In Florida, state education officials have rejected dozens of math texts because they allegedly include prohibited references to race; bookstores refuse to carry novels by J.K. Rowling; legislatures continue to create lists of prohibited books; and in scenes that would make Mencken’s ghost howl, smut-hunting illiterati across the country have risen up against public libraries. In one Texas town, reports the Washington Post, censorious activists “have taken works as seemingly innocuous as the popular children’s picture book ‘In the Night Kitchen’ by Maurice Sendak off the shelves, closed library board meetings to the public and …stacked [them] with conservative appointees — some of whom did not even have library cards.”
We are indeed in the midst of a spasm of book banning. The free speech advocates at PEN have documented 1,586 instances of individual books being banned in 86 school districts in 26 states. The group is also warning that bills banning “critical race theory” threaten free speech in schools.
But, as I wrote earlier this year, The New York Times report includes this jarring line: “In invoking free speech, PEN is staking its approach on a principle that has lost its luster for some on the left, even while many on the right — including politicians advocating these bills — have invoked it as a mantra.” Free speech has lost its luster for some on the left. And, of course, thereby hangs a tale, but not an especially new one in the woolier precincts of the anti-liberal left, where speech codes, trigger warnings, and safe spaces have been a thing for some time now. So, in Burbank California, teachers “will no longer be able to teach a handful of classic novels,” because of concerns over racism.
In today’s New York Times, Sungjoo Yoon, a junior at Burbank High School, writes about the intellectual intolerance behind the proscription of those classic books, and notes:
Cue the outrage for his flagrant act of bothsidesism. But the problem is real. Just ask J.K. Rowling. After the best-selling author of the Harry Potter series voiced support for a British tax specialist fired for “transphobic tweets,” a number of independent bookshops announced that they would no longer carry any of her books.
Their position won support from progressive librarians, including one writer in the “Intellectual Freedom Blog,” published by (checks notes) “Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association”, who defended the unstocking of Rowling’s books. “Once again,” she wrote of the Rowling book ban, “we have a case of private businesses choosing to not support a cause or belief that goes against their values…” “Curation is the key. Independent bookstores are curators of literature. They are not libraries. If libraries were to remove Rowling’s books, that would certainly be considered censorship.” But nota bene: the objection here is not to anything in the books themselves. The booksellers object to Rowling’s opinions that were expressed on Twitter and in a blog post — and decided to take their umbrage out on the books. Sometimes the objections are more direct. Flashback to this episode of progressive illiberalism: A few months ago, the American Booksellers Association issued this statement of performative groveling: The “serious, violent incident” here was sending out copies of this book:
The author of the offending book, Abigail Shrier, writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a graduate of Columbia College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. Her book is obviously controversial, but it was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist and one of the best of 2021 by The Times of London. But her book triggered opponents, who demanded that it be suppressed. After receiving two Twitter complaints, Target stopped selling the book (a decision they later reversed . . . and then reversed again). Hundreds of Amazon employees signed a petition demanding the company stop selling the book. Even the ACLU seemed to break bad on the idea that the book should be available in the marketplace of ideas. Chase Strangio, the American Civil Liberties Union’s deputy director for transgender justice, tweeted: “Abigail Shrier’s book is a dangerous polemic with a goal of making people not trans. . . . We have to fight these ideas which are leading to the criminalization of trans life again.” He declared: “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.” Shrier commented: “You read that right: Some in today’s ACLU favor book banning. Grace Lavery, a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, went further, tweeting: ‘I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre.’ “This,” Shrier wrote, ”is where leftist extremism, encouraged by cowardly corporations, leads.” ** To be sure, there are crucial distinctions to be drawn here between state action and decisions by private actors. There is a legitimate distinction between the decisions made by public libraries and bookstores. The First Amendment protects books only against government censorship. And so, the argument will go, there is no equivalency between the heavy-handed actions of legislatures and school boards and the opinions of individual booksellers. This is all true. But that misses the heart of the current danger: the absence of robust support for the idea that even offensive speech needs protection; that words are not violence; and that sensitivities should not be the basis of censorship. Illiberal progressives have very different objections than the right-wing critics, but they unfortunately share the premise of the censor: that we need to be protected from dangerous/offensive ideas/books/speech. As long as that is the case, the fight against illiberal attacks on books will continue to be a two-front war. The coup is ongoingDon’t miss this piece in today’s NYT:
But even though the efforts are preposterous, Maggie Haberman notes, the ongoing coup attempts “are fueling a false narrative that has resonated with Mr. Trump’s supporters and stoked their grievances. They are keeping alive the same combustible stew of conspiracy theory and misinformation that threatens to undermine faith in democracy by nurturing the lie that the election was corrupt.”
Bonus:   The mask wars have ended, not with bang, but with…… an apparent strategic surrender by the Biden Administration.
This take seems right:  J.D. and “America’s Hitler”ICYMI: J.D. Vance’s Yale Law School roommate, Josh McLaurin posted a screenshot of Vance’s thoughts about the Orange God King back in 2016. “The ‘America’s Hitler’ bit is at the end,” he tweeted. “The public deserves to know the magnitude of this guy’s bad faith.
Quick Hits1. Musk Twitter: Same Toilet, Different Plunger
2. Steve King Finds the Low Road Is a Lonely RoadExcellent read from Jim Swift on Steve King’s new deplorable memoir: Two years after his odious views cost him his seat in Congress, he wants to justify, blame, and excuse.
Cheap Shots
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![Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by [Abigail Shrier]](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_324,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd7f12f17-63e0-4234-9cba-902621948bea_324x500.jpeg "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by [Abigail Shrier]")
