This isn't the argument, which is why it didn't lose. The argument is that the law was too broad and banned books that have long been considered to have great literary value. Did you see the list of books that have been banned as a result of this bill in the article? The bill does not allow consideration of literary value (a.k.a. the rest of the book, and its role in history), it only considers some sexual content in the book in isolation. It also applied to the entire school system, these books were being banned from high school libraries.
Is there? Because I've heard this and everytime it's been an hallucination.
And also text on a page is not sexual. Its true that literary classics like "Kite Runner" include rape. But that's not a sexual book.
Is there actual, literal smut on school library shelves? Almost certainly not.
Its not a problem of sexual content, but rather a cultural problem of extreme prudism and purity culture, coupled with religious extremism.
Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.
I realize you're referring to some universal abstract theoretical concept of obscenity that doesn't apply or exist. The one I describe does, and I think that makes it more useful here.
Here is the text of the relevant decision, in case anyone would like to discuss that. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/413/15
These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.
That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.
You as an individual are not required to do this if you don't want to, but if a movement wants to be successful then a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success.
To have empathy with a view is not condoning it
From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.
popular vote for president
nonpartisan redistricting of every state
ranked-choice-voting everywhere
limits on corporate money in politics
end the filibuster
strictly define supreme court size, terms, and appointment rules
age limits for congress
finish reconstruction
mess with texas
there is a lot of technical debt in this project
It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.
If you are personally not capable of attempting empathy, that's fair. As I said, it is frustrating and hard. But a political culture where nobody attempts empathy is what has allowed grifters playing up the resulting culture war to gain political power, and put themselves in a position to aim for a dictatorship. If everyone keeps doing the same old, same old, the totalitarian outcome is guaranteed.
I'll make this concrete. Right now, many in Trump's base are dissatisfied with the handling of the Epstein affair. As much as you may disagree with a random Republican, the odds are that your differences are not as important right now than winding up united against the idea of an authoritarian pedophile running the country. But if the only emotion that they get is anger about all of the areas where there is disagreement, they won't have anywhere to go but back to Trump.
Is that outcome really what you think is best?
A great salesperson I learned from would often say something like "don't fight the resistance, join the resistance" with the implication that one must see through the other party's eyes before you can have a chance to really affect them. One must make them feel heard and understood rather than fought against.
The actual enemy only has power because useful fools are willing to follow them. Treating those useful fools as enemies is a key part of the dynamic that grants the actual enemy power.
I am advocating learning how to talk with those useful fools, and assist them in finding paths away from being the power base for the actual enemy.
(sidenote: I said "tools", as in they're disposable means to an end. I'm not sure if you called them fools because you misread my comment or you switched to that term to try and placate me).
edit: actually, I think that my sidenote goes to the core of our disagreement. In your view, there are 77M battles to fight and if you manage to win just a few percent of those to your side, things can be stopped. In my view, 95% of those voters no longer matter. The party is now in power and has full control over all branches of government and media. There is no way they will relinquish power over such a minor technical detail as an election. They only need a few million jackboots to maintain the status quo, the rest is disposable.
> Um, what we used to call that in the Marines, was "intel". Not "empathy". And that designation of the information you outlined made us surprisingly effective at combating opponents.
This is the important part. Understanding "the root causes for the desires of your opponents" is not empathy. It's understanding something.
Empathy is a relating to anothers plight. If you only understand it then there is nothing to cause pause before using that understanding to your advantage. It's a core part manipulation and deception. If the only thing that happened with that understanding is seeing what you can get from it or that there is nothing you want there or have use for, then that doesn't really help bring two sides together.
Having the ability to relate to this understanding of another is when empathy happens. It's the empathy that gives one pause long enough to see there are other options that are not zero-sum.
> No need to have empathy for anyone who doesn't have empathy for others.
Disagree. Just because someone else can not relate -- now -- does not mean they can not later. I personally don't care for tit-for-tat games, thats simply a race to the bottom. Boundaries are the things missing here; one can have empathy for another that does not have it for them, that doesn't mean you also have to have a bleeding heart for them and let them walk all over you.
>Stop defending tyranny.
I think you miss GP's point. It's not that they support such book bans or the ideology that encourages that and other anti-democratic (small 'd') nastiness. Rather it's the old saw that 'you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (balsamic vinegar excepted).'
While there are many who are callous, cruel pieces of shit, there are more who live (without their knowledge or consent -- cf. rural broadcast media landscape, online bubbles, etc.) in an "information" environment that promotes such stuff as "godly" and "American" and "freedom", when that's not even close to the truth.
Which is clear from the book bans, the ridiculous "anchor babies" trope, the Democrats are all communists and on and on and on.
Yes, folks who actively foment this stuff and cynically (or even genuinely) fight to reduce liberty need to be resisted. Strongly and loudly.
But if you adopt those folks' "othering" tactics, you devalue everyone who doesn't specifically agree with you and everything you believe as evil and unredeemable, you remove a key opportunity for education, positive experience and persuasion.
Will that work for everyone? Absolutely not. But we don't need everyone, just the ones who are honest and fair-minded. And those can certainly be those who disagree with you.
If you exclude the radical reactionaries, bigots and cynical scum who seek to profit from promoting such ideas, the majority of all of us agree about much more than we disagree.
Perhaps that's something we all should ruminate on.
I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.
There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.
While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.
That being said...
It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.
So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.
People who are trying to harm my friends and family don't deserve any of my time and effort.
My biggest issue is not the lack of contact, it is the demonizing. Using blanket terms like "if you voted for trump your racist, homophobic, sexist, etc" when I just simply don't think that is a valid blanket statement and is really just a "feel good" statement for us to justify not hearing why they might have done something.
I do think that we are actively pushing them to be more extreme with blanket statements like this and it isn't not actually helping.
We can keep calling them names all we want but the fact is they are still voters that are enabling what we all have to deal with. Either we acknowledge that or we just keep repeating the same pattern we have been repeating since at least the 70's. A little bit of progress followed by a regression.
No, I don't. Not when the other side just openly uses lies (that they know to be lies) like "post-birth abortion" to argue their cause.
They're not discussing things in even a modicum of good faith. Saying that I have some moral imperative to engage with them as if they are is horseshit.
Absolutely. Although I'd point out that in many states that overwhelmingly voted for Trump, those on the "other side" (you know, our fellow Americans), often by large majorities, rejected abortion bans in their states after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
So it's not really as cut and dried as you make it out to be. Yes, there are absolutely those who despise the idea of the agency of women, and there are absolutely those who exploit that for monetary and political gain.
But a majority of Americans don't and even many of those who aren't on board could be persuaded to a live and let live position.
Politics is, after all, "the art of the possible." If we just demonize and "other" anyone who doesn't specifically agree with us, then nothing is possible -- only dysfunction and hate. That's not a world I want to live in.
And if you can’t afford to buy them, then what?
Public libraries exist to serve a public good and are not just quaint anachronistic equivalents of amazon.com
There is no genuine offense here, they don't even know what the books are about other than someone saying "its LGBT". It is just cynical manipulation and hate.
As I said, their identity is such that they need to avoid engaging with these works to maintain it.
That doesn't mean that their outrage isn't genuine.
also stats on book reading are notoriously cooked, look at how many books publishers claim the median American reads.
Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.
But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques
Joyce's penchant for scatology in no way diminishes his canon's suitability for engagement via critical theory. If anything, the poststructuralist interdisciplinary approach is as natural a bedfellow for the interpretation of Ulysses of Finnegan's Wake as one could hope for.
To demean Eoin Colfer is another interesting hill to die on (Darren Shan?). Benny and Omar is a fantastic debut novel and a great introduction to class and cultural distinctions in the Islamic world as viewed through the eyes of a surly western teenager. The Artemis Fowl debut as well is a perfectly inoffensive fresh IP with an interesting take on putting a cyberpunk spin on Irish Mythology - although marred somewhat by an appalling cinematic adaptation.
To then cite Brian Jacques as a high-point, ploughing a furrow as he does in the foothills of mid-brow K-12 readership, only suggests to me somebody completely unfamiliar with the canons of Terry Pratchett or Philip Pullman. In any case, you seem to be conflating Young Adult Fantasy with the rich and well populated canon of Young Adult Fiction.
Properly defining how we educate children is tough.
To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.
Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.
It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.
There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey -- get things that are far more innocent banned in a bid to sue and reverse all bans.
Those with any form of power in very large measure (money, fame, political power, influence) ought not to be trusted implicitly.
I believe the term got popular around the time Trump got his wall by saying he was going to make Mexico pay for it. Suddenly nobody questioned the sanity of building a wall anymore, the entire narrative was about whether or not he’d get Mexico to pay.
100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".
I don't really know who to vote for to stop stuff like this. No political party seems to be on the side of a principled defence of freedom of speech. Instead it's always about censoring your opponents and their ideas while you're in power.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl_revision_controvers...
