It’s common these turbulent days to see leftists—politicians and their lackeys, journalists (same thing), NGO employees, professors, etc.—whining about all the banned books. Why, those evil Republicans are engaging in an orgy of censorship! They’re destroying the First Amendment! It’s a laughable contention.
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Never in human history have books been so readily and universally available. Public libraries tend to be bastions of leftism, careful to stock every leftist, woke, sexualized title imaginable, while equally carefully not stocking any book in opposition to those books and their narratives. This is true of many public school libraries.
Yet this is not censorship, nor book banning. Yes, that kind of thing isn’t public service; it’s partisan political indoctrination. Yes, it’s wrong, but no library has an unlimited budget, and anyone wanting a given book written by a Normal American on normal, sane topics has innumerable options for finding such books. So do leftists.
The real problem comes from—surprise—Democrats outraged that their attempts at political and sexual indoctrination of children are being discovered and largely thwarted. To their way of non-thinking, graphic literature, drawn and photographic depictions of all manner of sex, and particularly the LGBTQWERTY+- variety, absolutely must appear in every school library, available to kids of every age, or “our democracy” is being torn down.
But are books really being banned? Not remotely:
Responding to PEN America’s drummed-up hysteria [about school book bans], researchers at the Heritage Foundation set out in 2023 to test the claim, armed with a simple methodology: They printed out PEN’s list of allegedly banned books, logged on to the library catalogs in the school districts where these books were supposedly being banned, and tried to see how hard it would be, in reality, for anyone to procure the contraband.
The results should not surprise you. For example, The Hate U Give is young-adult agitprop shlock about police brutality and systemic racism and other Black Lives Matter talking points. It is one of the books PEN advertises as most frequently banned. According to the organization, the novel was removed from the shelves of public schools in Goddard, Kansas. Yet the Heritage researchers logged on to the district’s website and soon learned that the book was so completely suppressed that no fewer than nine copies of it were available in circulation, including three that were checked out at the time of the investigation. PEN judged the Indian River School District in Florida, another of its favorite targets, even more harshly for banning The Hate U Give. Yet in the district’s library catalog, twenty copies were available. The researchers reported similar findings for 74 percent of the books PEN and others alleged were being targeted by big, bad banning campaigns.
And even if that book were unavailable in school or public libraries, we can be sure it’s available in bookstores, and certainly at Amazon in Kindle—immediately downloadable–and printed form–take the link in the above quote. And no, one can’t reasonably argue that because they might have to buy their own copy of a book rather than have it provided by taxpayers, they’re being censored and oppressed. There is, thank goodness, no such thing as a right to be given any book at taxpayer expense. I’d quickly bankrupt the federal treasury.
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Graphic: Author
Sure, Democrats regularly try to remove Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from schools because “n****r” is often used as it was in Twain’s time. Republicans try to remove that book because Huck, a child, often gets the better of adults. Yet, the book, an enduring and irreplaceable classic, is easily found everywhere. Ernest Hemingway said all American literature comes from that book. The real battle is over other titles/topics:
One is Gender Queer, a graphic novel by Maia Kobabe. It’s PornHub for the alternative teen set, complete with graphic illustrations of oral sex. Another is All Boys Aren’t Blue, a self-described “memoir-manifesto” by George M. Johnson, which features more than a few wildly explicit scenes depicting gay sex between two minors. And, for those who like their stuff a little less X-rated, there’s Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, which argues cheerfully that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”
The battle for age-appropriate literature in schools is important and never-ending. But it must be waged not by emotion, but by people of good will arguing for good art, literature of enduring, timeless value. Grooming tracts and sexual and political indoctrination don’t clear that high bar.
Ultimately, perhaps the best argument against such things is that they are not banned, and anyone who wants them can easily obtain them. Any organization that wants to buy and distribute them can. Just not on the public dime, and not for scarce class time.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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