Opinion by Kip Hansen — 5 December 2024
One of the many social controversies that are getting more and more coverage in the U.S. mass media is the so-called issue of Banned Books.
From the outset, let me make it absolutely clear:
There are NO BOOKS BANNED in the United States.
Not a single one.
Now, I mean this quite literally. And I urge you to do your own research on this: I would be pleased if readers could find a single book that is on any list anywhere as forbidden to be sold, imported, or read in the United States. [see end note [i]]
So, you may well ask, “How can Banned Books be an ongoing social controversy if there are no banned books?”
I just love good questions.
The long and short of it is:
1. Some people think that some books are not appropriate for school children of various ages.
2. Other people, specifically the American Library Association, the trade group of librarians in the United States, and PEN America, a writers advocacy organization, hold the position that ALL books should be made available to all people in all libraries and if there are to be any exceptions, only librarians or the books’ authors are qualified to make those decisions.
Now, let’s get real.
I’m sure that any reader here can think of at least one book that should not be shelved in a kindergarten library and maybe one other book that should be not be offered in any library of any school with children under the age of 10, 12 or even 18.
Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember the release of “Sex” [a 1992 coffee table book written by American singer Madonna, which takes a provocative look at sexual fantasies in photographs and words, with the erotic imaginings highlighted by a series of photographs using innovative special effects]. Maybe we could all agree that such explicitly sexually photographs, text and themes should stay out of the hands of little children until they are old enough to develop standards and values of their own.
So, if we can agree on one book, perhaps there are sensible thoughtful people that can reasonably object to some titles, some books, some subjects, some language and some topics that they feel are not appropriate for shelving and display in grade schools and maybe others that might not be appropriate in middle or even high schools.
The real story is that the American Library Association (ALA) label any challenge, any questioning of librarian’s choices about which books to include in which sections of any library: Book Banning.
In this we see the propagandist’s favorite weapon being wielded with tremendous power: Redefining of basic words to mean something other than their original, generally accepted meanings. The words the ALA and PEN redefine are “ban”, “book banning” and “censor”.
Here’s their latest propaganda:
American Library Association reveals preliminary data on 2024 book challenges
In their own words: “Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and services. In those cases, 1,128 unique titles were challenged.” They are reporting about “challenges” but call it “attempts to censor”.
What is a challenge in the eyes of the ALA? : “a challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. As such, they are a threat to freedom of speech and choice.”
You can see the twisting of language in the official ALA statement. What is being challenged is the librarian’s choice: nothing more and nothing less. When a person, such as a parent or community member, questions the decision of a librarian to place a book with explicit sexual content, or controversial material that could be considered racist, on a shelf in one of the children’s sections in a library, the ALA claims it is a “threat to freedom of speech”. Whose speech? The Librarian’s speech!
Every single book in every library is there because a librarian decided it should be. Most libraries do not have the problem of ‘not enough books’. Most libraries, like my local town library housed in a lovely, tastefully expanded Carnegie library, have a problem of too little space for books. Thus, their book sales tables are loaded with copies of last year’s best sellers, damaged books and odd bits and bobs that are seldom or never checked out. Librarians regularly weed out books and dispose of them to make room for new or other books. If a book is in the library, the local librarian decided to buy it or decided to keep it shelved.
The location of each book in the library is also the decision of the librarian. There are generally agreed upon systems for placement of non-fiction books, including the famous Dewy Decimal System. However, non-fiction books are usually shelved alphabetically by author’s name.
Almost all libraries also have sections of books they recommend for children of various ages and reading abilities:
Board books: For children aged 0–3, these books are mostly pictures with a few words and are designed to teach basic language skills.
Picture books: For children aged 2–8.
Early readers: For children aged 4–8.
Chapter books: For children aged 7–9, these books are usually 4,000–15,000 words long.
Middle-grade novels: For children aged 8–12, these books are more complex than other children’s books, with more in-depth characters and multiple subplots.
Young adult (YA) novels: For children aged 12–18
The thing that is causing all the Banned Books brouhaha is this:
Which books are being shelved in which sections of which libraries?
It would be safe to say that nearly every book challenge involves books that have been included in library sections intended for children.
Of course, libraries in our public schools are universally intended for the use of children. Public school libraries are usually arranged in sections that are considered age-appropriate/grade appropriate. As above and as any parent knows, some of the decisions are based on reading ability, others on content. There are libraries in elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. In addition, individual classrooms also have small libraries of books or dedicated bookshelves of books that the teacher makes available to the children.
