I am not by any means a "book burner" but to some extent to believe in "community standards" which has kept pornography out of libraries in conservative communities.
So, in the case, I must stand with the Brooklyn Library, while you stand with the ACLU.
I am not by any means a "book burner" but to some extent to believe in "community standards" which has kept pornography out of libraries in conservative communities. So, in the case, I must stand with the Brooklyn Library, while you stand with the ACLU.Actually, I stand with no such thing. For one thing, saying we can assail the library's own internal censorship doesn't mean that we can't approve it, so long as it didn't assume that its own policy could or should become another library's policy in another community or venue. (This works, too, with a book the Brooklyn Library might okay, even if another library in another community rejected it, and this wouldn't even come close to remaining the exclusive province of porn which I think we'd all agree should be kept away from children, and not just in libraries.) Even if I think they're fools to pull or hide an ancient book that's being held to a standard that didn't exist, rightly or wrongly, in its own time and place (I don't believe one ancient Belgian book is going to turn a kid into a racist), never mind how foolish they were to have thought of pulling or hiding nothing more dangerous than one woman's political writing.
For another, and perhaps more important thing, you probably don't need me to tell you that the standard I enunciated in my original post would probably be hammered by the ACLU as sanctioning censorship of any kind! They'd see what I said in my first sentence and, perhaps having a case of apoplexy over that sentence, never even get to the very next sentence. Show me a cherry tree and I'll show you the spaces from which the ACLU has plucked very selectively the various fruits . . .