Posted on 11/22/2009 1:35:43 PM PST by Steelfish
I'm with you solidly, no way should just 100 people be able to censure a community of 50,000. We are in agreement.
If a community does not like this junk in their library then they have the right to oppose and remove it with enough folks taking action. .... That is the proper course of freedom as determined by local standards.
Abolutely, each community should, and does have the right to set limits as to what is permissble within their community. No arguement at all.
Excusing our culture war excesses with the notion that the parents can simply handle it all is nonsense.
This is where I do disagree. 'For the children' is the battlecry of every movement ever created that limits the rights of other people. "For the children" as California outlawed big screen TV's, "For the children" as taxes are increased, bonds are sold and rights are taken away.
I was not consulted when you decided to have sex with your spouse (or boyfriend, girlfriend or booty call). I never got a phone call saying "Hey, I'm goin to tear off a piece and not use protection, is that ok with you?". Now, all of a sudden I'm supposed to give up my tax money to support the results of decisons I had no voice in. Now, I don't mind paying for education, as the kids of today will pay taxes to support my Social Security payments in my closing years. But, now I have to have my public library materials censored to the lowest common denominator? Sorry, this is YOUR job, not mine. I have raised my kids, I help raise my grandkids - how about YOU raise your kids, and not foist the responsiblity of monitoring their entertainment off on me? If you don't want them reading Mark Twain novels - that's your job. My kids have been encouraged to read Mark Twain. If you don't like the Harry Potter books, that's your choice. I wouldn't dream of pushing your kids into doing something against your principles - but how dare you limit mine?
shoot man....I want mine reading Uncle Remus,watching Amos and Andy and memorizing Gone With the Wind.
Huck and _____Jim are as important as Samson and the jawbone insofar as good stories for my kids.
Actually, the magazine gets it right. Either the library director or Fox News can’t spell..... :-)
Oh, I agree, Mark Twain was one of America’s greatest authors. Not only did he capture the wonder of being a adolescent boy, he captured the atmostphere of the American culture at that point in time. It’s a shame that Disney’s Song of the South is banned in America.
But, one of the precepts that I agree with is that parents have the right to determine what their children consume, be it food, required reading materials, matters of faith and political views. I defend a parent’s right to be a Communist as much as I defend their right to be a
Conservative - for what the gov’t can do to the least of us, it can do to the majority of us.
But the question remains, in a Public Library, where do you draw the lines? I think it should be a Community effort, not the effort of a few self-appointed censors. IMHO, those who become self-appointed censors may start out doing something for the ‘Greater Good’ but soon become power hungry tyrants.
I’d much rather have a book on the shelf that never gets checked out, and just gathers dust; than to have a group demand that I never have the option to read it. That said, I have no problem with sexual materials being presented; at an age appropriate area. If a parent does not want their child to know about sexual relations, that should not prevent my kids from gathering information.
Now I’m just a silly engineer; so I try to remove emotion from my arguements. We make decisions that affect both our lives, and the lives of others based upon information we have. If we have little or no information- we make decisions based upon our limited information. My view is that poor information leads to poor decisions; whether we are talking about economics, building a tree house, or sex.
I think they're saying "If that pervert in the dirty rain coat tries to come near my child, I'll kill him."
Can you hear us now?
I thought this thread was about a community debate over a book in a library, not dirty men trying to approach your child.
I'm pretty sure we're all in agreement that you can keep your kids away from suspicious characters.
“Oh, let him read smut and look at porno, he's only hurting himself. It's his freedem and his business and not ours.” A lie....
"Oh, let him eat twinkies and sit on the couch all weekend...it's his fitness at risk and not out business"
"Oh, let him watch a programs that glorify tawdry displays of wealth and arrogant superiority over the less fortunate...it's his choice and not for us to decide his values."
"Oh, let him watch trashy sitcoms and infotainment news...it's his free time and his mind to waste away."
Are these also lies from the devil?
Yes they are.
We agree that perverts in the street should be prevented from offering pornography to children. When we move the act into a government building and call it "Freedom of Speech," does it make it alright?
I think there is a difference between a living, breathing human being approaching your child and your child having access to a book on teen sexuality in a library.
What we CAN agree on is that public funding of libraries leads to conflicts like this. Why not just privatize the libraries, let the new owners decide what books to put on the shelves, and then customers can go to the library that best reflects their values.
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Thanks for this post, it is fantastic!
It’s about time that people started waking up to the fact that a great many libertarians are nothing more than die-hard leftists (often approaching anarchists) who happen to believe in gun rights and don’t like taxes.
