IFI’s Laurie Higgins shreds the smarmy and dishonest liberal librarians:
Self-righteous, dissembling librarians are seeking once again to foment “book-banning” hysteria through their annual dishonest Banned Books Week campaign (Sept. 21-27) sponsored by the self-righteous, dissembling, and politically partisan American Library Association (ALA).
The ALA pursues its hysteria-fomenting goal chiefly by ridiculing parents who, for example, don’t want their six-year-olds seeing books about children or anthropomorphized animals being raised by parents in homoerotic relationships. (Scorn and woe to those parents who hold the now-censored belief that homoeroticism—even homoeroticism presented in whitewashed, water-colored images—doesn’t belong in the picture books section of public libraries).
Very few patrons are asking to have books “banned.” They are not requesting that the government or anyone else prohibit the publication or sale of books. Rather, responsible patrons are asking that books that deal with highly controversial topics, particularly sexual perversion, be removed from the section of the library in which children are encouraged by parents and librarians to roam and read freely. Occasionally, a community member will question the purchasing decisions of librarians—purchasing decisions that take place behind the scenes and often constitute de facto “book banning” (to use the ALA’s specious terminology). Librarians can’t be accused of book-banning if behind closed doors they simply choose not to purchase a book in the first place. How conveeenient.
Librarians, like those at the Schaumburg Township District Library, are becoming ever more brazen in their mockery of taxpayers who have different views than they do about which books should be purchased or about where those books should be made available in the library. This year in a cutesy and condescending propaganda effort to mock conservative patrons into ideological submission, Schaumburg Public Library librarians have posted faux-mugshots of themselves holding “banned” books—you know, books that are widely available in virtually every community library.
Most taxpayers have no idea how purchasing decisions in publicly subsidized libraries are made, but they should, because the policy librarians follow serves as a preemptive book-banning mechanism.
Libraries use Collection Development Policies (CDP’s) to determine which books they will purchase with their limited budgets. CDP’s hold that librarians should purchase only books that have been positively reviewed by two “professionally recognized” review journals. Guess what folks, the “professionally recognized” review journals are dominated by ideological “progressives.” Publishing companies too are dominated by ideological “progressives,” so getting books published that espouse conservative ideas (particularly on the topic of homosexuality) is nigh unto impossible.
If librarians really cared about the full and free exchange of ideas and if they really believed that “book-banning” is dangerous to society, they would direct their rage and ridicule at the powerful publishing companies, professionally-recognized review journals, and their own profession, all of which do far more book-banning than does a handful of powerless parents seeking to have a picture book moved.
Read more: IllinoisFamily.org