According to the American Library Association (ALA):
“Often challenges are motivated by a desire to protect children from “inappropriate” sexual content or “offensive” language. The following were the top three reasons cited for challenging materials as reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom:
- the material was considered to be “sexually explicit”
- the material contained “offensive language”
- the material was “unsuited to any age group”
The ALA leaves out that many books, further down the list of reasons, are challenged because they actively push radical social and racial agendas, which includes books that may make some children feel upset by the color of their own skins: books that might make black/brown children feel bad about their skin color or ethnicity and, in today’s social/racial climate, books that might make white children feel bad about being white.
The ALA further takes the position that “Librarians and governing bodies should maintain that parents—and only parents—have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children—and only their children—to library resources.”
While that sounds like a reasonable approach, it ignores the simple fact that children are not always accompanied by their own parents when in a library and almost never in a school or classroom library. The very existence of a book in a public library children’s section, a school or classroom library can reasonably be considered, especially by a child, to be a recommendation that the children should read that book.
Yet, expecting the child to know how to properly choose which of those equally colorful recommended books to read next – and still be in keeping with his family’s social, ethical, moral and religious values – is an unreal expectation. Both the child and its parents expect that the teacher or the librarian will have made only generally appropriate books available to the children.
Who owns the library?
Here is a hint: The Librarian(s) do not own the libraries. Librarians are employees. Employees take direction from the employers. The same is true of teachers, who act as librarians of their classroom bookshelves.
Your public school district is the owner of your public school and thus your public school libraries. It is a public school, thus the public, you, the body of the public, the taxpayers, are the real owners of your schools and the employers of the librarians.
Therefore, it is a simple ordinary everyday relationship. The Owners properly direct the actions, and have authority over the decisions of the Employees, and Owners have every right to ask employees to modify the employee’s decisions.
Now, not all school districts in all parts of the country have exactly the same administrative structures. There will be commissioners and school boards and such. But the ownership issue is not in question. Your public tax-supported library will have some corporate structure as well, a Library Board, maybe a Board of Trustees, and a Library Director or Administrator, and, of course, one or more librarians.
Nonetheless, in the end, YOU are the owners of the school’s libraries and of the Public Library. And you have every right to make your wishes and views known and demand changes in the shelving decisions of your employees, the librarians.
If you do so, you will be labelled a Book Banner, an Underminer of Democracy and a vicious Censor.
Not in the real world, you think? Think again. Here, for your consideration, is the opinion of the Editors of Scientific American magazine. It is only 1000 words, a quick read. It reads like a “talking points” list from an ALA “Banned Books Week” flyer, offers no substantive arguments, offers no evidence, misrepresents facts about the issues, uses links which do not make the point claimed, and, as in most propaganda, almost nothing in it is strictly true.
The Editors of SciAm again step into areas outside their remit – to the questions of moral values, social standards, and ethics. They did the same with politics, endorsing a candidate running for President of the United States in the most recent election.
When they challenge a book, what are the parents and concerned citizens protecting elementary school kids from? Things like this:
Generally, explicit sexual content (both hetero- and homosexual) and promotion of racism (anti-white, anti-black, anti-Asian, and everything in between).
I provide this one paragraph of example:
““Gender Queer,” an illustrated memoir, contains explicit illustrations of oral sex and masturbation. The novel “Lawn Boy” contains graphic descriptions of sex between men and children. Both books were previous winners of the American Library Association’s Alex Awards, which each year recognize “ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18.” And worse…..
It is easy to find web pages that will quote and show the parts of the books to which some people and parents object to finding in the children’s sections of libraries and in their children’s classrooms. Below are a couple sample links:
Bottom Lines:
1. There are no banned books in the United States. The Banned Books movement is stealth radical social/political activism masquerading as a free speech movement.
2. There are well-meaning, reasonable people who have moral values, ethics, and standards that demand watch care over what books the school-aged children in their communities are exposed to in their school and public libraries.
3. Those libraries belong to the Public and to the Parents.
3. It is a Good Thing for parents and community members to be concerned about the content of the books given to children.
4. Not all books are good, not all written words have a positive value, not all topics and issues are appropriate for children at various ages.
5. It is a Bad Thing for activists to promote various radical social, racial and sexual ideas using your school and public libraries to indoctrinate children contrary to the wishes and standards of the communities which own the schools and libraries.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
The ALA and PEN are out of touch with the majority of the American people. They support and promote radical social ideas – along the lines of what Conservatives colloquially call “radical liberal progressivism” and “the WOKE agenda”.
If you want to prove to yourself that the Banned Books movement is a HOAX, go to your local library and ask for any of the Banned Books. They will have them. If you go during Banned Books Week, they will be prominently on display. If they have them, and display them, they are not, have not been banned, nor censored.
