One of the silliest yet most insidious claims that we hear from the left these days when it comes to parents’ rights and the LGBTQetc movement is that parents who have concerns about the propagandistic material in school libraries are in favor of “banning books.”
A few weeks ago, PEN America, an organization whose stated goal is “to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide,” issued a report about the state of book banning in the U.S. Naturally, the report is fraught with the handwringing that LGBTUGH propaganda might not make its way onto school library shelves.
“During the first half of the 2022-23 school year PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists 1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles, an increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months, January – June 2022,” the report claims, and the breathless emphasis is in the original. “That is more instances of book banning than recorded in either the first or second half of the 2021-22 school year. Over this six-month timeline, the total instances of book bans affected over 800 titles; this equates to over 100 titles removed from student access each month.”
“Book bans are increasingly driven by organized efforts led by elected officials or activists [sic] groups whose actions can affect a whole district or state,” writes Alexandra Alter in the New York Times. You can almost see her wringing her hands as she continues, “Of the nearly 1,500 book removals that PEN tracked in the last six months of 2022, the majority — nearly 75 percent — were driven by organized efforts or because of new legislation.”
Side note: it’s funny how it’s problematic when parents are organizing to have more of a say in what happens to their kids when they’re out of parental sight, but it’s totally different when Barack Obama and groups like ACORN were doing the organizing and when Antifa engages in organized destruction.
PEN America tells its readers that “the movement to ban books is driven by a vocal minority demanding censorship” and cites a poll from the American Library Association last year claiming that 70% of parents oppose banning books.
This is all well and good, but the truth is that book bans aren’t happening. Parents in several states are raising the issue that some of the books on the shelves in their kids’ libraries are inappropriate and often downright pornographic, and they don’t want their kids to have access to them in the library.
Related: Check Out the Classic Books School Librarians Want to Remove From Reading Lists
Anyone who wants to read these books can buy them at a bookstore or hop on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or eBay to find a copy. These books are probably also available in the local public library. What all of this means is that nobody is banning these books. But to stop short of screaming about book bans doesn’t fit the left’s narrative.
PEN America gives the game away early on in its report when it points out that “These efforts to chill speech are part of the ongoing nationwide ‘Ed Scare’ — a campaign to foment anxiety and anger with the goal of suppressing free expression in public education.” Pornography and indoctrination equal free expression to these people.
“As book bans escalate, coupled with the proliferation of legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities, the freedom to read, learn, and think continues to be undermined for students,” the report continues.
It’s fascinating that PEN America and others on the left love to continually accuse conservatives (and concerned parents who aren’t necessarily conservative) of banning books when publishing companies are censoring classic works left and right and library associations are upending the ages-old reading lists for students.
These people don’t want kids to read The Great Gatsby, Little House on the Prairie, and Huckleberry Finn, but they want to fill students’ heads instead with The Hate U Give, This Book Is Gay, and Genderqueer. And it’s the end of the world when kids can’t get their hands on these books at school when their parents aren’t around to tell them no.
The psychological term for this type of behavior is projection, but what we all know for sure is that the left needs to look in the mirror before claiming that anyone else is engaging in censorship. Then again, the left will never admit that what it’s after is indoctrination. Instead, leftists call it “freedom” — which they don’t want anyone who disagrees with them to have.
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