A Wisconsin school board removed 444 books from its middle and high school libraries this week, pending investigation of claims from an irate parent. Don’t let that detail go unremarked: claims from an irate parent, singular. That’s the point America’s public discourse has reached, where outspoken individuals with bad attitudes arbitrate books for entire communities of learners. Remember, libraries are often the only book access disadvantaged students even have.
Earlier this year, a story got traction on social media: the recent spate of mass book bannings is orchestrated by nucleus of serial accusation-mongers. The story broke in the Washington Post (behind a paywall, sadly), before getting reproduced, with germane editorial insertions, in mainly left-leaning aggregator sites like RawStory and Vox. As few as eleven serial bellyachers in a representative sample filed sixty percent of actionable complaints with school boards.
Blue Facebook and Blue Xitter highlighted which parents—or frequently, “parents”—filed these complaints, and which books they rejected. The books overwhelmingly foregrounded queer characters; most of the remainder dealt with race and bigotry in America. They’re trying to squelch free ideas, the refrain goes; and, in close harmony, history never looks well upon book banners. Comparisons inevitably arise to the Nazi regime’s wanton destruction of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.
Fair dues, perhaps. But the leftists making this argument are hardly free-speech absolutists themselves. They wouldn’t tolerate these same libraries stocking, say, The Turner Diaries or 120 Days of Sodom. These examples are extreme to the point of satire, obviously, but the point stands: everybody will agree that some books (and other artifacts, like Confederate statues) don’t belong in public spaces. We only dispute which books and artifacts must go.
I’ve recently had leftist colleagues derail entire discussions over somebody’s use of outdated terms. I’m not talking about when somebody centers their discussion on offensive content, or uses actual slurs like the N-word. I mean specifically examples like the fact that “handicapped” has fallen on disfavor, and advocates prefer “disabled”—a word I was taught to abjure in the 1980s, because it spotlighted what somebody lacked over what they were.
Already I anticipate conservative friends chortling over “political correctness gone amok.” But the right is hardly innocent of wanting to amend language to expunge offense. Recent attempts to turn “Boomer” and “cisgender” into cusswords have turned unintentionally hilarious. The attempt to forbid certain words or turn language into a minefield of hurt feelings only differs on one point: exactly whose feelings we believe deserve protected from offense.
In the past, I’ve described myself as a free-speech absolutist. But like most absolutists, I’m far from absolute. Certain language doesn’t deserve protection. The Supreme Court has declared that, First Amendment notwithstanding, obscenity and incitement to violence aren’t protected speech. We can agree these forms of speech don’t deserve protection because they cause material, calculable harm. And in causing harm, they cross the line from “speech” into “action.”
Beyond the harm standard, though, what other yardsticks permit us to declare certain ideas off-limits? Some will argue moral disgust. These hyper-activist parents filing hundreds of book-ban requests want certain ideas removed from protected discourse because the content gives them moral heebie-jeebies. This, again, questions whose tender sensibilities need protection from the mean, terrible world. Why these White, conservative parents and not, say, me?
The very existence of accused human trafficker Andrew Tate and confessed queer-baiter Jordan Peterson offends my morality. To say nothing of Alex Jones, who had his Xitter account restored this week after a blink-and-you-missed-it poll. To me, and notably also to Elon Musk immediately after he purchased and eviscerated Xitter, silencing Jones in whatever hog-wallow he sleeps in is the obvious moral choice. That homunculus doesn’t deserve a platform.
Please don’t mistake me, the left has plenty of squishy, reactive, and morally vacuous history. We’ve done a good job of opposing everything Republicans and their allies like, even when it means abjuring our principles: Democrats demanded the Trump Administration “follow the science” regarding COVID-19, for instance, then turned deaf when Trump-aligned bureaucrats presented robust (but not ironclad) evidence that the virus escaped a lab.
Admittedly, that example is slightly tangential. But it makes my point: both sides make decisions based on moral disgust, in a society that no longer even pretends to have shared morals. That means both sides are currently arguing about what public morals our society should have. Sadly, both sides have nothing to fall back on, besides their own morals. The arguments become circular, and our society becomes dizzy.
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