For those of you who are unaware, I recently got into a huge blog-fight with a friend of mine on her blog. Her post, entitled “Ban Books…..yeah….fu** you!!!” was essentially an expletive-laced, rant about how backwards and dangerous Sarah Palin is for ‘banning’ books from her local library. She concludes, in a moment of exasperation, “What century is this crazy as* bi*ch living in?”
Being the good friend that I am, I thought some illumination was necessary. I proceeded to explain to her that:
What’s wrong with certain books being banned by library staff anyway? Surely even YOU would ban certain books if you were a librarian… for example, I doubt you would get a hustler subscription for your local library…
Librarians MAKE EDITORIAL SELECTIONS TO THEIR BOOK CATALOG ALL THE TIME. That’s why you have any given book in your library is BECAUSE of a conscious choice to PUT IT THERE.
This obviously was not convincing enough for her as she proceeded to say:
What the hell do you mean? Please tell me which power enumerated in the Constitution of the US or in Alaska’s laws give that idiot that right to ban books… I’d love to see Sarah Palin even begin to comprehend a casebook, lmao!!! She can’t handle children’s books in the local library, without getting offended. What a simple minded fool.
Banning books, wanting to teach a non science like creationism in schools, knowing nothing about how the constitution or goverment works, time and time again showing that she thinks she can be the arbiter of values for people who have the right to choose those things for themselves, I consider that i huge fuc**ng issue.
But I guess that’s why I’m a libertarian Joel, I believe in freedom, and people’s right to choose for themselves, and not have some half wit poorly educated blow hard tell me what I can or can’t do.
I’m sure you are getting the picture here; my logic didn’t make a dent. But, being the good friend I am, I concluded I just hadn’t explained it clearly enough:
libraries are not protected by the first amendment you IDOT. People are. Go ahead… explain to me how the constitution prohibits taxpayers from voicing their opinions about how their tax dollars are spent… LIBRARIES do not have first amendment rights!!!!!
Freedom of expression isn’t at issue here. Local communities can decide what they want in their library and what they DON’T want. Why is Palin unable to voice her opinion about what is in her community’s libraries??? Why should HER OPINION about this be stifled? You want to talk about stifling… let’s talk about the assumption SHE CAN’T GIVE HER INPUT. This is Orwellian doublespeak here.
[T]his whole thing is basically an argument that non-religious people are better-suited to decide what we should be learning at our local library than religious people. This is al basically just an attack on Christians and christian beliefs…
This was about as much as I could take. After a few more exchanges of (mostly) personal attacks, I felt my time would be better spent on other things).