But, if your community is on the ball, willing to protect its children, the worst of the books will not be in the children’s section.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
[i] There may be some exceptions, as there always are to anything so general. One such is child pornography. “Images of child pornography are not protected under First Amendment rights, and are illegal contraband under federal law.” There were one or two cases where books were written that violated National Security, exposed national secrets, or endangered intelligence assets in the field resulting in the books being withdrawn from publication.
Not even in Boston, where “Hair” was banned after one performance?
That was a long, long time ago.
Is there anyone who even uses the phrase “banned in Boston” anymore?
When I attended school across the river in Cambridge, we used to say a lot of things about Boston. Some stuck, and yes, I do still, occasionally, use “banned in Boston”.
I know what should be banned in Boston- climatistas and lovers of illegal aliens. But, unfortunately, they run the state government.
Can you guys ban the entire Massachusetts Government?
Hair was a book?
Hair was a book?
Retired ==> Hair at issue was not a book and not placed in children’s libraries.
It was the live performance of Hair that was closed….the public were not expecting more than a dozen naked young people to appear on the stage in the final scene. The issue was the public nudity, which at that time, and maybe still is, considered illegal.
Sorry, it had to be done.
https://youtu.be/mZHoHaAYHq8
Er, so how do I get a video to embed properly??
Kip,
As you know, the problem is not so much the volume of banned books as banned articles/authors.
I am fairly sure that I was the first scientist, perhaps the first person, to be banned by “The Conversation” years ago, for some words that dared to differ from the views of the Editor. The topic is close to me. I suspect a large volume of work is “banned” this way. One of the mysteries of Life as I see it is why people started this craze of silencing others, the “cancel culture”. Maybe it is a knee jerk reaction available for people who are not so bright and do not know a better way like polite, respectful discourse. Geoff S
“banned by “The Conversation” years ago, for some words that dared to differ from the views of the Editor.”
Me too !!
The Conversation = a place where you are not allowed to converse, question or make comments that differ from the editorial view
[ “Comments are open on selected articles and must comply with our community standards.”.]
But most are closed; so a lot of tripe goes unchallenged & then is quoted as gospel by the MSM.
1saveenergy ==> See reply to Geoff above.
Good point- cancel culture is the new banning.
Thanks to comedian Dave Chapelle for standing up to CC on the record.
Joseph ==> Cancel Culture is childish — they used to do it in my High School in the 1960s- “Oh, don’t talk to him – he dumped MaryEllen!”
Governmental cancel culture is true censorship, even the recent and current stealth governmental cancelling and silencing.
Cancel Culture (science) is entirely a self-protecting mechanism — make it hard for people who disagree with you to express their contrary opinions.
Broader social cancel culture — getting people fired, attempts to wreck the lives of other — is viscous and just plain wrong. A societal illness at the moment.
In book publishing — attempts to cancel a book usually boost sales.
I am- or was a licensed forester- now retired. Twice in the past 20 years, the state forester license board tried to cancel me- that is, take away my license for daring to challenge their idiotic policies. Both times I got letters saying I was going to be INVESTIGATED! They sent me certified letters telling me that. Both times I asked for help from the ACLU and both times one of their lawyers wrote letters for me to the license board. Both times, those letters were aggressive and the board backed down.
Cancel culture also existed at the university level in the in the early 60. I was at UC Berkeley during the “Free Speech Movement” and for a short time I was on the side of the protesters. I favor no censorship.
Before too long I found that their “free speech” only applied to opinions agreeable to them. The heart of that crowd were strongly marxist/socialist preachers. I attended a number of protests, rallies, and lectures. Anyone who attempted to express objections to points being promulgated by pointing out irrational views or logical objections, etc. could not be heard. They were always met by loud chanting, random loud noise making, or general loud verbal abuse, and sometimes by throwing things. it was all useless and disgusting.
Geoff ==> Let me use your comment to make a few things clearer: 1) There are NO BANNED BOOKS! (thus volume is not an issue and not a problem). 2) “Cancel Culture” in all its forms is an insidious affront to thinking people…BUT…
Who owns The Conversation? It is a 501(c)3 non-profit, whose principal officer is ELIZABETH DALEY. The Board has 12 people. They are the owners and set the policies for their “news organization”. They, the Board, have every right to control who authors and publishes there, who comments, commenting rules, etc.
YOU have every right to author here (and anywhere else you can) and expose how they have violated their own goals and charter by excluding you.
WUWT is owned by Anthony Watts and operated with the help of many dedicated, unsung hero, volunteers. Anthony, and his assigned Moderators, have made rules about content, commenting, commenter behavior, and the like. That is their right and duty.