In the case of the Dahl revisions, there is no official power being used to suppress individual preference. The publisher decided they wanted better sales for an older item, realized that things like anti-Semitism were unappealing to modern audiences, and created a new edition of their own property. Every part of that process was entirely voluntary and nobody’s purchased property is affected in any way – quite unlike the right-wing telling libraries to remove books with significant literary value which their patrons want to read.
These people are all dangerous in the extreme. It's just that the conservatives have unmasked themselves and displayed the extreme danger they represent to our ideals in the US in a far more open fashion than liberals.
- attempted illegal book bans
- suppression of right to protest and free speech on university campuses with lawfare
- US citizens being black bagged and deported to foreign concentration camps without due process and against court rulings
- deploying the army to the states unconstitutionally
- continued gerrymandering over the ruling of state supreme courts (Ohio)
Evidence for the Democratic party becoming more extreme:
- ... I'm struggling to think of an example, maybe you hold that prosecution of violent insurrectionists and their ring leader, the current president, was political extremism and authoritarian, but one would be so far detached from the reality-inhabiting community if so I don't know what to tell you.
The massive difference between government censorship and private cooperation censorship is unlikely to effect how people feel and react to it.
I would regularly see stories on Reddit where someone was gifted one of the more borderline Dahl novels and they binned it rather than giving it their child. I'm sure their internal metrics were painting a similar picture.
That's bad for business. It wasn't change for social justice. It was change or watch your IP die and everyone involved still wanted the money.
You realize that's significantly better, right? Like at least two orders of magnitude better?
In one case, the copyright holder of Roald Dahl's books decided to censor (incorrectly, I agree) their own books which they own the copyright to. That's a private organization doing a stupid thing, making their own content worse. A private organization censoring their own words. No elected officials or persons appointed by elected officials were involved.
In the other case, the government is unilaterally deciding to withhold information from the public. The government is censoring other people's words.
You realize how that's not even remotely similar, right? "The left" is way better on this one.
(Feel free to substitute the situation with Dr Seuss books if Dahl isn't a fit because that organization also publishes originals, but even if the originals were still available, derived works are also censored)
Surely the Dahl's family censoring their own books is on progressives, and it's equally as bad as Republicans trying to overthrow an election, send the troops after protesters, build concentration camps on national territory, ban books, revoke women's rights to abortion, revoke civil rights...
There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.
The people supporting this political wave tend to be extremely triumphalist in their personal religious zeal, unwilling to make compromises, and are iconoclastic and disrespectful to most outside their in-group.
Much like other iconoclasts and zealots, they rely on the pluralistic principle of toleration to force the paradox of tolerance to bend their way.
It's shame - pluralism is much more invigorating and no one forces lifestyles they disagree with onto dominionists.
Reading your comment, I feel like the word religion is misleading. You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology, despite it not having to do with a god, has been introduced into many layers of government and other institutions. All the things said here can be demonstrated for the religious right but also the non religious left. It’s less about religion in my opinions, and more about how politics is about winning by controlling institutions instead of supporting individual freedoms.
Fundamentally, there are a lot of Republican policies which attempt to force Christianity or at least Christian morals down our throats, whether it be forcing women to have children, or posting the ten commandments in schools and government buildings, banning pornography, or preventing gay marriage.
I'm rather curious what Democrat policies are equivalent in your mind that would make you try and "both sides" this. And I mean actual passed or proposed policies -- not just bullshit you see from Hollywood and other media.
At minimum I feel like cancel culture ought to count.
What would the application of your test to the Chinese Cultural Revolution look like? That's a genuine question - I really am curious what your reasoning would be.
No, this is incorrect.
The cold reality is that the adherents pushing Dominionism push an unsustainable ideology, such that they would rather throw the US into religious-based fascism rather than recognize that when people are free they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants.
Even then, the statement "they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants" seems to apply in equal measure. The core issue here is that both major groups have ideologies that seek to impose on others.
I'll also note that your response of "no these two things are obviously different and one is not okay while the other is" is shared by the opposition. When you agree with the behaviors being imposed and the justifications for doing so it becomes difficult to understand why anyone would object.
A bit reductionist, but critically, and because you asked for clarity, Dominionists want to force others to stop doing what they don't like even though it has no impact on their life.
Easily understood if you look at the standard of medical care for many miscarriages. They are abortions.
Today in the US, abortion is mostly illegal in many states, and people have died due to liability and uncertainty that would otherwise not have died should the standard of care been followed. This is before you consider the harassment of women after receiving care.
Yet, Dominionists want it banned because their theology changed with political winds conveniently in the 1970s and they now feel strongly, even more so than your feelings-based opinion that the factual claim of non correctness is unjustified despite clear justification, that life is absolutely defined as a zygote. This is before we consider that they are also equally unwilling to help children post-birth or to adopt sound economic policies to encourage household and family formation.
Tell me, what polity or power is forcing Dominionists to receive abortions unwillingly?
Or is it that they forget that their rights end at my nose?
---------------------------------------
> I'll also note that your response of "no these two things are obviously different and one is not okay while the other is" is shared by the opposition. When you agree with the behaviors being imposed and the justifications for doing so it becomes difficult to understand why anyone would object.
You know, I hear conservatives say this all the time, but me being an old school minarchist Libertarian, I just want people to leave each other alone.
I'll note that now several times in this discussion you implicitly assert that anyone contrary to Dominionism is "progressive" (strawman designation by rightwing propaganda for outgroup, or actual political group, hard to say), and that if a specific behavior is called out, well, there must be some behavior the other party feels should be imposed on them.
No one cares about someone worshiping at their house of worship and engaging in their rituals. Not a bit. But come in and force someone else to hold their particular social club in high regard in order to engage in commerce, education, or careers? That's what Dominionists want. And it's an egregious violation of everything the US stands for to everyone outside the Dominionist camp.
------
Now, please specify what progressive philosophy or policy planks that you think Dominionists find so unappealing that they'd be willing to sacrifice the freedoms so many US service members have died for, and how that is _imposed_ on said Dominionists?
Sort of like adding "Common Sense", "The Grapes of Wrath" or "The Pentagon Papers", etc.
The side effect of this is that some literary classics will enjoy a brief surge in popularity among young people.
Reasonable people wouldn't ask to get these book banned. What if people colluding with the publishers got them banned as part of a larger strategy?
I have no evidence to support that hypothesis; it's just very odd for literary classics to have been banned.
--------------------
Genesis 16:4 – “And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived…” (Abram and Hagar)
Genesis 29:23 – “…and he went in unto her.” (Jacob and Leah)
Genesis 30:4 – “…and Jacob went in unto her.” (Jacob and Bilhah)
Ruth 4:13 – “…and he went in unto her, and the LORD gave her conception…” (Boaz and Ruth)
Variants & related euphemisms
Genesis 38:16 – “…he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee…” (Judah and Tamar)
2 Samuel 11:4 – “And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her…” (David and Bathsheba)
Leviticus 18:6+ – “uncover nakedness” is repeated as a sexual euphemism.
Genesis 38:9 – “…when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground…” (Onan; explicit ejaculation reference).
Deemed by whom and in what encyclopedias? There are certainly religious groups who are historically recent offshoots of Western Christianity that viewed it that way in the 1950s, but the same groups do so today, nothing substantial has changed on that front since the 1950s. For the rest of Christianity, well, it was adopted as a Christian feast in the 4th century and has been treated as one since pretty consistently by most of Christianity. Certainly so in the largest branches of Christian in the US in the 1950s, which constituted between them the great majority of the population.
I can understand that Christmas has mutated into a family reunion, a time for gathering with loved ones etc, even Santa Claus, name and all, has turned into the figure that brings presents, but even if I can understand "You shall not murder" as a secular rule, the ten commandments as a whole are really hard to take as such no?
Perhaps "secular" is not the best description, but for anyone faithful to any of the major religions, these are going to be broadly shared principles, in addition to being the basis for most of our laws and social norms regarding individual behavior (don't kill, don't steal, etc.)
It's kind of like having "In God We Trust" printed on our currency. It's not a specific (i.e. Christian) God, at least that is the justification, and it's not seen as "respecting an establishment of religion" in the Constitutional sense.
> Secularity [...] is the state of being unrelated to, or neutral in regard to, religion.
Having a book available does not mean promoting it or establishing it as a religion.
https://oklahoma.gov/education/newsroom/2025/march/despite-c...
The Constitution only applies if there are people able and willing to enforce it.
This lets people at the top do whatever now since the eventual consequences (if any) are way out in the future and punitive to the gains they get now.
Its like being a bank robber with a Ferrari when the cops are stuck using horse-and-buggies.
My hope is that this situation wakes Americans up to the fact that laws were always this way. I'm hoping this breaks the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice. In reality the legal system of the USA is enforced at the whim of incredibly biased cops, judges, and politicians. I really think a day in a county courthouse should be a requirement for all American kids so they can see just how arbitrarily sentencing is applied or how whether someone ends up in trial at all can hinge on whether a judge agrees or disagrees there was probable cause, and the judge will do like 20 of these hearings one after another.