Moral Absolutes ping, eh?
As we can see by the many and various replies on this thread - It is quite clear many FReepers have no moral absolutes.
Or worse - they use their Libertarian ideals to claim that this smut in our children’s libraries is just fine.
Moral Absolutes? Show me where that is protected in our Constitution. (They claim) I think it’s sad that there are so many FReepers with no morals and that they use the Constitution to further advance their right to view as much porn as they can.
Or - to use as much dope as they want.
This is just the beginning. I anticipate that sex with 16 year-olds will soon be un-prosecutable, then legalized if they drive a car. It’s part of the living-breathing law thing and change.
While morality may not be protected by the Constitution, neither is immorality.
The original intent of the Founding Fathers was that freedom of speech and the press was to protect POLITICAL speech and writing, it had NOTHING to do with protecting smut.
What many people don't realize is that if the Constitution is a "living, breathing" document then it will one day die.
Now, I realize that Zero and his ilk would love to kill the Constitution; however, I don't think that the useful idiots who voted them into office have quite grasped the ramifications of destroying the Constitution.
By the time I was 14, I decided that life was a whole lot easier if I just gave my parents the details of my planned activities beforehand, and I earned more freedom that way. It was a matter of conscientious parental training from the time I, two brothers and a sister were very small.
And that was in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s -— can you imagine it? There was marijuana and “speed” all around us, and none of us ever touched it; we were scared to death of it . . . not scared of our parents. Conscientious, consistent parental training worked.
We loved being home with our folks, and so did our friends, some from liberal homes, and our parents were staunch conservatives.
My wife and I have seven children, and that is partly due to the fact that the children are not with us 24 hours a day, if you get my drift. An Obama micro-car won’t work with our family!
Two of ours thus far are married, have their own children, and it’s almost embarrassing to be around either couple. They stay so madly in love. And they didn’t “date.” There wasn’t a kiss, not even holding hands until the marriage altar. You don’t have to believe that, but it’s true.
From the time our children were very little we began teaching them hands-off courtship. And we have found other Christian families who have learned the same thing.
We hold courses for families on this subject. It includes teaching your children to love to be with Mom & Dad more than any friend on earth.
I have a 30 year-old daughter of whom I’ve written on these many pages. She was declared “USELESS” by neurosurgeons at 3 weeks old, predicted to be a severely retarded vegetable, and a ward of the State of Florida. But at three years old she had a vocabulary of a high schooler (that’s private, not public high schooler). Once in a Winn Dixie Supermarket near Ocala, Florida, we caught her lecturing a @35 year old mom about why her two little girls should “not be running carefree through public establishments.” She was 3 years old. OOPS!
Okay, well, her manners toward adults in the lecturing department got corrected, but she also was never found running carefree through public establishments, and learned to reserve that for parks and sports fields.
Our children don’t wander off, or hide, or conceal their plans. They love to be with us as much as with anyone. It’s parental guidance and love. They have never been interested in contemporary music trends, although they are constantly listening to music: Christian hymns, Americana, folk, Welsh & Scotch-Irish (their favorite), etc. They all play musical instruments, and we keep a little orchestra going at the house. We sing as a family, in four, five, and six part harmonies. Ever hear What a Friend I Have In Jesus in Barber-Shop close harmony? Wow!
My point! Children don’t have to be in places parents don’t want them, or with people that might ruin their reputations or harm them. For children to want to keep the knowledge of their whereabouts hidden from their parents is NOT normal, and a child does not have to grow up thinking it is normal. It might be common for children to act that way, but it should never be dignified by being called “normal.” It is ABnormal.
Normality is love toward parents with obedience and respect. Normality is when parents deliberately and with forethought teach these things to their children from early childhood.
Only Bible-believing Christians will understand this point. A component of this training that cannot be by-passed is to teach the children from early on that they are born sinners and have a sin nature that makes them prone to sin and offend a Holy God. That parents are stewards that that Holy God has placed over children as external guard-rails and safety cords until their is an internal control. That internal control is the Holy Spirit Who is received when they learn the Truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and take Him as their only Saviour, only Remedy for their sins, and only Hope of Eternal Life.
Can young children understand all of that. Oh, yes they can, if we don’t complicate it or confuse it with mere religiosity.
And did you agree to forsake Jesus Christ on behalf of your children before they were born? Could that possibly have been the source of their discomfort? Or were all your children baptized, confirmed, and taking communion along with you?
No, the source of their discomfort was that they were intolerant bigots.
So, you did renounce Jesus?
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