[Publib] Assault on Reason?

[James Casey]

Rational arguments may not work very well when the entire motive of one side is to promote irrationality.  Reducing the discourse and changing the subject may be the best tactic libraries can employ when confronted by such an assault by well organized minority groups who purport to represent the entire community.

Don't forget that there is an election campaign underway!   Mobilizing "values" voters and stoking the fire of divisive "culture wars" through preposterous accusations about ALA and the manufacturing of phony "liberal conspiracies" is well underway around the country.   There are millions of voters and at least a dozen states where any objective assessment of the dire situation into which our country has fallen during the past few years would be totally cancelled out by opposition to such "terrible" dangers as sex education in the schools or books dealing with "indecent subjects" allowed in our schools and libraries.   The tide of anti-intellectualism during the past decades has delivered some massive voting blocs into ideological fixation on culture wars issues to the exclusion of any objective assessment of the larger reality.

Now, you might say that it is I who am exaggerating the sinister intent and power of organizations like those represented by Mr. Kleinman.   If so, just check the election results for 2000, 2002, and 2004 and consider the narrow margins by which the presidency and other offices have been won in "battleground" states like Florida, Ohio and (yes) Missouri.

James B. Casey --- My own views
Director of Oak Lawn Public Library
ALA Council Member

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Hubert Thompson
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 12:06 PM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Publib] re Censorship

I really, really, REALLY disagree with the idea that choosing not to purchase an item in the first place is the same thing as throwing it away once it's in a library's collection. In that sense, and contra several of the articles cited here recently, I don't agree that librarians censor.

Also, I don't think that anyone has the right to propose (or require, or insist) that other people be denied access to information or any cultural production. If you find something objectionable, DON'T READ OR VIEW IT. You have no right to tell me or anyone else that I can't.

Not to mention, of course, that pornography harms no one.

By the way, does anyone else think it's strange that this Dan Kleinman person (in the "Metrovoice" article) thinks that eleven year olds are teens? He says it twice.

Mr. Hubert J. Thompson
Chicago, Illinois
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