Banned Books Week

Happy Banned Books Week! This week is the time when we celebrate the freedom to read what we like, a right that we have embedded in our Bill of Rights.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Course, that’s Congress. People try to ban books all the time on the local level, challenging books because of profanity, sexual content, racism, rape, incest, violence against women/Jews/African Americans, etc. Their biggest defense is, “think of the children!” And the funny thing about censorship is that we all think it’s bad until something comes up to offend us.

There are disturbing and offensive books that I see and I wonder how they got published, or why. Books I’d never want to read, and I sometimes do wonder how in the world someone allowed this to go through. There are some sick and twisted people out there.

Here is where Neil Gaiman comes to the rescue with his insightful and brilliant blog post, “Why defend the freedom of icky speech?”

If you accept — and I do — that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don’t say or like or want said.

The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don’t. This is how the Law is made.

What strikes me as brilliant about this post is it reminded me that if we allowed censorship, we could never be sure if there’s someone in a room somewhere who mirrors our sensibilities and decides what should and should not be printed. Which means once you allow censorship of some things, eventually someone’s going to be offended and come for something you like – and we’re a blog for writers, people. They could come for something you create.

One of the most influential professors to me at UNC-Chapel Hill was Dr. Reid Barbour. He illuminated John Milton’s writing for me, and one of the most powerful things I read in his class was Aeropagitica, Milton’s pamphlet against censorship. Considering this was written at the height of the English Civil War, Milton essentially risked his own life by defying the censorship laws. It’s cleverly written with much praise toward Parliament before he gets down to it, but then comes the most amazing defense of the written word I’ve seen before or since.

He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis’d & unbreath’d, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary. That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure; her whitenesse is but an excrementall whitenesse;

Essentially Milton is saying that we can’t know good untill we know evil. You are weak and ignorant – not innocent and pure – if you refuse to go learn what evil is against you. The person who faces evil/temptation/or a naughty book and comes away unscathed is better than someone who hides and denies that the evil exists at all. I’m not even a Christian but I find this argument very powerful. I tend to look at it this way: if an athlete shines at practice, do you call her a star if she’s never competed? Of course not. You’re not a star until you face the true challenge, which consist of another team who wants to win as much as you do, the cheers or jeers from fans, and your own fears. Trial by fire is how anyone gets respect in this world (for better or worse, do we remember the peacetime leaders or the wartime leaders?) – why should books be any different?

I am not as eloquent as Milton or Gaiman, but my own personal argument against censorship is this: censorship is the notion that the establishment cannot trust us to be rational human beings. While quite objectionable, Big Brother telling me what I should not read is not what my core argument against censorship is; what really offends me is that some people don’t trust me to read a book and not come away a delinquent. Even more offensive is the thought that them denying my daughter a book in class will impart on her better, more pure values than our raising her can.

To me, it’s about trust, and the lack of it. Kids are smarter than we think; they can handle the occasional disturbing thing, the occasional swear word, the very concept that the world is not sunshine and butterflies and there are bad people around. Using Milton’s argument, books can open my daughter’s eyes to the world, and help her decide how to act and how not to act. I’d much rather the Pink Tornado read books with questionable content so we can explain that content to her and help her come out the other side a smarter, better person, than never read them at all.

In other words, I trust her.

Learn more about Banned Books Week