This is an issue that really gets my blood boiling, and this time I don't even have Brad to blame!
Let's see if we can tally a scorecard for each team's approach to free speech, thought and expression in the Trump era:
On the Left side of the aisle we have: the stifling conformity of modern academia, where anyone who contradicts sacred dogma is demonized and shouted down, and where something as silly as liking a tweet acknowledging the sex binary can wreck a career for causing unspecified "harms" to campus crybullies; next we have the MSM, which has become our American Pravda, abandoning fairness and neutrality for "moral clarity" and crafting narratives about Democracy™ dying unless you obey their edicts and vote accordingly; then there's Hollywood, another propaganda factory, where Social Justice means wedging the same preachy sermon into every TV show and movie and where segregation of the imagination is the new moral litmus test; then there's publishing and even Madison Avenue, who are all on the same team and all soldiers in the cause of full and total victory for Social Justice Inc.
Then on the Right side of the aisle we have: a few random school boards scattered throughout the country, and then some parents' groups and Red state legislatures, who I'm sure have more than their fair share of petty tyrants and aspiring censors, but who have as much cultural power as Scott Baio and Danny Bonaduce.
But this is the benefit of owning the means of cultural production and being willing to use those means to grow your power and defeat your enemies: not only do you get to wheel out another BIG LIE, you can gaslight to the point where the issue becomes at least muddled enough for your side to maintain plausible deniability and if that fails, there's always the go-to move of all emotional bullies: If we don't get our way, THE CHILDREN WILL DIE!!
This whole "They're the real book banners!" campaign is psychological projection on the grandest scale I've ever seen....
I get so irritated when those pushing for the inclusion of what is pure and simple pornography on children speak dishonestly about what they are advocating. These seem to be the same people telling people these little kids need these books and so-called gender-affirming care to they will unalive themselves. What message does that tell kids? It's telling them that that is the only option. Its horrible.
It's not just horrible, it's complete bullshit. I spent the 1970s attending 3rd to 12th grades. Most of us lived there and attended the same schools the entire time. There were no suicides that I ever heard of, and even if there had one that a family tried to keep quiet, we kids would have eventually learned about it.
Also throughout the1970s, there was no chemical or surgical mutilation of kids to stop their puberty or pretend to change their sex. Again, this is something I would have heard about. So, in my ten years of 3rd-12th grade, with 100s of other students, no one got their puberty delayed or their breasts or balls cut off, and yet, no one killed themselves. So, either something in the water has changed since then, or that is simply bullshit.
Agree completely. I attended junior high and high school in a middle class Canadian suburb from 73 to 79. If ideologues would consider that the dark ages, why was there not a single suicide by any classmate (or sibling of a classmate) at anytime during that period? And as far as hushing it up might have gone, chatty moms and gossipy sisters would have have been far more effective than Woodward and Bernstein at exposing the truth had one occurred.
I'm not involved in the public system so I have no idea whether or not kids are being "indoctrinated" with progressive ideology or whether the books conservative parents object to are indeed pornographic. For all I know everything Brad said above is true. What I do have is my own experience as a then-closeted teenager growing up in rural northern California in the eighties. In the county library I came across a wonderful book by Don Clark called Loving Someone Gay. I hauled that book into the most remote corner of the library I could find and desperately hoped nobody I knew would come along and ask what I was reading. That book made me feel like it was OK to be me.
No doubt there are some books in kids libraries that are inappropriately sexual. I just hope that in the rush to remove LGBT content from children's libraries that books like Loving Someone Gay don't get sequestered away from young readers. Society has changed a lot in the last fourty years but even today there are gay kids that need to hear Don Clark's message: that gay people, just as much as their straight brothers and sisters, are deserving of love.
You make a good point about gay teenagers, but exposing young children to gay pornography is not a good way to make sure teens can get the support they need. And these days, when anyone can get a book on Amazon, the books are easily available to those who want them.
Excellent summary of the current furor. I will furnish this as required reading to anyone who I hear attempting to equate parents’ efforts to remove pornography from their school libraries with book banning. If my children were still in school I would be in the forefront of efforts to monitor their school libraries for inappropriate material. The left has been extremely successful in misrepresenting this issue to the uninformed public who are concerned about government censorship.
Take it from a blue state teacher, this is all absolutely true! Thank you for bringing attention to this, Brad. Most people have no idea how quickly these ideas have been pushed in and how suddenly difficult it is to push back. Educators who object are being cancelled, fired, and threatened. Did you hear about the Canadian principal Richard Bilkszto who was bullied over false charges of racism and died from suicide? He was 60, and to be honest a lot of this feels generational, with younger teacher social justice activists treating the objections of older teachers with eye rolls and ok boomer/Karen dismissals. Even if you're tough and can take it, the problem is they get the students on their side because they seem like the cool kids. It's becoming very cult-like and Maoist very fast. I'd love to sue the unions over all this for misuse of dues. Teachers for Liberty? We need organized push back because this is endangering children and adding fuel to cultural war fires that could destroy our country. Keep up the good fight!