Not to mention the fact that any black American can tell you that there's two justice systems in the USA: the one for white people, and the one for everyone else. Hence why so many black kids can tell you about when their parents gave them "The Talk," and no, it's not the birds and bees one, it's the one about how your white friends can get up to mischief that you can't and there's nothing you can do about it so don't bother getting mad about it, just keep your head down and never backtalk the cops.
This is advice my parents gave me too. It's generally sound advice.
One of the goals of ACAB folks is to help people understand that this isn't true. Yes, police are humans, but no, you can't reason with them. You as an individual aren't going to overcome the might of the state's propagandizing and training of them to treat you like a potential threat to their life, or at best, a criminal.
Modern police training revolves heavily around hyper paranoia around how any interaction could lead to their sudden death. For whatever reason, the apparatus has chosen to create an army of armed, nervous, below-a-defined-level IQ thugs.
I personally believe all humans deserve a minimum of respect, but ACAB isn't just a statement of ideology, it's a warning: All bears are hungry, all cops are bastards. You wouldn't try to reason with a bear, you wouldn't make sudden movements around a bear, nor should you do that with a cop. With a cop you should simply say nothing other than wanting to maintain your 5th amendment right to remain silent, and then try to leave an interaction with them or wait for them to take you to jail. ACAB is a warning against attempting for any other outcome, because no other outcome is statistically probable enough to justify taking a risk to achieve.
The moment a cop engages with you, you are dealing with a potentially hungry bear.
I basically disagree with you on all fronts there. You essentially wage civil war. "You know, those guys that come when you are in a live threatening situation (fire, assault), those guys who are regulating your daily activity so that not too much people die by doing dangerous and stupid stuff (speed limit penalties, vehicle checks), those who tell your 'corporate slave master' that you also have rights (workers rights, minimal wage, cartel breakup), yeah they are aliens, enemies. They are merely wild animals not really humans at all, so you can treat them like shit. When they are friendly, don't trust them, don't trust you eyes. When they will fight back, now you see how they truly are."
Seriously how can you expect such a society to work? No wonder when you don't have pleasant police encounters. You are actively sabotaging your society. How can you expect it to stay peaceful with your behaviour?
So today I learned that the social struggles of the United States are not solely due to politicians and corruption. You guys have way bigger issues there. I can only hope that this is a minority opinion, otherwise civil war will be inevitable.
Cops treat Americans like wild animals. I'm not sure how this is news to someone in 2025, when we've had countless stories of police brutality come out and had breaking stories about e.g. the California county sheriff department gangs.
I'm warning people about this reality that cops are not what the copaganda would lead us to believe in elementary school. "Just don't resist," how about I send you a video of a cop gleefully pepper spraying not violent protesters sitting on the ground? Shooting into a house during a no knock raid on the wrong house and murdering a woman in her bed? Shooting a man with a rifle as he crawls towards them per their screamed contradictory orders? Shooting blindly into a residential neighborhood because an acorn fell on a squad car?
> You know, those guys that come when you are in a live threatening situation (fire, assault), those guys who are regulating your daily activity so that not too much people die by doing dangerous and stupid stuff (speed limit penalties, vehicle checks), those who tell your 'corporate slave master' that you also have rights (workers rights, minimal wage, cartel breakup),
Please, no. I checked your post history, you are a smart and informed individual, this gap in your knowledge could be resolved with a single afternoon of Wikipedia. Cops don't save people from fires, they arrest firemen that hurt their fragile egos. Cops don't enforce labor protections, they violently break up strikes. Cops don't save you from assault, they assault you for the crime of recording them, or they watch you get stabbed to death from the other side of a subway carriage door. They don't save you from active shooters, they prevent you from entering the school to rescue your child while they stand around terrified, waiting for the shooter to kill himself.
Treat them like shit, my foot. America's most well funded gang deserves my respect? The government already gives them every toy they ask for so they can unleash their depraved need for violence on unarmed people. The Austin Texas cops have a honest to God APC.
> Seriously how can you expect such a society to work?
I just don't want armed, well funded gangs running amok with no accountability, robbing people blind and beating them with no recourse. That's all. Too much to ask? Little bit of law and order and civility? Cops escalate every situation they arrive at.
Yes truly horrendous. I wonder how that could become that worse. It sounds like you got the repressive state police earlier than the commanding dictator.
> I'm not sure how this is news to someone in 2025.
I have of course heard about that. However for me the USA is a "far"-away country somewhat about the ocean(, that still affects me negatively).
As anything reported I expect this to be somewhat exaggerated. Surely not every policeman will be like that. I would expect them to be a very "vocal" (/active) minority.
I just don't see how your advice helps the victims here. When you encounter that gang, you basically have already lost? When you fight back won't you just bring the state against you, so that also the non-gang policeman are against you? And on the (rare?) chance that you meet a decent policeman, you will also turn him against you, which will make the current encounter unpleasant for both of you, might expose you to the "gang" and also serves as a justification for their barbaric behaviour.
> I checked your post history, you are a smart and informed individual
Thank you very much. :-)
> this gap in your knowledge
This "gap in my knowledge" is mostly me failing to see some idiotic US men with guns as the pinnacle of a policeman.
> I just don't want armed, well funded gangs running amok with no accountability, robbing people blind and beating them with no recourse. That's all. Too much to ask?
Yes and no. No, I'm with you on that wish; yes, because the majority of people live not in a first-world country. Sadly this also (now?) applies also to the US-citizens.
I seriously think your only chance at improving the situation is becoming a policeman. Ideally the judicative would hold them accountable, but this is messed up in your country as well. Being a policeman protects you from the fate and also lets you be a better civil servant.
The nicest cop is indistinguishable from the one leveraging his training to seem nice to get any info out of you he can use for probable cause. He gets you to joke around, talks about how he used to smoke weed in college, didn't you as well? You don't answer, he takes that as tacit admission (unless you verbally plead the 5th, silence is admissable), now he has predisposition to drug use, probable cause to search, oops he's found "shake" in your car (fuzzy leftover bits of weed, I've seen cops rip up a bit of carpet and call it shake first hand), now you're spending the weekend in jail because it's Friday and he'll fail to finish your paperwork before 5.
Your suggestion to try to fix it from the inside comes from a good place but a naive one, you say you aren't American so I'll share with you what happens to "good" American cops.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
Adrian blew the whistle on NYPD abuse again black Brooklynites and in return they raided his home, kidnapped him, and institutionalized him.
In the best case, they get fired:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/west-virginia-cop-fired...
Or look up Sean Gannon or Joe Crystal. Joe was fired for reporting an incident of police brutality. Sean for reporting when his partner raped someone.
I thought about filling this post with cases. I could probably find 50 more, I've a large collection over the years.
The point is, the system selects for bad cops. To us, a good cop reports abuse and doesn't do it. That good cop makes less arrests. A bad cop is abusive and lies. That's the opposite of what the system selects for. A good cop follows orders and meets their arrest quotas, a bad cop blows the whistle and empathizes with the people on their beat.
Because of this fact you are safe to assume every cop you encounter is a bad one.
We didn't arrive at abolition out of nowhere. The policing in America is completely rotten from top to bottom. It works in some other countries that have much better policies and regulations. We arrived at abolition because the only cops left are the ones that would wiggle their way around such regulations. It needs to be completely cleaned out in the USA.
Especially when you know how dangerous they can be, you shouldn't treat them as brutal animals. When you give them the opportunity to follow orders and still be seen as loyal to the people and the constitution, why shouldn't they take that opportunity?
Of-course you wouldn't say anything compromising, that would be really dumb. But why would you talk to a policeman about anything personal? You can have a conversation about politics, the economy global/nation/local, tax-policy, etc. . You can talk about their uniform, their new car, (because you are in HN) their encounters with software, the recent trend in UI. You can talk about the road quality, the new highway, where he thinks should be a new highway, what he thinks about public infrastructure, public transport (when that exists), the new park in town, the littering of the park in town. You can rant about the idiots going over the speed limit, the idiots parking everywhere, those modifying their cars, about issues with water, electricity, garbage disposal, regulatory overreach, those idiots in the EU, the idiots in near and far East, the idiots in Africa.
When a policeman jokes about talking drugs, I would expect you to deflect and tell him that taking drugs is forbidden, or how you held a lecture about the effects of drugs in school, how you always avoided the regions were it smells so bad. Nothing of that must be true.
I'm sure you can show me hundreds of cases, when there are millions of policeman it still wouldn't show that a majority of policeman is corrupt and commits crimes.
> Sean for reporting when his partner raped someone.
I can't really wrap my mind about that, because in my experience a superior that thinks a rape here and there is a good thing, still will kick subordinates out, to save his own reputation.
You are lucky, you must live in a nice country with normal laws and normal cops. I can't imagine any other reason why you'd just offer this up... Even an American with a thin blue line flag on their house would warn against talking politics with a cop. Check out the videos of the statsi troops going door to door in DC, fawning to locals about how they're there on trump's orders to "keep them safe." Armed to the teeth. You think it's a good idea to try to have a polite political conversation with men like that? You are blessed! For your own safety, never come to America, stay in peace and comfort elsewhere, I genuinely fear how your kind hearted openness will land you into awful trouble in the USA.
