2005-09-30 - 9:34 a.m.
BURN THE BOOKS
By Peter Fredson
September 30, 2005
“Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-mustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.”
—George Orwell, 1984
First Amendment Basics
“Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting an Establishment of Religion, or Prohibiting the Free Exercise Thereof; or Abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the Press; or the Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble, and To Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.”
*********
Ever since the invention of writing to preserve and transmit ideas, especially since printing has made books and ideas available to many readers, some people try to prevent others from reading the material. In Medieval times the Catholic Church was the prime censor of printed materials. By banning the reading of books, by burning of books or by burning the authors, the masses were kept ignorant of whatever scientific, philosophical, historical or political ideas conflicted with religion.
Officials, to conceal embarrassing or criminal behavior, often resort to shredding documents. George Bush, with his penchant for secrecy, often classifies documents as confidential or seals them for long periods of time.
One of the main sources of censorship was The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) a list of publications that Roman Catholic laymen were banned from reading pernicious books, immoral books, sexual explicitness, political incorrectness, or works containing theological errors and heresy to prevent corruption of the faithful. The 32nd edition of 1948, contained 4,000 authors, representing the best of world literature, in philosophy, history, science and general surveys of knowledge.
It is interesting that many unauthorized editions or translations of the Bible have been banned and burned by civil and religious authorities. In 1996 Singapore convicted a woman for possessing the Jehovah's Witness translation of the Bible. Some Christian countries have forbidden the publication of the Koran.
Even today the reading of books has been often challenged. Some books have been banned from library shelves. Books today are challenged as being unsuitable for readers in schools or school libraries or public libraries, although in the past private possession of a prohibited book would incur grave punishment, including whipping and torture.
Often challenges are well-intentioned, to protect children from “difficult” ideas or sexually explicit information or thought to be “unsuitable” for certain age groups.
Some institutions dislike their dogma being challenged, some books are thought to be dangerously unorthodox or unpopular, some have what people consider offensive language or excessive violence, others are thought to be blasphemous or contrary to religious notions.
Sometimes people try to suppress anything conflicting with their traditional notions or that expresses homosexuality, nudity, racism, anti-family, or approve of Satanic and witchcraft themes. Most challenges are unsuccessful and are retained in the school curriculum or library collection.
BANNED BOOKS WEEK 2005 of the American Library Association is September 24–October 1.
“Banned Books Week emphasizes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them.”
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom in 2004 received a total of 547 challenges last year. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.
Books of 2004 most frequently challenged are:
• "The Chocolate War" for sexual content, offensive language, religious viewpoint, being unsuited to age group and violence
• "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers, for racism, offensive language and violence
• "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture" by Michael A. Bellesiles, for inaccuracy and political viewpoint
• “Captain Underpants” series by Dav Pilkey, for offensive language and modeling bad behavior
• "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky, for homosexuality, sexual content and offensive language
• "What My Mother Doesn't Know" by Sonya Sones, for sexual content and offensive language
• "In the Night Kitchen" by Maurice Sendak, for nudity and offensive language
• "King & King" by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, for homosexuality
• "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, for racism, homosexuality, sexual content, offensive language and unsuited to age group
• "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck, for racism, offensive language and violence
Challenged books of the past included these popular ones:
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
5. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6. The Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.
The most frequently challenged authors in 2003 were Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, J. K. Rowling, Robert Cormier, Judy Blume, Katherine Paterson, John Steinbeck, Walter Dean Myers, Robie Harris, Stephen King, and Louise Rennison. The most frequently challenged authors in 2002 were J.K. Rowling, Judy Blume, Robert Cormier, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Stephen King, Lois Duncan, S.E. Hinton, Alvin Schwartz, Maya Angelou, Roald Dahl, and Toni Morrison.
“What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. ~ The crises and reforms (real reforms too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. ~ To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted.’ ~ Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. ~ Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) . . . You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.”
—A German professor describing the coming of fascism in They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer
Today, in America, supposedly the nation of liberty, of freedom of thought and speech, we have FBI agents looking through library records to find people who are reading books on subjects suspected by the Bush administration to be connected with terrorism. Librarians are forbidden to ever mention that the FBI was in the library making lists of people who might find themselves under indefinite detention for unspecified actions.
This is a big Bush step toward fascism and thought control, which can later be used for religious persecution by fundamentalist American Talibanists as well.
Political correctness is still in the ascent, and political repression by dirty tricks is popular today as a means of retaining control of political office. Today we censor manuscripts and books, tomorrow we burn the books and manuscripts, and next we burn the authors
“I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.”
—Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127