With Obama’s words we now know without any doubt that great community organizer was behind the mess of woke we are dealing with today. And any so called moderate politician that opposes controlling what children read and are taught is not a moderate politician, but a radical. And I think they are responsible for child abuse.
Brad, thank you for writing about this issue. I am Grandma to 8 and 6 year old boys in public schools, and I can’t imagine what kind of sick personality would want to show them these books.
Nothing is more important than our children. Somehow we let our schools get taken over by a swarm of immature perverts. Like all degenerates, they try to hide what they are doing, then try to justify it when they are found out.
I don’t believe the majority of teachers support this, but they are too afraid of their unions to speak out against it. Parents need to take back control, but they will need the help of teachers who can vote against the union leaders.
This has nothing to do with book banning and everything to do with having the common decency to protect children.
Anyone who could condone or be OK with those images in your article is simply beyond the pale, mentally, morally, emotionally disordered in the most profound way, and public schools and unions are probably irremediable, irredeemable.....
I’m a free speech advocate. Growing up, my children heard most of the English language’s obscene words, most it which I learned at my mother’s knee. We encouraged free and open discussion, whatever the topic.
This is an issue that really gets my blood boiling, and this time I don't even have Brad to blame!
Let's see if we can tally a scorecard for each team's approach to free speech, thought and expression in the Trump era:
On the Left side of the aisle we have: the stifling conformity of modern academia, where anyone who contradicts sacred dogma is demonized and shouted down, and where something as silly as liking a tweet acknowledging the sex binary can wreck a career for causing unspecified "harms" to campus crybullies; next we have the MSM, which has become our American Pravda, abandoning fairness and neutrality for "moral clarity" and crafting narratives about Democracy™ dying unless you obey their edicts and vote accordingly; then there's Hollywood, another propaganda factory, where Social Justice means wedging the same preachy sermon into every TV show and movie and where segregation of the imagination is the new moral litmus test; then there's publishing and even Madison Avenue, who are all on the same team and all soldiers in the cause of full and total victory for Social Justice Inc.
Then on the Right side of the aisle we have: a few random school boards scattered throughout the country, and then some parents' groups and Red state legislatures, who I'm sure have more than their fair share of petty tyrants and aspiring censors, but who have as much cultural power as Scott Baio and Danny Bonaduce.
But this is the benefit of owning the means of cultural production and being willing to use those means to grow your power and defeat your enemies: not only do you get to wheel out another BIG LIE, you can gaslight to the point where the issue becomes at least muddled enough for your side to maintain plausible deniability and if that fails, there's always the go-to move of all emotional bullies: If we don't get our way, THE CHILDREN WILL DIE!!
This whole "They're the real book banners!" campaign is psychological projection on the grandest scale I've ever seen....
....
I get so irritated when those pushing for the inclusion of what is pure and simple pornography on children speak dishonestly about what they are advocating. These seem to be the same people telling people these little kids need these books and so-called gender-affirming care to they will unalive themselves. What message does that tell kids? It's telling them that that is the only option. Its horrible.
It's not just horrible, it's complete bullshit. I spent the 1970s attending 3rd to 12th grades. Most of us lived there and attended the same schools the entire time. There were no suicides that I ever heard of, and even if there had one that a family tried to keep quiet, we kids would have eventually learned about it.
Also throughout the1970s, there was no chemical or surgical mutilation of kids to stop their puberty or pretend to change their sex. Again, this is something I would have heard about. So, in my ten years of 3rd-12th grade, with 100s of other students, no one got their puberty delayed or their breasts or balls cut off, and yet, no one killed themselves. So, either something in the water has changed since then, or that is simply bullshit.
Agree completely. I attended junior high and high school in a middle class Canadian suburb from 73 to 79. If ideologues would consider that the dark ages, why was there not a single suicide by any classmate (or sibling of a classmate) at anytime during that period? And as far as hushing it up might have gone, chatty moms and gossipy sisters would have have been far more effective than Woodward and Bernstein at exposing the truth had one occurred.
Oh I agree, I was just trying to me measured with my language. It’s total BS and it makes me quite angry whenever I hear it.
someone needs to organize a "Happy Hour Story Time" for kids at the local library. let's read mother Goose with martini's and cosmos eh? why not?
or instead of Drag Queen Story Time, how about Stripper Story Time? I mean, strippers are underrepresented too. I think the kids would dig that.
I mean, if yer notion of social justice is just pushing boundries and violating taboos, let's just go all the way right?
the Utopia is just on the horizon..!
Yeah I mean why not a Dominatrix instead of a drag queen? At least the kids will sit still for the reading...
