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\u201cWherever they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too.\u201d This quote by journalist and romantic poet Heinrich Heine is originally in German, so there are many variations of it in English. However, the sentiment is always the same: Burning books eventually leads to killing people.<\/p>\n
We should be concerned, be very concerned, about Governor DeSantis\u2019 book bans. He is doing the people of Florida, and especially the state\u2019s children, an enormous disfavor. Outlawing the teaching of Black studies, forbidding school children from discussing non-binary sexual orientation or even the monthly visits from Aunt Flo narrows their minds and engenders ignorance as well as bigotry and hatred.<\/p>\n
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A while back I wrote about the stink that arose when Maus<\/i> was banned<\/a>.\u00a0The result? Everybody wanted to read it. Sales of the award-winning graphic novel spiked. In other words, you really want kids to read a book, outlaw it. Controversy sells. Salman Rushdie\u2019s The Satanic Verses<\/i> became a best-seller because Muslims made such a big deal about its alleged blasphemy.<\/p>\n The U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect our freedom to read what we like. OK, I can get keeping kindergarteners away from 50 Shades of Grey, <\/i>but keeping them away from And Tango Makes Three<\/i> is absurd. Right-wingers see \u201cbad\u201d stuff in so many books because they look for it. One of the characters is gay? Ban it! Girls talk about menstruation? Ban it! The author supports reproductive rights? Ban it! Stamp, stamp, stamp, the \u201cBanned\u201d label goes on just about any book for just about any reason. But it\u2019s OK to expose children to the Bible, even though it includes incest, rape, genocide, violence, magic, talking animals and – wait for it – menstruation.<\/p>\n Conservatives give exceedingly strong indications that they want to dumb down the education system in the US. They claim that public schools are \u201cindoctrinating\u201d and \u201cgrooming\u201d children. Yet right-wingers are the real groomers, fomenting hate and paranoia, encouraging children to all but worship guns, pounding pseudo-science and outright lies into their heads. Better-educated people tend to be liberal, which could be the main reason why the right-wing disparages education, especially universal and affordable education. Ignorant masses are easier to control – and bamboozle.<\/p>\n Children need to be exposed to people who are not like them so they appreciate diversity and do not become bigots. Kids often know from an early age that they are nonbinary, so they need to know it\u2019s OK to be that way. Also, they need to know about history. They need to know why people are different colors. They need to learn about different cultures. They need to study history in order to know why things are the way they are – why Blacks still struggle to achieve equality, and why women are under-represented in many fields.<\/p>\n What is wrong with letting drag queens read to children? How many people have been killed by books? Yet certain governments within the US feel it is more important to regulate and control books than to regulate and control guns. I have yet to hear about somebody dying as a result of reading Heather Has Two Mommies<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWherever they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too.\u201d This quote by journalist and romantic poet Heinrich Heine is originally in German, so there are many variations of it in English. However, the sentiment is always the same: Burning books eventually leads to killing people. We should be concerned, be very concerned, about Governor […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}