If you do come, enjoy a day sitting in a courtroom. Watch how the simplest, most meaningless conversation with a cop is read out by the court in a toneless transcript without any context and how a judge will grant probable cause on it, or consider it in sentencing to their detriment.
Bon homanie about the slow construction of a local freeway? In court that's lack of attachment and local loyalty, disaffected personality, antisocial tendencies.
Complaints about the EU? General disrespect of authority, likelihood to stir up trouble, lack of respect for law and order.
I guess it's time to trudge out the classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
Anything you say will be used against you.
> I'm sure you can show me hundreds of cases, when there are millions of policeman it still wouldn't show that a majority of policeman is corrupt and commits crimes.
The most likely outcome of an encounter with a bear is it runs away. Sometimes though, it's lost its discomfort around humans, is rabid, or just hungry enough to give it a shot. You should treat every bear like that bear. So too for the police. If the police want to be liked and treated with respect, they can become firemen instead. There's no song called "fuck the fire department."
> I can't really wrap my mind about that, because in my experience a superior that thinks a rape here and there is a good thing, still will kick subordinates out, to save his own reputation.
Untold such cases. It doesn't have to be logical to you, police departments in the USA reject candidates that are too smart.
In my country joking about incapability of some public organization is a common topic of jokes it doesn't reveals anything about you, you are just citing "public opinion" as being broadcasted by the state media. You can choose your equivalent in your country.
I thought it is republican accepted stance to rant about the libs not being able to do anything for the public? That's what I think about ranting about the state of the highway.
I thought some like to rant about the "trade restrictions" of the EU? That's what I had in mind.
Will that kind of thing bring you into trouble?
---
> statsi [sic!] troops
That's a good reference, because that's actually what I have in mind. It's not just my personal believe, it is about a lesson from a historic successful revolution.
The troops of the StaSi (ministry for state security) and the NVA (national peoples army) were also convinced that the demonstrators are all rapist, that do horrible things, that will riot and deserve to be shot. They were well prepared to repeat what happened in China just some weeks earlier. The marksmen were all well positioned, the police made violent noise and gestures. Everything was prepared for the next massacre. Do you know what prevented that? The demonstrators being peaceful, singing and praying. It was quite important that nobody shouts, nobody lets themself in anger kick against even a garbage bin.
Like you wrote the police has infinite resources compared to you. They are quite well prepared to you rioting. You know what they aren't prepared for? You treating them like a decent human.
That's why treating them as the brutal animals they often reveal themself as, won't actually help you. They expect you to, and this strengthens their opinions about you. You know what actually might help? Treating them like gentlemen.
> It doesn't have to be logical to you
It isn't about being smart, it's about the power of public opinion. When you say "it has been like this", you are actually weakening the public opinion. That's why that doesn't cause what you want it to.
---
> General disrespect of authority
This shouldn't have any effect on a judgement. Can you seriously be convicted for such nebulous crimes in the USA?
I never advocated against peaceful protest. You are describing the protest ideology I subscribe to, as described in the new version of The Anarchist Cookbook by the founders of Food Not Bombs: https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html
However:
https://tminstituteldf.org/police-and-protests-the-inequity-...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/20/nypd...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_police_violence_incide...
https://www.amnestyusa.org/aiusa-documents-police-violence-a...
Police in the USA beat peaceful protestors. Here's a picture of them pepper spraying students that are sitting down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UC_Davis_pepper_spray_incident...
"Treating police like they're human beings" gets you beat in the USA. I am an advocate for peaceful protest, I'm just warning people - you will probably get shot with tear gas or bean bags or plastic bullets if you participate, and you might lose an eye or die as a result. I won't lie to people about this reality. Americans should still resist this rising fascism, but they should go with both eyes open (behind safety goggles).
> This shouldn't have any effect on a judgement. Can you seriously be convicted for such nebulous crimes in the USA?
Yes, you can be arrested and convicted of "resisting arrest," this happens to people who lawfully film police all the time. They are given an unlawful order, question it on camera, are arrested, and then because the cops have no crime to accuse them of, accuse them of "resisting arrest," and the judge agrees during probable cause determination. It's easier to get the probable cause determination if you say anything about your political opinions, which the type of people who film cops often can't help themselves from doing. And yes, that includes "tendency to disrespect authority." I've personally witnessed this happen to protest observers, though I'm too tired to dig through court docs and find examples.
I understand that you don't want America to be this way, or are in disbelief perhaps that it's that bad, but that is my whole point for sharing these stories - you're not the only one surprised that it's this bad! It's this bad. Don't come to America and if you do, don't talk to cops!!!!
> the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice
That is NOT a myth. That is what it is supposed to be.
When you start to say "yeah, that's just how it always has been", that IS when radical ideologies start to rise.
How public opinion treats thinks that is how they tend to become. That is true with humans and that is true with systems. I heard it is quite less regulated to become a police man and there are quite a lot of black police mans* already. I heard you have a system where there is a jury that can overrule the judge. Why isn't there a massive influx of black/other-wise-suppressed people into the judicial or executive branch?
* yeah and woman of course
I strongly disagree.
> No I don't think that such a judicial system is normal.
I believe we have enough evidence now to indicate that it is in fact normal.
Americans believe their constitution is written about this - aggregation of power inevitably leading to tyranny, thus such aggregations must be prevented. The contradiction is believing a bureaucratized aggregation of power (the United States government or individual state governments) would function as an effective regulation. We have 250 years of evidence now that it does not. 250 years, and a significant portion of the time a large portion of the population was enslaved. Half the time, more than half the population couldn't even vote. In living memory, portions of the population were marched into concentration camps. Actually, that's happening again. 250 years and the largest per capita prison population.
The experiment was successful - now we know these systems don't work.
Time to trust the American instinct's true origins, in an enlightenment triggered by Western confrontation with indigenous American ideology, best described as "anarchism." Most values Americans falsely believe their institutions are upholding can be traced back to this root of American history, when colonists were intermingling with indigenous Americans.
> I strongly disagree.
> [proceeds to claim this is moral and just]
> aggregation of power inevitably leading to tyranny, thus such aggregations must be prevented
Yeah true, aggregation of power makes that easier, bureaucracy makes it still possible, in fact large bureaucracy makes it easier to oppress people by a majority who doesn't want oppression, because everyone is "just doing it's job". That's how Nazi Germany operated.
> We have 250 years of evidence
So you had 250 years to address this and are still complaining? /s
> In living memory, portions of the population were marched into concentration camps.
Why doesn't this lead to a social stigma against it and strong opposition against it? As an outsider it seams more like a large majority doesn't have this in memory at all.
Does the whole society has stockholm syndrome?
> The experiment was successful - now we know these systems don't work.
Now you know YOUR system doesn't work. The same you already knew when you rejected the idea that your state is just (Did you?). In fact the United States of America are not the only existing society.
> Americans falsely believe their institutions are upholding
So you think:
- I am not endorsing the current system.
- The current (judical) system is moral.
- The current system does not work and did not for 250 years.
- The core values (constitution) are against tyranny.
- The institutions are upholding the core values.
- The core values being uphold is wrong.
Normal doesn't mean good... Wage slavery and people killing themselves to make iphones is also normal.
Yeah we will disagree on that really much, but I only find that tangentially to my point here, except if you think that this ideas is only promoted by anarchists. When this attitude is only promoted by the rare anarchist, then I find that somewhat "okish". My concern is when that attitude becomes commonplace.
> Normal doesn't mean good.
A Norm is a subjective society-wide agreed moral stance. What you seam to mean is what I would expect to be called common.
That's basically my point treating it normal means endorsing it.
> I'm completely opposed to the current judicial system in the USA.
Yet this will also be the judicial system of next year. These things seem to stay constant even across civil wars and revolutions.
That's why I think you should think of it as THE judicial system. It will be also the judicative of your aspired state (unless you disagree that there needs to be a judicative), if you want it to act differently you need to expect it to act differently, while of course still not being surprised when it doesn't.
Somebody on HN recently claimed, that you can't treat your child as a "X" and expect it to not become "X". I think that applies also the state branches.
When you give up and say it has always been like this, then you endorse the current regime.
---
Oh, and I parsed
> Most values Americans falsely believe their institutions are upholding
as
(Most values Americans falsely believe) (their institutions are upholding)
Most values Americans (falsely believe) their institutions are upholding
That's a shame then, because that means we anarchists are correct that it is a lost cause and must be completely dismantled, a process which will probably result in short term suffering for some.
I'm not sure where belief comes into it. The fact is that the judicial system is wildly inconsistent and arbitrary in the USA. That Americans trust it and anarchists (and other leftists) don't just means many people are ignorant of reality. Pursuing further ignorance seems the wrong strategy. Ostrich, head in sand.
Expectations are nothing without action. Unless people acknowledge the reality that the judicial system is unsalvageable, they'll just accept it for what it is.
Or if you want to be a liberal democrat about it (in the actual meaning of those words, not the Americanized versions), you still need to be aware of the system's rot to cut it out. I don't mind if libs take a crack at fixing it but historically they reallllllly prefer not to.
