Books Week" to influence the entire nation, although no books have been banned in the USA for about half a century.  Half a century!

We now know that the "most reliable opinion" was aided significantly by Kagan herself, and even the "emphasis added" that she notes in her memo [PDF] to the president was her own, since she recommended that emphasis to ACOG in her markup [PDF].  But none of that stopped her from touting the ACOG statement without qualification as a basis to support his veto.

Does that not sound like the ALA self-promoting itself as the arbiter of what is censorship?  Does that not sound like the ALA touting itself as authoritative in local communities, public libraries, and school libraries based on its own phoney views as expressed during "National Hogwash Week"?

Does anyone think what Elena Kagan did is dishonest?  How is what the ALA has done and continues to do any different?  Even the victims are the same, children, are they not?

Isn't it a shame the ALA says nothing about this and only little mom and pops the ALA derides as "censors" who "oppose intellectual freedom policies" and the "First Amendment" have to take a stand against potential government censorship?  Somebody tell me where my opinion as expressed here is wrong.  Someone wake up the ALA.  Please comment below.

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