Given the ever-more extreme race to the right by Missouri’s Republican leaders lately, it was perhaps only a matter of time before one of them suggested the government should start dictating what books public libraries can and cannot carry. That’s the essence of a proposed new rule by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. The stated purpose, of course, is to protect vulnerable children from that most threatening of societal scourges: librarians.
Like Republican Senate nominee Eric Schmitt’s cynical attacks on Missouri school curriculum, this is a solution in search of a problem. Unless the problem is that Ashcroft, a potential 2024 gubernatorial candidate, is worried some other Republican might try to challenge him from the political right. He thus joins Missouri’s growing list of GOP figures willing to trash fundamental principles of a free society in their ever-spiraling quest to pander to the angriest elements of their base.
Ashcroft, whose official duties include the largely symbolic title of state librarian, announced Monday that he’s filing a proposed administrative rule that would make that role chillingly literal. It would create a state certification process under which state-funded libraries would have to create written policies explaining how they choose books “in considering the appropriateness for the age and maturity level of any minor” — and file that policy with Ashcroft’s office or face loss of state funding. It would also require libraries to create a process for parental control over what books their kids can check out, and to refrain from displaying “age-inappropriate materials” in places where kids might see them.