No, you want to dismantle the judicial branch, because of their failures, but you also say you're an anarchist, so people hear you and think you are against every kind of judiciary and will oppose you.
Violence will never lead to a better regime. Public opinion does. There might be violence while public opinion reveals itself. Denacification didn't happened by convicting them. It happened by temporarily forcing others into power and THEN raising children, who think differently.
> you still need to be aware of the system's rot to cut it out
Yes. There is a difference between "The system sucks fundamentally and has for 250 years, so screw it" and "The system is just and should be protected, there just happened to be a lot of idiots in there for the merely 250 years. That's why need to bring back it's glory." The latter might improve things, the former will only cause self-enforcing violence.
For example, a writer could call a woman a "Jezebel" without any expository context, assuming that the reader would know what that meant.
Thus the bible should be in every high school and higher education library.
By the skin of their teeth, these wolves in sheep’s clothing’s days must be numbered, but if they keep on the straight and narrow, live by the sword, and go the extra mile, then lo and behold the first shall be last and every salt of the earth will be made a scapegoat from here to the ends of the earth!
after KJV, possibly with thanks to Bill (Shakespeare) also.
But I don't see any reason a library can't have various books from antiquity, for reference at least. Probably multiple editions or translations of each too.
Without the bible, people still have dictionaries if they don't understand words or references. Or they could use Google. I don't see why some books would be "too crucial" not to ban in a law banning books intended to protect kids.
If anything, I find it easier to defend a ban on religious books in (public) schools.
We no longer live in the middle of the 20th century. Based on your bandwagon logic, we should also require the Quran, Torah, Shruti, Smriti, The Book of Mormon and associated volumes, the apocrypha, Watchhouse volumes from JWs, NIV, NRSV-CE, The Good Book [0], Buddhist texts, Holy Piby.
No. We don't need that. This is a misapplication of Chesteron's Fence to the late 18th century US culture. We all survived the 1950s to now and culture has, dramatically and mostly for the better, evolved.
On the other hand, in different areas with different cultural traditions, each of those books should be required reading as they were central to their literary tradition. And, one assumes, are.
To deny that contemporary American culture has its roots in European culture (i.e. western culture) is to deny reality. And honestly, it mystifies me why so many seem to want to be ignorant of their own cultural roots.
Incorrect.
> To deny that contemporary American culture has its roots in European culture (i.e. western culture) is to deny [my] reality
FTFY, otherwise an ignorant and frankly naive take. There are dozens to hundreds of cultures that have influenced and rooted American culture, and you'd do kindly to remember that:
- The American Southwest is __heavily__ influenced by Spain and Mexican culture
- Louisiana is __heavily__ influenced by French and African culture
- Oklahoma, Alaska, Hawaii, the Dakotas, much of New England, and many others are __heavily__ influenced by Native American culture (Way down on the Chatahoochee, anyone?)
- The Black belt and most of cities are __heavily__ influenced and rooted in the reformation of Black culture after being ripped out of their homelands by slavery
- Blues, Rock, and Jazz all stem from African
- What you call "European" is probably English (so, wrong) or a confusing and tangled mess of different cultures that get grouped as "European/Western" and assumed to be one strand of "Christian" or another (I note you missed the Torah being listed, Catholic scripture being listed, etc.).
I strongly, strongly recommend that, if you are a citizen of the US, that you take pride in your own culture and learn where it _actually_ sources from -- of which you clearly care, given that you have chosen to make it _the_ supporting argument for why book bannings are okay and why an irrelevant text should be standard, non-optional reading in high school. The roots matter much less than what the culture currently is.
And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. – Genesis 19:33–36.
And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her, Come lie with me, my sister. And she answered him, Nay, my brother, do not force me; for no such thing ought to be done in Israel: do not thou this folly. And I, whither shall I cause my shame to go? and as for thee, thou shalt be as one of the fools in Israel. Now therefore, I pray thee, speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee. Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. – 2 Samuel 13:11–14
Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished. - Isaiah 13:16.
And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms. She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men. Then I saw that she was defiled, that they took both one way, And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity: And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them. So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister. Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth. - Ezekiel 23:11-21
But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. – Numbers 31:18
There does not seem to be a clear interpretation of this AFAIK. A lot of the other bits of Genesis have clear messages (e.g. the creation myth, the near sacrifice of Isaac, etc.) but not all necessarily. It might be that there were no other men and they were desperate for children.
Re-quoting:
> Since its passage in 2023, Florida schools have removed hundreds of books under House Bill 1069 (HB 1069). HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book.
For real. For Lot, was wondering about if there was supposed to be some message here.
Others noted. It was more anti-propaganda. Lot was part of adversaries of Israel so this was painting them in a bad light. Just funny how we are still reading this holy book, and here is really some very local, very time specific propaganda that we are still reading.
“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”
Rapin' is ok if she doesn't belong to someone else (theft) and you have $50. Also HIS penalty is that HE has to marry HER.
A Levite from the hill country of Ephraim goes to retrieve his concubine from her father’s house in Bethlehem.
On their return journey, they stop for the night in Gibeah, a Benjamite town.
The townsmen surround the house, demanding to “know” the man (sexual violence implied, similar to Genesis 19 with Lot).
The host refuses and offers his own virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine instead.
The mob abuses the concubine all night; she collapses at the doorway and dies by morning.
The Levite tells her to get up, sees she’s dead, then cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel to rally the tribes against Benjamin.
Also, anytime you are to the point of asking if the words from the bible are 'ok', you've already lost the argument with the person you are talking to. The bible is infallible, so of course it is okay. You cannot use it as evidence against their point. Ever. It is a waste of breath on your part.
Ezekiel 23:20: "There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
(Somehow I find the need to involve two different equines particularly off-putting.)
Worth adding: Making the Bible available to common folk was also hotly contested at the time. The Puritans lost that fight and I suspect they will eventually lose this one too.
"There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses."
The bible doesn't always use archaic language or euphemisms.
Also you have to have a very cartoonish view of people think we're like the Hulk and turn green the moment you come across a copy of Mein Kampf, denazification was a broad cultural project, not a binary thing about one text.
The primary struggle with that book is actually reading it because it's simply horrid. If you wanted to prevent Germans from turning to nationalism you'd probably have taken Thomas Mann's political writings off the shelves.
It should appear evident, and a pretty apolitical stance, but here we are.
Which laws did Democrats pass calling for books to be removed from schools? I admit I'm not always paying attention, but I don't remember any.
We already don't do this though, between state laws, federal laws, and the department of education. I am fine getting rid of the department of education though since it seems you're opposed to it too.
And it was 20 years ago, you'd have to look up the specific policies. The point is acting like this is the first time people have tried banning books from young children in school is ignorant of all recent history
This smells a lot like the old "both sides do bad stuff" argument, which often gets over applied to pretend there is no difference in magnitude of the egregiousness when two sides do similar bad stuff.
And even if we did it would still go to shit because "educators" is not an representative cross section of the population and their choices would be ideologically skewed and/or subject to industry circle jerks and fads.
But issuing organizational memos is not illegal, whereas passing explicit laws is banned by the Constitution. Probably because one is a really bad idea that chills free speech for the whole nation, while the other is just how any community organization operates.
Why do people associate these disparate things? Because they've been trained to...
Sadly, this tribalism is at the root of most of our civil disagreements these days.
And it was rightfully opposed by the majority and by folks who understand the tenability of our rights to the whims of authoritarians, as many, many, many of the actions of the current administration should be.
Come on man. These aren't the same thing. Not everything is the same as everything else because you can torture the principle to vaguely fit both.
Source? I was an adult alive 20 years ago, that wasn't a thing.
Although if that’s what you meant then I agree.
One of these things is happening and the other is not (no one is banning or endeavors to ban anyone from using the wrong pronouns).
I feel like there are a lot of conservatives who are unaware about what sex and gender actually are, and rather than looking for understanding they prefer to mock because they are lazy and chose the easy route rather than understanding other people.
Real rough to have a society when one side just wants to openly mock the other.
I mean, it's absurd. It feels like a psyop. Is this a targeted propaganda campaign?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta...
Republicans are seeking to ban thousands of books nationwide.
I am extremely against book banning, but the possibility of some time in history where they really needed to disallow access to a book seems at least _possible_.
There is less and less any reason for them to try to hide their true intentions and can just be more open with their blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, etc etc.
Side note: was quite surprised to see a reference to Cloud Atlas. While not surprised given the entire point of that book, it makes me wonder how much these people are actually reading these books and what that looks like.
Rather than big government via vague laws that allow random people to control everything in schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/north-dakota-books-obs...
Or do you actually have some delusion that Democrats have banned words and hate speech?
Yes, this is not as bad as a making the books illegal.
> HB 1069 required that school librarians remove materials from their collections that contain “sexual content,” regardless of the value of the book
Florida cannot ban private libraries from stocking books with sexual content. But librarians are government employees buying books and maintaining libraries with government money. The state can direct its employees what kinds of books to make available for the same reason any private entity can do so.