"I mean, strippers are underrepresented too. I think the kids would dig that."
I don't know about the kids, but plenty of dads will show up.
I think it would be a very successful "movement"
or at least a good South Park pitch...
I'm not involved in the public system so I have no idea whether or not kids are being "indoctrinated" with progressive ideology or whether the books conservative parents object to are indeed pornographic. For all I know everything Brad said above is true. What I do have is my own experience as a then-closeted teenager growing up in rural northern California in the eighties. In the county library I came across a wonderful book by Don Clark called Loving Someone Gay. I hauled that book into the most remote corner of the library I could find and desperately hoped nobody I knew would come along and ask what I was reading. That book made me feel like it was OK to be me.
No doubt there are some books in kids libraries that are inappropriately sexual. I just hope that in the rush to remove LGBT content from children's libraries that books like Loving Someone Gay don't get sequestered away from young readers. Society has changed a lot in the last fourty years but even today there are gay kids that need to hear Don Clark's message: that gay people, just as much as their straight brothers and sisters, are deserving of love.
Excellent comment, thank you. I hope that school boards don't become over-zealous and remove books that really shouldn't be removed.
You make a good point about gay teenagers, but exposing young children to gay pornography is not a good way to make sure teens can get the support they need. And these days, when anyone can get a book on Amazon, the books are easily available to those who want them.
> Society has changed a lot in the last fourty years
And not for the better.
Excellent summary of the current furor. I will furnish this as required reading to anyone who I hear attempting to equate parents’ efforts to remove pornography from their school libraries with book banning. If my children were still in school I would be in the forefront of efforts to monitor their school libraries for inappropriate material. The left has been extremely successful in misrepresenting this issue to the uninformed public who are concerned about government censorship.
Take it from a blue state teacher, this is all absolutely true! Thank you for bringing attention to this, Brad. Most people have no idea how quickly these ideas have been pushed in and how suddenly difficult it is to push back. Educators who object are being cancelled, fired, and threatened. Did you hear about the Canadian principal Richard Bilkszto who was bullied over false charges of racism and died from suicide? He was 60, and to be honest a lot of this feels generational, with younger teacher social justice activists treating the objections of older teachers with eye rolls and ok boomer/Karen dismissals. Even if you're tough and can take it, the problem is they get the students on their side because they seem like the cool kids. It's becoming very cult-like and Maoist very fast. I'd love to sue the unions over all this for misuse of dues. Teachers for Liberty? We need organized push back because this is endangering children and adding fuel to cultural war fires that could destroy our country. Keep up the good fight!
Teachers for Liberty! What a great idea, would love to see it happen. I don’t think the battle can be won without some inside help.
With Obama’s words we now know without any doubt that great community organizer was behind the mess of woke we are dealing with today. And any so called moderate politician that opposes controlling what children read and are taught is not a moderate politician, but a radical. And I think they are responsible for child abuse.
Community organizer = trouble maker.
Brad, thank you for writing about this issue. I am Grandma to 8 and 6 year old boys in public schools, and I can’t imagine what kind of sick personality would want to show them these books.
Nothing is more important than our children. Somehow we let our schools get taken over by a swarm of immature perverts. Like all degenerates, they try to hide what they are doing, then try to justify it when they are found out.
I don’t believe the majority of teachers support this, but they are too afraid of their unions to speak out against it. Parents need to take back control, but they will need the help of teachers who can vote against the union leaders.
This has nothing to do with book banning and everything to do with having the common decency to protect children.
Ban any books for adults, and I oppose. Force inappropriate books on children, and I oppose.
Anyone who could condone or be OK with those images in your article is simply beyond the pale, mentally, morally, emotionally disordered in the most profound way, and public schools and unions are probably irremediable, irredeemable.....
I can hardly express how I feel about what is going on in our world...
There has always been evil, but we need to get back to 'using' morals in our lives.
This quote from what you wrote; is what I've been thinking all along.
"And the line of reasoning progressive school authorities often fall back to — that “we need these
books for gay kids” — is, as one parent pointed out, really humiliating and dehumanizing: “Because
as far as I can see, it’s only gay pornography in libraries — I don’t see heterosexual pornography
being shown to kids. Why do gay kids have to be dehumanized in pornographic images?"
Pornography is pornography!
All parents should care about what their children are reading.
I have 6 sons and 27 grandchildren.
We talk about real life all the time.
I gave you the heart for having 6 sons and 27 grandchildren.
THANK YOU, for helping to explain COMMON SENSE to those having a hard time understanding “AGE APPROPRIATE”‼️
I’m a free speech advocate. Growing up, my children heard most of the English language’s obscene words, most it which I learned at my mother’s knee. We encouraged free and open discussion, whatever the topic.
I’ve never seen such a bunch of crybaby hypocrites in my life. It must be exhausting to be this self-righteous and ignorant.