While I agree that something that touts itself as a public square for news and opinion should not exclude reasonable voices that does not give me, or you, the right to demand to be included.
The issue at hand — “The Banned Books Hoax” — is quite different
Kip,
I am not disagreeing with your point about book banning being a nothing. However, if you accept that a purpose of books is to advance knowledge, I noted another way that knowledge spread was being impeded. My apologies if this looked like a way to divert your theme, it was not meant to.
Another point about The Conversation is that it received substantial taxpayer funding. This raises the question of whether such funds can be used for censorship. Not the same as when only private funds are used, I feel, different accountability, different legals. Geoff S
Geoff ==> I hope I didn’t come across as critical. Just wanted to use your comment to address the other readers.
The Conversation receives taxpayer funding? At what level? Federal, State, Local?
In recent times, it seems that a book is more likely to be banned because it is politically incorrect, such as several Dr Seuss books.
Erik ==> The objections to several Dr. Seuss books were not that they were “politically incorrect”. The fact that some people somewhere objected to several Seuss books is part of the overt propaganda effort of the ALA and PEN.
In the end, SIX Seuss’s children’s books due to racist stereotypes that “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.” The six titles withdrawn from publication were And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer. Withdrawn by the publisher from further publication.
It was the illustrations themselves that were thought to be objectionable.
Perhaps if you belonged to one of the racial groups portrayed, you might have objected to your children being given those books in the first grade….?
On Beyond Zebra! was my favorite Seuss book. One of the subtle messages is that thee are letters beyond the 26 used in the U.S. alphabet.
I think I would have more sensitivity to the racial stereotype argument if there was an equal effort to tamp down geographical, religious and political stereotypes.
Erik ==> You can, of course, still get “Beyond the Zebra!” — (digital (poor) copy online here). And, again, I agree that some of the “objectionable” racial/ethnic stereotypes are just Seuss’s silly stuff. You don’t hear zoologists complaining about his affronts to the animal kingdom or botanists to his mockery of the plants.
He makes little white children seem silly too!
Sure miss those old Amos and Andy television shows that appear nowhere on COZI, METV or Antenna network at anytime.
“There are well-meaning, reasonable people who have moral values, ethics, and standards that demand watch care over what books the school-aged children in their communities are exposed to in their school and public libraries.”
That might be true but there is no guarantee that any two well-meaning and reasonable people will have the same moral values and ethics as you. So what do you do when different people have opposing views? If I object to the Bible because it is not the Koran and depicts Judah having sex with his daughter in law disguised as a prostitute does that mean I can get it removed from school libraries? Alternative if I object to Koran because it doesn’t say that Jesus is God can I get the Koran removed from school libraries?
Minorities are also entitled to have their views represented in books in school libraries. Not having any representation is also harmful to kids growing up.
When did librarians come to realize that children just weren’t exposed enough to cross-dressing perverts, pedophiles and deviants?
Izaak ==> You are right, of course. But you DO have the right to object, you do have the right to challenge a book that sits in YOUR public library’s children’s section or in your public school library.
No one is challenging or excluding books because they disagree with them — they challenge them because they feel they are inappropriate for children.
Just because a book is questioned/challenged does not mean it will be removed — usually not, in fact. It should mean that it will be reviewed to determine if it is appropriate in line with community values. some books that are “iffy” may be moved to a non-browsing section, a restricted section, and :older children” section, etc.
It is mostly atheists that challenge the Bible in schools — but their challenges are seldom upheld. Truthfully, in my opinion, the Bible is NOT appropriate for most elementary school children, especially traditional translations such as the one used in my Church, the King James Version. The KJV requires a very high level of reading ability which is beyond that of many adults in the USA. Illustrated age-appropriate Bible stories should be used. By the way, many/most schools offer illustrated story books for a wide range of cultures and religions.
As for “Minorities are also entitled to have their views represented” — do you mean political views? to children?
Your school system has a procedure for determining if a book is appropriate — participate in it.
Isaak tries to rebut a strawman. He totally skips over the “school-aged children” part jumps to Judah having sex with his daughter in law. Isaak, Bible or not that is the subject matter that Moral values folks would keep from school-aged children.
If by using the word “minorities” you are trying to get pedophiles etc to be represented in school libraries then you are cowardly and wrong.
Should Penthouse, Hustler, Screw, etc be brought back from behind the counter and placed back in see through plastic wrappers for all to view?
You missed the whole point.
Should “The Taming of Sleeping Beauty” be in the children’s section because its “based” on a fairy-tale?
