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2024-10-16 02:57 Views:134
For many months, the national GOP has flirted with the Florida-based crusaders who seek to banish targeted books from school libraries. When Donald Trump headlined the annual summit in August of Moms for Liberty (MFL), it became clear that the flirtation is headed toward marriage.
Titles blacklisted by Moms for Liberty describe violence, sexual victimization and a range of other troubling human behaviors. Members believe it is sinful to expose kids to challenging acts and attitudes. Such exposure abrogates the right of parents to…well…pretend these challenges don’t exist.
Moms for Liberty and similar right-wing culture warriors are supported and funded by conservative Republicans – like me. I’m speaking up now not despite my partisan bona fides, but because of them. If a wedding is imminent, those of us in the GOP family who object to this union must say no…or forever hold our peace.
I spent 30 years in the trenches of Republican politics as a county commissioner, state legislator and deputy minority leader in the New Jersey General Assembly. I too have fought for parents’ rights.
I sponsored bills to expand school choice: charter schools, voucher programs, homeschooling options and other alternatives to traditional public education. I supported initiatives to build the visibility and value of nontraditional, vocational, and arts education.
But the MFL movement seeks restriction, not expansion. It seeks to hide and devalue disfavored books, not to help students – or parents – engage with them. It privileges the perspective of self-proclaimed “leaders” over parents themselves.
I’m not a libertarian. I realize that some books use language and tell stories that may be age-inappropriate. Trained librarians and teachers can identify such books. They can and should require parental permission to borrow them or read them in class, especially in elementary grades.
But my most fundamental belief is in the basic conservative principle of prudence. A prudent person rejects the passions of the moment, seeking guidance from the bodies of knowledge captured in literature. Prudence acknowledges evil in the world but respects that there are many ways to understand, explain and improve the human condition.
A favorite tactic of book enemies is to cherry-pick problematic passages, “exposing” the blasphemy at the mic during school board meetings. For example, they might choose this graphic description of rape and mutilation:
Enter the Empress’ sons, Demetrius and Chiron, with Lavinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out,and ravished.
The words of a libertine/socialist? No – William Shakespeare, in Titus Adronicus.
And in 1967, author Bernard Malamud won the Pulitzer prize for his novel The Fixer. The story’s protagonist anticipates today’s conflicts when he says: “There are no wrong books. What’s wrong is the fear of them.” The Fixer was banished from school libraries in Beaufort, South Carolina – until community push-back got it restored.
Those who wish to censor what young people read – or even see – may succeed in sheltering them from such raw, terrible imagery. The students they “protect” may retain a measure of innocence.
But naivete won’t prepare those students to grapple with the world awaiting them. In that world, such scenes, and far worse, are enacted by real people who can’t be vanquished by righteous rhetoric. Think: the rapists of Boko Haram. The killers of Hamas. The barbarians of ISIS.
Through books, young people can learn how others have responded to the dark side of our nature. Exposure to the full range of human experience will help empower them to make ethical lifestyle choices - to mature into decent people.
And isn’t that a goal we all share? Can’t political partisans at least leave literature alone?
Amy Handlin is a former New Jersey state legislator and county commissioner. She has lived in Miami since 2019.
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