Editor's note: This article was originally published at Wirepoints.
You’d almost think Illinois singlehandedly defeated the Nazi Axis based on the comments made by progressive politicians and media about the state’s new ban on book bans that Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law this month. For example:
- Pritzker said, “Regimes ban books, not democracies,” adding that Illinois refuses “to let a vitriolic strain of white nationalism” determine “whose stories get told.”
- The Daily Kos began its column with this quote from a German poet, about what it called a “monumental bill”: “Those who burn books will in the end burn people.”
- The New York Times said the signing of Illinois’ new law “may have opened a new front,” quoting a library association person saying, “there was a huge wave of conversation and dialogue about how important it is that we see governors and that we see lawmakers engaged in this conversation.”
Under Illinois new law, public libraries will forfeit state grants unless they either (a) adopt the American Library Association’s library bill of rights or, (b) develop a written statement prohibiting the practice of banning books or other materials within the library or library system.
Let’s first consider what the second option above means, because it’s so empty. A library would be in compliance, if it used that option, if it merely has a written statement “prohibiting the practice of banning books.” What on earth does that mean? Maybe a statement saying no banning at all allowed? Nobody would agree with that. Any “statement” to make sense would have to get into the specifics of what can be banned and why, but the new law says nothing about what those specifics should be.
Now consider what the new law would mean if a library chose the first option by adopting the library association’s Bill of Rights, which itself is hopelessly incomplete. All the association’s bill of rights says directly about book bans is that materials “should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
That may sound nice, but those words are useless. An overtly racist book, for example, surely could be considered doctrinal and therefore could not be banned under the Bill of Rights. At the other extreme, the left has sought to ban “Huck Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” foolishly claiming they are racist, but they’d presumably say their reasons are not partisan or doctrinal so their ban should be permitted.
What about explicit pornography, calls for immediate violence, brazen defamation and how-to-make-a-bomb books? Most everybody would agree that those should be banned, but the association’s bill of rights does not address such things and defining them would be nearly impossible.
And what if the association changes its bill of rights in a way that’s far too strict or too lenient? Apparently, Illinois law would automatically change with it. The General Assembly has essentially delegated its authority to the Association, which is perhaps unconstitutional.
Turning to the underlying substance of the controversy, much of it is not about banning, but instead about placement in libraries and what is age appropriate. Most current disputes are about books on sexuality, particularly books directed at children. Of the 13 “Most Challenged Books” last year, seven were challenged for having LGBTQ content. The most contentious is “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” written for minors.
It’s hard to say for sure how many disputes are about placement and age, not censorship, but at least one librarian says it’s about keeping age inappropriate books out of the kids’ sections. The director of the Effingham library, quoted here, supports the new law but said the term “book ban” to describe the removal or reconsideration of a book or resource in a library can be somewhat misleading.
“I think ban is just a really simple and generic word to use,” she said. “We do have patrons, on occasion, ask us to reconsider the placement of an item,” she said. “We want to listen to the patron’s concern and make sure that we understand why they want to see this item reconsidered either for placement in whatever collection it’s currently or placement in the library as a whole.”
Disputes about what’s appropriate for what ages are unavoidable and everlasting. They are not about censorship. Labeling one side of that debate as book banners is a deception.
Finally, do progressives really expect to get away with claiming they are champions of free speech? Earlier this week, law professor Jonathan Turley, a Chicago native, put it this way:
“Limiting free speech has become an article of faith for many on the left. I have written about my distress (as someone who grew up in a liberal, politically active Democratic family in Chicago) in watching the abandonment of free speech values by the party. Democratic leaders now uniformly call for censorship and speech regulations. President Biden even charged that companies who refused to censor opposing views on social media were “killing people.” Others have denounced free speech as “a white man’s obsession.”
Illinois’ ban on book bans is projection at its worst – a brazen try by today’s left to ascribe its illiberalism to its opponents.