(It’s a BDSM trilogy. If you must know how I know, I used to own a used bookstore – not my kind of reading for sure…)
The (intentional) failure to understand that the issue is appropriateness for children is astounding to me.
Tony ==> “The (intentional) failure to understand that the issue is appropriateness for children is astounding to me.” Yes, that is true for many of the echo-chamber MSM re-prints, re-post, and quoting ALA/PEN talking points.
But there are those that truly believe that things that were considered obscene, even for adults less than a generation ago, should be given to all children, regardless of their ages and that Libraries and Schools have a duty to expose children to those inappropriate and harmful ideas — both in word and picture.
There is a side issue of homosexual and paedophilic grooming going on in this ALA/PEN advocacy — to make children “feel comfortable” if approached by adults for sex.
Good grief man. The horror that is your mind. Thank goodness you aren’t responsible for anything remotely important.
But who gets to decide? The elected school board? Or one of their employees as librarian?
At least, if the school board is dictating some book be suppressed, it is more open, rather than a civil service apparatchik doing so in private.
If a parent chooses to let their kid read such “banned” books, they can go out and buy one. They are not “banned” from being published.
If a parent wants to sit down with their kid, and watch porn, gay or not, with them, that is their choice. Weird, but their choice.
Tom ==> School Boards and Libraries have established procedures and committees and the like that handle Book Challenges — review the books and the challenge and decide for their school or library. The choices are not limited to removal of a book from a classroom, or library altogether. That is how it should be.
Parents who don’t like those decisions can appeal to the Board or make the matter pubic take it to the local press, quote the objectionable material, show images from the books. This type of effort has brought down entire leftist school boards.
Books are not being suppressed — they are, for the most part, either being removed from the schools and their libraries entirely if wildly and widely objectionable and inappropriate for kids or moved to a more age-appropriate library or classroom location.
None of the books you mentioned are “banned”, because they can be gotten freely almost everywhere.
Being exposed to the degenerate human morality that people like you espouse, is NOT good for children under 18.
They might end up a gender confused and self-deluded piece of human low-life… like you.
Story tip.
I see we’re going ice free once again.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/12/04/an-ice-free-arctic-could-happen-by-summer-2027-what-it-means-for-weather-shipping-and-pola
How many times have they got it wrong?
It’s like deja vu all over again.
Could happen. Or not happen. This tune will not end.
JeffC ==> “Scientists define ‘ice-free’ as the sea ice area dropping to less than one million square kilometres in a short time, which is considered a climate tipping point.”
Now, give or take a million square kilometers is a pretty vague idea, and certainly, having only a million dollars or a million elephants would not be considered money-free or elephant-free.
The article itself is nonsensical, yes, and it might be worth looking at the study to see if it is just “citation – bait”.
However, a ice-safe Northwest Passage going north of Canada, from the Pacific to the Atlantic would be a boon to shipping and lower consumer prices, even if only passable part of the year.
The Northeast Passage, over the top of Russia, has been being used quite a bit recently, even with ships not Ice-Classed.
One million Sq Km is one Wadham, after an unfortunate paper’s author.
Is that a dirty joke?
No, a unit of measure used derisively after a researcher defined one million sq km as no ice coverage. It has been used on this site before.
Tom ==> Dang, I was just hoping for a laugh….
As Kip wrote, “banned” means banned. Cannot be sold, bought, or possessed, by government authority.
None of the book ban whining is about banning. It is all about the left complaining about parents having control of the content of material made accessible to their young children.
Duane ==> Yes, exactly. Also, certain authors, wishing to influence impressionable young minds to agree with their radical social agendas, are upset when their “oh so important” books are pulled from schools (cutting their income) just because the author wants to teach 10 year olds how to have sex with their classmates, same or other gender, or how nice it is to have sex with adults.
What!!!? No mention of, “Steal This Book” by Abbie Hoffman? Guess that just shows my age.
debrix ==> It is often claimed that Hoffman’s book, which made some best seller lists and sold 100,000 copies in the United States. Hardly :banned”.
There is also a long standing FALSE claim, repeated endlessly, that the book had been officially banned by the Canadian government. More factually, “the Department of National Revenue did indeed seize copies of Abbie Hoffmann’s Steal this Book on the grounds that it encouraged criminal activity. However, importers must have found a way to smuggle it across the border, as it was available in some Toronto bookstores; the Department could not prohibit the production or distribution of books inside Canada.”
The CIA banned the book The Adan and Eve Story back in the 1960s. After 50 years, a sanitized version was released.
Does anyone believe that the Sun isn’t capable of a massive CME that could have extreme consequences to humans.
