Want to know why three library trustees don’t want students to read tough literature? Stepping into someone else’s shoes, seeing the world through oppressed or marginalized eyes can create empathy, better understanding and even solidarity. So, my advice to the teenagers of Flathead County – pay close attention to the books the powers that be want banned. Find out for yourself why these zealots don’t want you to read certain books. Ask why people who disdain compassion, and who fear your future want their misinformed anxieties trusted. Who knows, you may be as baffled as I am by the appeal-to-ignorance (albeit clever) logic of the three library trustees. Adams, the most disingenuous, in pretending to be against censorship, contrived to eliminate the word “censorship” from state-mandated guidelines.
He cunningly clouded his true intentions with an incongruity right out of Lewis Carroll. “In order to have a different rule, it’s easiest to create a new rule that tells one how not to apply the old rule.” (Watch Mr. Adams ban Alice in Wonderland next.) Common sense students may also spot another formal, “either/or” propositional fallacy (i.e., affirming a disjunctive) that fuels book-banning minds; that is, “If some kid wants to read a book we’ve banned, he or she can buy it from Amazon.” Libraries are for people who don’t have credit cards and can’t afford books, much less computers. Plus, there are nooks in libraries where one can pick a book from a shelf and read it in privacy. Students, recognize the real truth here. This is an effort by extremists to control, in accordance with their norms, your thoughts and behavior with the long-range goal of undermining and then conforming to their needs the functions of education.
Glenn Schiffman
Whitefish