UGH!!

Sorry, I've just got to vent . . .

"The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label "controversial" views, to distribute lists of "objectionable" books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read.

. . . We trust Americans to recognize propaganda and misinformation, and to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. We do not believe they are prepared to sacrifice their heritage of a free press in order to be "protected" against what others think may be bad for them. We believe they still favor free enterprise in ideas and expression.

. . . suppression is never more dangerous than in such a time of social tension. Freedom has given the United States the elasticity to endure strain. Freedom keeps open the path of novel and creative solutions, and enables change to come by choice. Every silencing of a heresy, every enforcement of an orthodoxy, diminishes the toughness and resilience of our society and leaves it the less able to deal with controversy and difference."

Now, it's been a long time since I've read anything so chock full of b.s., if you will excuse me. Now I understand how librarians get to having that slimy, public-school-teacher feeling to them, if they have to read up, swallow and swim in THIS kind of stuff.

Egads! The stupidity!! The blatant biases! The unmistakable insensitivities to the beliefs of so many!! Strange such a group of liberated, culturally careful people should err in this way. How incredibly . . . fitting . . . it is . . . that they do.