This might be different if libraries were neutral venues for authors to come present about their books. In that case you might have a case about viewpoint discrimination. But the first amendment can’t force the government to buy particular books and make them available to the public.
Not according to the constitution.
As the article you link to points out, "It is not always clear when the government is speaking for itself instead of unconstitutionally restricting others’ speech...The Supreme Court has not yet provided a clear standard for this type of case."
Also, "...even though government speech is not regulated by the Free Speech Clause, it is still subject to the Establishment Clause."
Where "sexual content" includes the mere existence of LGBTQ people at all.
From the statute, "As used in this subsection, the term “school property” means the grounds or facility of any kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, junior high school, or secondary school, whether public or nonpublic."
And sure, that's weird, but it's just how the First Amendment works.
The books stocked in government libraries is more like the government speech doctrine: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/government_speech. The government itself is allowed to have a viewpoint.
Government speech of course remains subject to other constitutional provisions. But the standards for these provisions are quite different. Your hypothetical raises the possibility of an Establishment Clause violation. But to prove that, it’s not enough to show that the government is discriminating as to view point. It has to be enough to amount to an establishment of religion.
And of course the Free Speech Clause covers basically any subject, while other constitutional provisions are much narrower. For example, a government-run book selling platform probably couldn’t exclude people from trading books on Brutalist architecture. But a school library could have such a policy.
... So, that would be approximately every great work of literature, every important religious text... I mean, what does this leave? This seems _incredibly_ broad; even when censorship of books for obscenity was routine, there was pretty much always a getout for "yeah, but it's Proper Serious Literature".
Like, what books are on the curriculum for English students in Florida? Just the Very Hungry Caterpillar?
> It also allowed parents or county residents to raise objections to material, which then would need to be removed within five days of the objection and remain unavailable until the book was formally reviewed.
Again, wtf? Surely this would allow anyone sufficiently motivated to just run a DOS attack.
On one hand we want kids to learn about consent, what 'normal sex' is like and all that, but simultaneously there is this idiotic push to prevent them from encountering any of it until they are 18. If we don't want kids to see bad porn, we need to ensure that there is lots of good porn available, and not just some boring sex ed bullshit. I mean actual benign everyday sex that kids can safely watch and learn from because otherwise they will never see it anywhere else (it's not like they regularly watch their parents or other people do it).
You have to be incredibly regressive to think 18 is somehow a good cutoff for this.
Concrete and overt examples being unable to imagine someone being sexually liberated, a woman, and a feminist all at the same time (they see sex as inherently demeaning to women), or seeing male sexual success on a "nice guy virgin" (unsuccessful through insufficient exploitation) or "man-slut womanizer" (success through excessive exploitation) spectrum. (Even the word "womanizer" bakes this assumption in, to be made a woman, woman-ized, is to be exploited?)
It appears in popular discourse around trans individuals (choosing to present as a woman means you must have a sexual fantasy about being exploited, we can't expose that idea to children). Around homosexuality (so which one of you is the exploitative one). And around polyamory (you must have a cuckold kink because nobody would let someone exploit their partner otherwise).
But this same dynamic also appears in a more subtle form in daily interactions in the culture and shuts down sexual topics or behavior. It's somewhat analogous to the situation of shushing a white toddler that points out the race of a non-white person because it's "rude" - you've made it apparent that you think non-whiteness is something inherently uncomfortable for a non-white person to have pointed out so you try to "spare" them this.
That said, there are definitely examples of books that have been put into school libraries that can be considered obscene, that you can't post screenshots of on Facebook or other social media platforms, or quote or otherwise read into a school board or city council meeting. Such as graphically depicting a minor student giving fellatio to a teacher. That are wholly inappropriate in any school setting.
And that isn't to restrict a parent who decides to allow their child access to this kind of material, if deemed mature enough to handle it. Only in that it doesn't belong in a public or school library. They simply aren't meant for children. Aside, I'm even open to an "adult" section of libraries that do offer mature content access/storage for adults, such as Playboy, which has a history of decent journalism.
The folks deciding to order the books and make them available are government employees.
The folks seeking to prevent those employees from doing that are also government employees.
AFAICT none of the parties are seeking to control what books private citizens procure themselves in their personal capacity.
If we accept that governments are going to run schools, some set of government employees is going to decide which books they buy, right?
epistasis•5mo ago
The people who fight for free speech in these cases, devoting time and money to it, and have real meaningful effect, self-describe in more ordinary ways.
mlinhares•5mo ago
gosub100•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
In what way do you consider this similar to laws enforced by courts and police and the full legal system?
DrillShopper•5mo ago
They are fighting to get different books (less Eurocentric, for the most part) into the curriculum, but they're not removing them from the library.
HK-NC•5mo ago
etchalon•5mo ago
prox•5mo ago
steveBK123•5mo ago
NickC25•5mo ago
mindslight•5mo ago
Government agents summarily executed Breonna Taylor in retaliation for Kenneth Walker exercising his natural right to night time home defense. This was the exact scenario the 2A enthusiasts always grandstand about - "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away", "From my cold, dead hands", etc. Any yet the response from the sheer majority of supposed 2A enthusiasts? Utter fucking silence, if not outright support for the jackboots.
epistasis•5mo ago
FireBeyond•5mo ago
mindslight•5mo ago
insane_dreamer•5mo ago
steveBK123•5mo ago
antonymoose•5mo ago
The government deciding standards for content it purchase is neither tyranny nor fascism. You are free to purchase as much controversial or sexually explicit material as you see fit.
amanaplanacanal•5mo ago
SilverElfin•5mo ago
This training means nothing. Critical pedagogy is just code for biasing the books in libraries towards the left. It isn’t even a hidden agenda - the ALA has been open about it. This “pedagogy” isn’t about what’s appropriate for kids. It’s about using a public institution and its funds to push one side’s ideas.
So sure, the state may be trying to prevent kids from being exposed to ideas they don't personally like. But it is to counter the librarians and their organizations, who are trying to only expose kids to ideas they personally like.
epistasis•5mo ago
Substituting one term for another and railing against the substituted term is a very weak argument.
SilverElfin•5mo ago
UmGuys•5mo ago
poplarsol•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
They are also available in schools, because the judge here enforced the US constitution.
The article is about Florida politicians trying to censor books in public schools, literal government censorship.
bigfishrunning•5mo ago
As a "Free Speech Absolutionist", I think as much material as possible should be in public libraries, including material that some people object to. I also think that school libraries should be curated to what is appropriate for the audience. The rub here is defining what is "appropriate". Silencing minority literature is bad. Also allowing my elementary school kids to check out "the turner diaries" is bad. There needs to be a balance.
alistairSH•5mo ago
TimorousBestie•5mo ago
https://www.christianpost.com/news/florida-school-board-vote...
epistasis•5mo ago
bigfishrunning•5mo ago
You can say whatever you want, that doesn't make it a good idea to stock a school with it.
epistasis•5mo ago
What does "absolutist" mean to you if you think that limits to what's in a library are a "good idea"?
Remember, I'm not talking about whether there should be limits or not, I'm asking about your self-description of "absolutist" and why absolutism still has fuzzy definitions of what is allowed or not.
bigfishrunning•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
Again: how is your belief in this compatible with being an "absolutist"?
I don't know how I can phrase this more clearly, yet you repeatedly doge the question.
bigfishrunning•5mo ago
ModernMech•5mo ago
Let me try to break the deadlock: epistasis is getting at the fact that you can't call yourself an "absolutist" on free speech because your position is not absolute, but qualified -- all speech is free except speech you find problematic, which shall be regulated. That's pretty much everyone's definition of free speech, not an absolutist take.
An absolutist would say there should be absolutely no content-based restrictions on what is in the library regardless of the ages of the patrons. Hustler, Anarchist Cookbook, whatever. They might justify that by saying "free speech is so important we can't place any limits on it. If you as a parent find the idea your child might access speech you find distasteful, it's up to you to prevent your child from seeing it, not the library or the government".
> without fear of repercussion
Let's say you write a book about being a kid and finding it uncomfortable to grow up who you are. You're free to write it, free to talk about it, free to to sell it. But then the government adds your book to a list of books they deem "pedophilic and a danger to children."
Do you think you would be free from repercussions from the government publishing your book on the harmful to kids list? Can free speech thrive in such an environment?
epistasis•5mo ago
What is "absolute" about this?
Do you want your own speech to be absolutely free of repercussions to you, be they government or not? Is that it? I really have trouble trying to put some sort of consistent framework in this, unless it's dividing the world into two classes of people: those who will not experience repercussions and those who will experience repercussions for their speech.
komali2•5mo ago
wnoise•5mo ago
A 7-year-old doesn't need to read about nearly any topic. Excluding any mention of all of those subjects from the school library leaves a nearly empty library.
For that heavy-handed of a response to be _legally mandated_ requires not just "no need", but some strong evidence of harm. Mentions of sex, oral or otherwise, doesn't actually have much evidence of harm. Certain treatments of it might -- but that's not what the law targets, nor can effectively target. It covers mere mentions or small bits of explicit language, even where that is necessary for the effect of the book. These can and do make parents profoundly uncomfortable, though, and that is worth taking into consideration.
