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Banned Books (For the Whole Family)

In honor of Banned Books Week, DC’s very own Takoma Park library hosted a Read-Out this past weekend, where volunteers read excerpts of selected children’s books that have been challenged. Examples of “misbehaved” books were Heather Has Two Mummies, Daddy’s Roommate, and Elbert’s Bad Word. (Visit http://www.takomapark.info/library/children/archives/002343.html for more spicy titles.)

For the record, “challenging” a book means attempting to ban it, but not quite achieving the goal. As for “banning” a book, sanctions come in degrees. Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto, Mein Kampf, for instance, is explicitly denounced in Germany. There, it cannot be republished, sold or even held under possession. The Netherlands, on the other hand, allows lending it and reading it but prohibitis people from selling it.

On the subject of book banning, there isn’t a prevailing consensus. Some people feel that the amorality of a book never, ever trumps the amorality of prohibiting free speech and free access to information. Others think that silencing these rights is worth it if a book threatens public health.

Really, it’s one thing condemning  The Catcher in the Rye for dropping f-bombs. That’s conservatism gone astray. But when a book like Mein Kampf is the building block for one of the most calamitous events in recent history, maybe banning is the good way, the only way.

Or how about The Global Bell Curve, by psychiatrist Richard Lynn, whose premise is that intelligence is racially inherited and that Sahel Africans are at the bottom of the…erm, race? According to loon Lynn, East Asians are the most genetically intelligent. Frankly, it reminds me of the scientist who claimed that Caucasians are more intelligent because he managed to fit more marbles in a Caucasian skull. I wish I knew more about this, but I also regret hearing about it at all.

The First Amendment does protect free speech. But in no way does it endorse the license to harm.

In my mind’s ear, however, I can’t stop myself from hearing German playwright, Heinrich Heine, whispering: “Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.”