From Wiki
In 1963, he published the book The Adam and Eve Story which interpreted the Book of Genesis, several pre-Biblical legends, and historical geological phenomena to make the pseudoscientific claim that the Earth has routinely been hit by cataclysmic events every 7,000 years. These alleged cataclysms involved the Earth’s poles switching place, causing earthquakes, tsunamis and supersonic winds to wipe out entire civilizations. Thomas claimed that another such event was on the horizon.[1]
The book also claimed that Jesus Christ was a scholar who lived among tribes in what is now the Indian state of Nagaland, and that he was taken away by aliens after his crucifixion.[1]
In 1967, aerospace company McDonnell Douglas assembled a small team of researchers to investigate reports of UFOs with the goal of discovering the underlying science that powered such vehicles.[2] Thomas was reportedly one of four full-time researchers on the team. The team’s director, aeronautical engineer Robert M. Wood, wrote some four decades later in a newsletter for MUFON that Thomas had a “tremendously innovative mind” and “was a total ‘out of the box’ thinker.”[3]
Thomas also claimed to have ESP, having written a handbook on the topic, and said he had made contact with extraterrestrial life.[3] James Randi criticized Thomas’ prediction that Los Angeles would succumb to a future catastrophe, noting that Thomas was careful to place his disaster “between the year 2000 and 2500. He was able to assume that he would be safely in his grave by then and unavailable for comment.”[4]
The CIA declassified documents in 2013 that included large excerpts from Thomas’ book The Adam and Eve Story. In subsequent years, the book’s claims were repeated by conspiracy theorists in numerous viral TikTok videos.[1] One conspiracy theorist also recounted the book’s claims on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Media Matters for America concluded that this trend was part of a wider framing of climate change an inevitable catastrophe that is beyond the control of humanity, which it considers to be a form of climate change denial.[5]
Nelson ==> The whole thing about The Adam and Eve Story book seems to have been lost in the fog of controversy and conspiracy theory. Exactly HOW the CIA could ban a book is somewhat beyond me….I guess they could have confiscated all printed copies? Claimed National Security issues?
There doesn’t seem to be any clear facts on the issue readily available.
But, if it were actually banned by the CIA, then it would come under the possible exceptions mentioned in the endnote.
However, today, the book is available from the CIA website, albeit in its “sanitized” form.
Did Chan Thomas work for the CIA? As I understand it, CIA employees must sign a contract that requires agency pre-approval for publication of anything written by the employee. Obviously, they have to do this to prevent the release of secrets when a retired agent or analyst writes his memoirs. It does not sound like there’s anything related to real-world national security in the book, so if it’s banned on the basis that the author was a CIA employee, it’s a gross abuse of power – but I think the contract terms make it impossible to challenge the CIA determinations in court.
But I think it’s far more likely that the “CIA censorship” is another conspiracy theory. Inability to find a publisher is far less likely to mean that your book is being censored than that it’s _bad_ and no one thinks they could sell it at a profit or is willing to incur a loss to get it out there.
markm ==> I don’t know if he was or wasn’t CIA, but there seems to have been some intelligence community connection or somekind of engineering/aerospace connection that required security clearances. Personally,not that interested, but there is a lot of stuff out there about the guy and the books.
But, yes, if he had high security clearances he may have signed documents that denied him rights to publish without CIA clearance.
As I recall in early 2020 there was an essay here on this forum by Leo Goldstein
about a YouTube video, MedCram34, which looked at a treatment for the covid
virus. The video was taken down but is back up now. There also was another
YouTube video about a nursing home in Canada that had a scabies outbreak early
in 2020 and treated the residents with Ivermectin during the covid deal. It got taken
down also but a version is back online. I know this isn’t books but censorship is censorship…
Mr Ed ==> don’t take this personally, but I’m afraid I have to disagree. It is that kind of “black or white” — that everything called the same name/word is
the same thing/identical — that allows propagandists to paint good things as bad, by re-naming them with a word that has a negative connotation.
Governmental censorship, controlling what is allowed to be spoken or written or shown in a video, for political reasons is probably bad. There are exceptions. For example: Someone should have stopped certain politicians of Rwanda from calling for the slaughter of one ethnic people in Rwandans. Would that have been censorship? Should the authorities in Portland prevented calls for burning, killing, and rioting?
Google (ABC? META?) owns YouTube. There are corporate officers and employees that set policy. They have the right to control what appears on their service, whether we like it or not. However, the Government of the US or California or whatever, does not, except through known and accepted laws, have the right to TELL, SUGGEST, or IMPLY that Google had better take down certain content. The Government did so — despite their hair-splitting denials — and it was and still is WRONG.