I would think that the usual approach of professional librarians curating based on their own judgement, subject to some oversight from the local school boards to take into account these valid discomforts, but largely baseless fears would be a far better approach.
Levitz•5mo ago
Say someone in the police department takes the public stance, as a police officer, that black people are subhuman degenerates, is any pushback from the government a first amendment issue? Note this is an ideological stance and doesn't involve any of their duties.
EDIT: I should have done better than to comment this without the very relevant input from the article. Better late than never I guess:
>A second key component of this ruling is on whether or not regulating books in school libraries constituted “government speech.” Officials for the state argued that they were empowered to make decisions about the materials in those collections because it constituted “government speech” and thus, was not subject to the First Amendment.
>Judge Mendoza disagreed.
>“*A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all.* Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints,” he wrote. While parents have the right to object to “direct the upbringing and education of children,” the government cannot then “repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”
Emphasis mine. This is frankly even weirder to me. If the government made a blanket, content-based prohibition of any material with a black character, that wouldn't express any intentional government message at all? Really?
epistasis•5mo ago
poplarsol•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
A law of the sort that was struck down is clearly an unconstitutional restriction on speech.
Levitz•5mo ago
It seems more and more that the elephant in the room here is that schools are part of government, but they overwhelmingly lean the opposite side of the administration and they want to exercise their speech through their positions, but the government doesn't want to allow that.
Private individuals would of course enjoy first amendment protections on speech, but if you are government you don't get your speech restricted by government, that's just government. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
lesuorac•5mo ago
Also, "removing" books means the money was already spent. So it's just about whether we should waste money or not by tossing items in good condition.
bigfishrunning•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
Cerium•5mo ago
morkalork•5mo ago
anigbrowl•5mo ago
const_cast•5mo ago
n4r9•5mo ago
Come on, now.
Levitz•5mo ago
n4r9•5mo ago
perihelions•5mo ago
tremon•5mo ago
tstrimple•5mo ago
root_axis•5mo ago
xnx•5mo ago
gosub100•5mo ago
zeroonetwothree•5mo ago
Although I would apply it equally to the other political side as well. “Diversity” = everyone has to think like me, “inclusion” = exclude certain groups and so on
2OEH8eoCRo0•5mo ago
steveBK123•5mo ago
Is driving 100mph down the highway OK as long as you slow down right before the known speed trap? The system worked?
epistasis•5mo ago
zeroonetwothree•5mo ago
I for one do not support the law and I would consider myself 99% an absolutist.
anigbrowl•5mo ago
omnimus•5mo ago
UmGuys•5mo ago
Especially with the new Tr*mpian ethos of rules for thee, not for me.
whimsicalism•5mo ago
Sprocklem•5mo ago
I do, however, think it is also worth noting that there is value in critically discussing the ideologies espoused by "The Bell Curve" and "Mein Kampf", since both ideologies persist and continue to have influence on American politics today.
whimsicalism•5mo ago
Sprocklem•5mo ago
laurent_du•5mo ago
fknorangesite•5mo ago
komali2•5mo ago
Even the word "libertarian" doesn't mean "anarchist" in America as it does everywhere else, to refer to the most far-left you take take political ideology. Instead it refers to a deeply right-wing ideology obsessed with corporatocracy.
terminalshort•5mo ago
komali2•5mo ago
Libertarianism is an application of right-wing ideology subtracting the State. Opposition to the State may be a shared aspect of the ideologies, but for another example, just because Nazism advocated for nationalizing industries doesn't mean it has anything beyond that in common with Marxist Leninist Communism which advocates for the same.
terminalshort•5mo ago
Yes, that's the philosophy. All the rest of what you said is just listing different predictions of what will happen after you get rid of the state. Once you get rid of the state, there is no authority to enforce the "mutual aid or communism" so that isn't a political philosophy. It's just a prediction of what will people will do under their own free will in the absence of a compelling authority.
komali2•5mo ago
In reality Anarchism describes a political ideology that people have been writing about for a couple hundred years. There are a lot of disagreements, but generally all anarchic philosophies agree on a couple things: opposition to coercion, opposition to hierarchy, opposition to state, opposition to capitalism, promotion of mutual aid, promotion of community strength. The majority of anarchist philosophy resolved first around collectivist anarchism, and then around anarcho-communism.
That's why we don't call American libertarians "Anarchists," that's why we have a different word to describe them. Usually it works fine because American libertarians typically want nothing to do with anarchists, often for culture war reasons, but sometimes some American libertarians, such as those leaning "anarcho-capitalist," try to borrow anarchist terms, leading to confusion such as what we're having here.
Anarchist philosophy isn't a prediction, though sometimes anarchist philosophers make predictions. It's a collection of criticisms, values, strategies, and analyses, like any political philosophy.
terminalshort•5mo ago
But herein lies the problem. You can't have collectivism without this. Any collectivist system (which is all human societies to differing degrees) faces two fundamental problems of self interest. The free-rider problem and the problem of people who put in more than they get out leaving the collective. This requires coercion. Whether or not you define the authority applying that coercion a "state" is debatable, but that hardly seems like the important distinction here.
komali2•5mo ago
> You can't have collectivism without this. Any collectivist system (which is all human societies to differing degrees) faces two fundamental problems of self interest. The free-rider problem and the problem of people who put in more than they get out leaving the collective. This requires coercion.
I disagree, and so do many writers, and so does history.
First off, the "free rider" problem is a problem under capitalism, not anarchism. We have ample evidence of "free riders" being supported even in ancient societies with high scarcity, such as highly genetically deformed people who lived to a remarkably old age, which means despite their inability to labor, someone was feeding them. Same for people who had traumatic injuries. The idea of a "free rider" is only a problem in a society that believes everyone needs to justify their existence through labor, such as capitalism. Mutualist anarchist societies don't have this problem. Especially a modern day one, now that we've achieved post-scarcity (all scarcity today is artificially enforced).
Second, no human coercion is necessary to ensure collective bounty. Humans are intrinsically motivated to create bounty, if nothing else by hunger. And, being social creatures, we are also intrinsically motivated towards collectivism - ample anthropological evidence for this throughout every continent humans have lived on.
My proposition to you is that capitalist society is motivated by self-preservation to convince you that what I'm telling you is silly and impossible. The system has glaring faults that we all feel, so it can only continue if it can convince everyone that it's The Only Way.
A great resource that covers these historical facts in detail is Graeber's "The Dawn of Everything." If that's too lengthy, the founder of Food Not Bombs wrote a new version of The Anarchist Cookbook that's available as a free PDF https://www.foodnotbombs.net/anarchist_cookbook.html . Ignore the recipes, they're genuinely terrible. The first couple chapters are a good short introduction to the history of anarchy, and as I recall include ancient examples.
zeroonetwothree•5mo ago
komali2•5mo ago
It was revived only recently with "anarchist capitalism" which is of course a contradiction.
If we were having this conversation in the 1820s before such abominations were dreamed this distinction would be worth making. Nowadays, when people want to talk about "social anarchism," they say, "anarchism," and when they want to say "individualist anarchism," which as been identified for the right wing ideology it is, they say "American libertarianism."
jltsiren•5mo ago
terminalshort•5mo ago
But this is, of course, only if you take their claims that they want to abolish the state seriously, which I don't on either side. In reality these people do nothing but describe the state that they want when asked to go into detail. The whole thing is, of course, ridiculous because we are a social animal that when left to our own devices, forms states. The concept of a stateless human society makes about as much sense as cows forming a republic.
komali2•5mo ago
Property can be owned in common. Then it's not private property whose ownership rights are enforced by a State. We have that here in Taiwan with indigenous people and it causes issues with the bureaucracy all the time, which is desperate for a name to put down as landowner. Many societies throughout history have common ownership aka no private property.
Before you ridicule the idea of anarchy perhaps take a look at history - humans as a social animal tend to form societies, not states.
graemep•5mo ago
In the UK and I understand libertarianism to mean an extreme free market position, usually in the belief that markets will fix problems unregulated. I think the UK definition is less extreme than the US one but on similar lines.
amanaplanacanal•5mo ago
graemep•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
I don't agree with calling anarchy the most far-left ideology, just as I don't agree with calling Marxism the most far-left ideology, because this isn't a one-dimensional axis. The meaning of words is continuously shifting in language, especially with something as slippery as political ideologies, which themselves are continually changing. We must make the words the tools of our communication, instead of our communication the tool of the words.
terminalshort•5mo ago
It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free. It seems to me like compelled speech to require the government to stock certain books. As this pertains to schools, I don't understand how the government doesn't have the same right to control the curriculum as it does in any other case. e.g. it is not a violation of a teacher's right to free speech to order them not to teach flat earth theory in public schools because that teacher is an employee and not on their own time. Same as my employer can restrict my speech while on the job without violating my rights.
epistasis•5mo ago
Similarly, you are also wrong about this compelling the government to stock certain books, that's not on the table at all.
terminalshort•5mo ago
You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question, which in this case is the state whose budget and laws are controlled by the legislature.
nozzlegear•5mo ago
It's the school librarian, who purchases books from their vendor lists. Depending on the school, the school board might vote to put a selection policy in place for the librarian. A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
terminalshort•5mo ago
> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
dfxm12•5mo ago
Well isn't that exactly what FL did?
