A few years ago I heard a professor condemn book-banning. This was in a public lecture. She condemned Christian sects and their ilk in hillbilly country. Because they wanted to ban books from school libraries. Books on homosexuality, for instance.
An audience member asked if she and her ilk would ever do the same. Would they ever ban any books. “Yes,” she shot back. “We would ban the Bible and other books on religion.”
Since she was against the Christian sects banning books, how could she justify doing the same? “Because I know we are right,” she boasted.
The temperature in the auditorium plunged twenty degrees. I pitied her students.
Over the years this type of thinking has grown fashionable in America. If you follow the news you will see evidence of it most every day.
Over 1000 Google employees signed a petition recently to ban Breitbart, the news and commentary platform. Banish it from Google searches. Label Breitbart articles as “prohibited content”. This would starve Breitbart of Google-generated ad revenue.
Facebook employs thought-police today. To ban content they deem unworthy. YouTube does the same. Pssst, they love to ban stuff from conservatives.
San Francisco’s Board of Education voted to destroy murals in the George Washington High School. Murals that depict George Washington. Because he owned slaves.
You remember how critics destroyed statues to Civil War figures. And how anti-religious zealots have destroyed crosses and plaques of the Ten Commandments. And other religious symbols in public places. (Gollee, didn’t those barbaric Taliban and Isis do something similar?)
Books like Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye and Little House on the Prarie – they have to go. So say other zealots.
Banish Christ the infant at Christmas. Banish Columbus and Columbus Day! So says Columbus, Ohio. Meanwhile, Charlottesville, Va. banished Thomas Jefferson Day.
A CNN analyst just called for a new cadre of young liberal journalists. To be trained to do away with the likes of Tucker Carlson’s commentary on FoxNews. To do away with conservative media.
The knives were out for Bill O’Reilly. When Fox jettisoned him over sexual harassment charges the ban-gang was ecstatic. For years, they have hounded advertisers on all conservative programming, such as Carlson’s and Limbaugh’s.
Climate change warriors do all they can to ban papers from scientists who question any of the climate dogma. They vote down tenure for them at universities. They ban their papers from science journals. They squelch thoughts of public debates on climate issues. They work to banish dissent from what they fraudulently claim 97 percent of scientists agree upon.
Ban the Pledge of Allegiance from city council meetings. Ban the singing of the National Anthem. Ban the displays of the American flag. Ban that flag’s appearance on pairs of sneakers!
Banish conservative speakers from campuses. Ban them from commencement podiums.
This is what is happening across America.
Ban words that offend someone’s ears. Especially on campuses where wimpy student ears are more tender. Ban calling her a her or him a him. Create safe zones, where kids are protected from such horrible words.
At Oberlin College: Ban and destroy a local bakery. Because it thwarted shoplifters who were students.
Banish jokes. No laughing at jokes against women, gays, foreigners, stupid people, etc. Banish any thoughts that came from dead white men. Like the Constitution and Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. Banish Kate Smith’s rendition of God Bless America. And depictions of Chief Wahoo of baseball’s Cleveland _______. I don’t know what they are allowed to call themselves now. Maybe the Cleveland Water?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a prominent Somali-born Dutch-American activist. She declares love and respect for America. Mutilate her! So suggests prominent American political activist Linda Sarsour. (She organized the 2017 Women’s March.)
Somali-born Congresswoman Ilhan Omar dislikes Tucker Carlson’s commentary on FoxNews. She calls for advertisers to abandon him. Kill his show, she urges.
Many readers of this column have begged newspapers to banish my writing from their pages. Sack that Morgan!
We used to be a people who disagreed but discussed. We used to deploy opinions as points of view, not as hatchets. When did this urge to banish and destroy leak into our blood? And how did it get there?
Do you suppose we can ever return to civil discussion? Whaaaat? Omigod! Banish the thought!
From Tom…as in Morgan.
Find Tom on Facebook. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com.