It is NOT censorship for the parents and citizens of OurTown USA to object to book in elementary schools that overtly and openly, with illustrations, teach children to perform sexual acts with their classsmates, male and female. THAT is child protection, and teachers, ministers priests, schoolbus drivers, social workers are required by law in most states to report immediately any instances of that type of violation.
I am 100% against the library’s having the books you have cited. What Google & the CDC did with the videos I cited was evil. Protecting children from deviant sexuality is on the
same level as protecting people from germ warfare which is what those vids did. I know
a number of people who got the covid vaccinations and were either disabled or died.
Kip,
I think one of the biggest issues is schools no longer teach students how the bill of rights works on purpose. It’s quite easy to stir up citizens if they don’t know the difference between our government censoring them versus a private company. They also no longer teach critical thinking which helps them push false information.
Darrin ==> quite right….I too believe children, up through university, are mis-educated by academia about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — giving the kids an entirely wrong idea about what they say and what they mean.
A carry a small pamphlet of both of them in my suit coat pocket to hand to some ill-educated adult and ask them to show me in the Constitution that whatever they are claiming is “uncontitutional” is actually there.
[And yes, I know how very weird that is…. ]
Kip’s summed this up nicely:
First, radical, activist librarians purchase sexually-themed materials for children’s libraries then they cry censorship whenever concerned parents speak out.
The ALA is a distraction from the real attempts to suppress material, as shown by The Twitter Files and Missouri v Biden, AKA Missouri v Murthy, where there was real attempts by government to suppress distribution of “misinformation” that disagreed with the apparatchiks narrative.
The classic example of librarians taking political “education” onto their own preferences is shown by Robert Heinlein’s disputes with his editor at Putnam’s. Heinlein had a popular “juvenile” (currently Young Adult) series, and his editor tried to tailor them to fit what she thought was the prejudices of librarians. Heinlein was rather libertarian, with conservative tendencies, and his editor was a Freudian and Progressive. “Starship Troopers” caused the editor to go ballistic, and break the contract.
What the librarians want is to have their own taste taken as unchallenged.
Quite possibly true of some, probably only a few, librarians but hardly descriptive of the whole profession.
I do believe it is true of their professional association, but, as the old saw goes, any organization not actively trying to be conservative end up leftist. And going all in for the Alphabet people is a current leftist cause.
It may be possible with enough digging to find Harold Covington’s Northwest novels, but I doubt there are many people able to make the effort to find them. If I cannot find them on Amazon, Ebay or Abebooks, I, and probably most people, have run out of resources.
They might as well be banned.
For anyone interested, here are the 5 titles:
The Brigade
A Distant Thunder
Freedom’s Sons
Hill of the Ravens
A Mighty Fortress
If you can find any or all of these in book format, let us know.
The fact is that books like Covington’s Northwest novels are effectively banned, not because they are poorly written – the novels are very well written – but because they espouse ideas not liked by the people who run the publishing business in the US.
A Quick search on “A Mighty Fortress Covington” turned it up at Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, as well as eBay and Thrift Books. The latter has all but one in stock. SecondSale has the full series available. Found them at AuthorHouse.
Here’s the ThriftBooks link: https://www.thriftbooks.com/series/northwest-independence-novels/53468/
Might help to use a search engine other that google. I used StartPage for these results.
Thank you. I am glad I was mistaken.
Jim ==> If you actually want them, at least four are available currently at Amazon. To claim “effectively banned” because of “xxxx” when in fact Covington merely had trouble finding a publisher is disingenuous. Publishers publish books to make money — not necessarily to pamper authors or enlighten the world with the wonderful prose of whomever.
Publishers seldom publish books that they don’t believe will sell enough copies to recover their expenses.
And, quite right, many publishers shy away from publishing books that they feel also might be damaging to their (the publishers) reputation — which is their privilege.
None of that has anything to do with Banned Books.
I myself have written things that my usual outlets (publishers, so to speak) declined to publish….
An average school library has 10,000 books.
The Library of Congress has ~26 million books.
To use the same logic of those that spout how certain books are banned, 99.96% of books are “banned” because they are not selected to be included or are removed from the local library.
jimmygawain ==> Yes, precisely, books are in school libraries because librarians decide to buy and shelve them and not move them out to make room for new books.
Very nice Kip, well done.
Bob ==> Thanks, appreciate it.
Removing pornographic material from elementary school libraries is not book banning. You can still buy them pretty much anywhere online. Don’t let me catch you giving them to children.
