Two school board members in Virginia last week called for the burning — yes, burning — of books in the school’s library that they deem sexually offensive. This is, of course, the logical direction of the conservative movement to crack down on any school curriculum that doesn’t reflect a right-wing view of the world. And it’s another reason why liberals and progressives should reclaim the mantle of free speech that was once an integral part of liberal thinking but that has now, alarmingly, fallen out of fashion on college campuses and other liberal strongholds.
While the Spotsylvania County School Board on Nov. 8 was discussing removal from the school library of materials that some parents had objected to as sexually explicit, board member Rabih Abuismail declared that wasn’t enough: “I think we should throw those books in a fire.” Fellow board member Kirk Twigg specified that he wanted to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.” It was unclear whether either of them knew or cared that they were calling for action associated with 1930s German Nazism and other oppressive regimes.
Some of the books in question at the school are in fact sexually explicit, like “33 Snowflake” a critically acclaimed but controversial book about teenage runaways. It’s reasonable to debate whether a given book is age-appropriate for students. But that’s a far cry from lighting them up like a bunch of modern-day Brownshirts.