No.
terminalshort•5mo ago
if (allowed_books.contains(book) { library.add(book) }
It's the same. (Well, not quite. Yours is much more restrictive.)
didibus•5mo ago
Simply recommending or mandating that a particular set of books should be made available is very different, that's in line with the role they should play here, which is to make sure that a good selection of books for pedagogy is made available to students.
What's funny is, the "banned books" might have not even been available in any of the libraries to begin with. That shows the distinction.
And finally, even the set of books they make available, it should reasonably look like an effort was made to select them based on an objective criteria of offering the best education. If it starts to feel like it wasn't done so in good faith, it's leaning on propaganda. The librarian, school board, governor, this applies to all of them, it's not their own personal selection of what they want the kids to learn. It's a set of books of their good faith effort at objectively offering the material that benefits the kids education best.
nozzlegear•5mo ago
I'm not saying I agree with it, just listing all of the methods of selection (that I'm aware of) for accuracy. Personally I prefer the school board approach, so that the community can assert local control over the process rather than politicians trying to score points with national parties.
ModernMech•5mo ago
What's being done here is a top-down effort by certain political forces to insert themselves into this community-lead governance. They don't want the community to set local standards; they would rather those standards be dictated by the governor, or by some party-approved commission appointed by him.
> Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question
Agreed, but Republicans think this person should be the governor of the state, and Democrats think this person should be someone local from the community. Ironically, it's Republicans who are styled as the party of small government.
terminalshort•5mo ago
ModernMech•5mo ago
A small branch library making autonomous choices about what books to store behind its walls with backing of the local community doesn't stand to chill speech across the state or nation, so the first amendment protection to free speech isn't really implicated. If some podunk town doesn't want to put books about trans kids on the shelves, that's not going to chill speech about trans people across the state or nation.
But when the governor sets policy that no libraries shall have books about trans people, then that's going to chill speech and the first amendment is implicated. Therefore it's unconstitutional, despite flowing from the same derived power source. That's my view anyway, I'm not a lawyer.
epistasis•5mo ago
Community norms are not laws, and are much more flexible, have no government enforcement mechanisms, and don't have the weight of the legal system behind them.
These are very different things when it comes to freedom of speech!
Levitz•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
mindslight•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
There is a very very good answer here: the constitution.
You are not even responding to the constitutionality claim here, and have refused to even acknowledge the core aspect of this entire case! It seems a bit rude to say "you don't have an answer" when you ignore the point again and again.
The government can set laws, curriculum, etc. But it must be in accordance with the constitution.
It seems that in the last year or so, many people think that the government can do whatever it wants, that there's no constitution, that there's no limits on government power. This is fundamentally anti-American, and against everything that the entire country was founded on.
> You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library.
I'm not dancing around that fact at all. It's a government employee, the school librarian. Guess what, government employees are also subject to restrictions in how they act, as set by the constitution and other laws. When the "other laws" conflict with the constitution, like the one that's the subject of this post, the constitution wins.
Budgetary power is not the ultimate law of the land, it's the constitution. This also seems to have been forgotten in the past year.
nozzlegear•5mo ago
The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't kosher is that taken to its extreme, the government could ban all books that aren't the King James Bible without explicitly adopting a pro-King James Bible policy. And if that's the only kind of book they stock in the library, then children who want to check out books are going to be reading literature with a certain kind of slant to it.
Replace the King James Bible with whatever you personally wouldn't want kids to be reading, e.g. the Quran or the Kama Sutra.
terminalshort•5mo ago
But there isn't any other choice except to not have school libraries at all. The library is owned by the government and the books are paid for by government funds. Somebody has to decide what goes in the library and what doesn't. Who would that be other than the government?
mindslight•5mo ago
nozzlegear•5mo ago
So to answer your question: the government can stock the libraries, or the school board can stock them, or the librarian can stock them. The courts have even said they can select books based on age-appropriateness, accuracy and educational value. But if anyone selecting books is making a judgement call about which books go in the libraries based on the ideas/viewpoints within the books, it's a violation of the students' First Amendment rights.
SoftTalker•5mo ago
My high school library didn't offer much popular paperback fiction, but I could have found that at the county public library, or at any bookstore or most general retail stores.
School libraries have limited space, funds, and are constantly making decisions about what is age-appropriate and of educational value.
benmmurphy•5mo ago
SilverElfin•5mo ago
nobody9999•5mo ago
What conspiracy are you talking about? Who are the members of this "conspiracy"?
>even though this has not been legislated, or commanded by the executive and is probably in contradiction with what the current executive wants it should not be allowed either.
Huh? IIUC, Florida House Bill 1069 (you know, the law we're discussing) was passed by the Florida Legislature and signed intolaw by the Governor of Florida.
So yes, it was "legislated" and approved by the current executive in 2023.
didibus•5mo ago
Those libraries are to the people and paid by the people.
Similarly, the school curriculum is not to be controlled by the government, public schools are also to the people and paid by the people.
In both cases, the criteria for school curriculum and the books to stock are pedagogy. What will best prepare and educate students so they can innovate, thrive and improve our society later in life.
Attempts at seizing control of the school curriculum or the material made available to students for their pedagogy (like books they can research) by the government in a way that appears to be for some political or value setting agenda and not the criteria of offering the best pedagogy for students feels like propaganda and information control for political gain.
const_cast•5mo ago
Private libraries banning books is perfectly fine and theyre allowed to do that. Public libraries aren't private.
slibhb•5mo ago
An example of this is FIRE -- which was massively criticized by progressives for suing colleges over anti-conservative speech codes, DEI statements, etc. But FIRE has behavred in a princicpled manner and has sued conservatives and the Trump administration over civil liberties violations.
kstrauser•5mo ago
I genuinely laughed out loud here. As a Mastodon operator, when I see another new instance describe itself as “free speech absolutists”, it means they’re about to fill up with 2 things: Nazis (as in, literally swastikas and “Jews are oppressing me!” memes) and drawings of Japanese 8 year olds in lingerie.
Every. Single. Time.
zeroonetwothree•5mo ago
kstrauser•5mo ago
I want to keep my hangouts pleasant, and sometimes that means looking at the unpleasant parts so that you can put a wall between them and myself and my friends.
QuadmasterXLII•5mo ago
Oh and musk of course but I think that's ketamine poisoning, not long-planned betrayal.
zeroonetwothree•5mo ago
zeroonetwothree•5mo ago
epistasis•5mo ago
If this were true, where were they on this clear case of government censorship?
Check out this thread, and the single person admitting to be an "absolutist" seems to have no opposition to this law at all, and merely wants to defend limits to speech.
Free speech "absolutists" are the least principled defenders of free speech, but they may have extremely right-wing principles they are trying to defend. Others here have given examples of high-profile "absolutists" but I'm talking about those I encounter online mostly, such as in this thread.
slibhb•5mo ago
UncleMeat•5mo ago
ModernMech•5mo ago
SilverElfin•5mo ago
Let’s not pretend the default situation is uncensored. Librarians are mostly politically skewed to the left, as is their organization (ALA). Walk into libraries in most cities and you’ll find books on the main shelves pushing political ideas from one side, associated with movements like DEI, BLM, LGBTQ, etc. But you won’t find the other side on those shelves.
And that’s the issue. Public money is being used by activist librarians, who practice “critical librarianship”, to basically censor the other side. Changes to public libraries are intended to correct that bias.
dogleash•5mo ago
It's attitudes like yours that discourage me from wanting to show up for the cause anymore.
epistasis•5mo ago
If you are motivated towards free speech action because of banned books don't you think I would suppprt you in that?! That's the entire thrust of my comment, I think people fighting for free speech are great, and based on the information you provided you seem to be doing that!
dogleash•5mo ago
Of course not and I'll explain why:
Lefties regularly distance themselves from me when I accidentally let my anti-authoritarian positions code as libertarian to them.
Your parent post is a shallow dismissal of some free speech support as opportunistic with a weak-ass signal to identify the group. The same exact behavior I'm used to seeing from ostensibly likeminded individuals that ice me out for non-conformity. (I'll concede you don't name a political party, but in a two party system it's not a secret and I was just saying the implied part out loud.)
So no, I don't think the person who came into the comments to shadowbox people who aren't supporting the cause properly would support me.
UmGuys•5mo ago
People are very volatile and polarized because of their social media's marketing. GOP marketing is insane. They're marketed as fiscally responsible, good for the economy, conservative, pro free speech, pro liberty, capitalist, and recently anti-war. And somehow people believe that despite reality. I can't grasp how anyone could ever support someone so awful as Trump. The man is a pathetic spoiled rotten bully in clown face who can barely string together a coherent sentence. Not to mention all the (sex) crime.