In my possibly misbegotten youth I spent many hours in libraries reading about things that were new to me, and I also carted many books home for further reading. No small part of that new to me material was in older books, some more than a hundred years old. A number of these libraries were school libraries. Others, and the generally more interesting ones, were public libraries. Some of these were like some museums used to be: full of dusty old things in obscure nooks, crannies, and unobvious rooms that one could investigate for many hours while hardly ever seeing another person.
My granddaughter, from about the 1st through 5th grades, was an avid reader and I was privileged to spend many hours with her in a number of local libraries. My observations were that there was little to no old material. Part of this had no doubt do to what Kip mentioned, that storage space is generally at a premium. Older has to go in order to make room for newer. Another striking aspect to my experience is that the libraries seemed to be strongly oriented to entertainment rather than factual material.
My point to all of this was a belief that occurred to me when I first became aware of digital media in libraries, mainly e-books and audio books. These I thought, are so much easier to store than paper books. Every library could essentially grow unrestricted. Another hard drive is relatively inexpensive and, even though libraries restrict the e-book checkout to one person at a time, as though e-book were the same as bound paper books, at least they would not have to throw them out after a short time in order to have space for new titles.
Then I read a little abut digital library material and some of the major problems libraries have with them which are a consequence of the newer copyright laws designed to give far more extreme privileges to the copyright holder. Also because of conditions imposed by the few companies that produce software to make reading or listening easy — but strictly controlled Each book, or copy thereof, costs a library about $500 per year. Keeping something for a long period, especially if it isn’t one of the most popular titles, is a financial impossibility.
I don’t know if there used to be, or still are, any special financial consideration for paper books purchased for a library but when one purchased a book it was personal property, to keep as long as one wished and disposed of as one wished. This current situation is a very limiting one on what any library can make available for its card holders. Less popular material can’t justify its financial expense to a library so it is, in a certain manner of speaking, banned.
Andy ==> I’m going to look into that — libraries paying to loan out digital copies of books. Thanks….
Yes, this is right. What is happening is not book banning. That would mean a state or municipality making it unlawful for bookshops and mail order houses to sell the books and for the postal service to deliver them. It would ban their ownership and lending from all libraries. That isn’t happening anywhere in the US.
The entire focus is on public libraries and schools, and Kip is right – the question is who shall decide what books are to be made available either in public libraries or school libraries. The focus of the debate has become the negative – who decides what shall not be included in these repositories.
But the real question is who has the power of selection, both positive and negative. Is it the librarians who decide what shall not be included, as well as what shall be. Or do parents (in the case of schools) and the public (in the case of public libraries) also have some powers?
The somewhat veiled issue is that positive selection can also be a political act and a manoeuvre in the culture war.
Michel ==> Absolutely — currently the Librarian makes these decisions — both what to buy/include and what to shelve where, and what to sell off, what to trash, and what to move to a more appropriate section of the library. Generally, if the school or library board has made a good hiring choice, the Librarian will know and agree with the values and standards of the community that hired them. But, the OWNERS of the library (public and local citizens) have the right to question those decisions and ask/demand that the decisions be altered.
A librarian that chooses to buy and shelve inappropriate books in children’s sections should be brought to task by the community — and replaced if found to be actively and intentionally undermining the standards of the public.
Note the young up and coming librarians will have been taught to use their positions to bring about “social change” by the radical leftist/progressive professors in academia.
Here’s an excerpt about a recent President of the American Library Association.
ALA Presidency
In her first editorial for American Libraries after becoming president, Drabinski stated, “These coming months will ask even more of us as we organize and mobilize together on behalf of our libraries, our patrons, our communities, and, importantly, ourselves.” She asserted that the ALA needs to make “good trouble, the kind of trouble that matters,” adding that the ALA must “build the collective power necessary to preserve and expand the public good,” and committed herself to working with everyone.
In her first interview as ALA president on August 7, Drabinski said she plans to tackle “pressing issues” facing librarians, including preparing libraries for climate change consequences, ensuring collections are diverse, hiring lawyers for libraries, encouraging people who support intellectual freedom to run for library and school boards, and hosting an intellectual freedom summit in Washington, D.C. in January 2024.
After her election as ALA president in June 2022, Drabinski described herself in a later deleted tweet as a “Marxist lesbian” who believes in “collective power.” Following the tweet, Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative nonprofit Moms for Liberty,[32] criticized supposed outside interference in libraries. Drabinski stated that she wants to promote and build enthusiasm for librarians’ work across the United States.
From here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Drabinski
Gunga ==> Thanks for the input on Drabinski — far left, promoting far left ideals through OUR libraries.