This week on May 8th, my favorite president, Harry Truman, would have been 140 years old. I have often wondered what Truman would have to say about the situation we find themselves in as democracy seems to be precariously hanging in the balance. I would love to see him in action today. No one could say he didn’t have many challenges during his presidency, but I don’t think he could have foreseen the ridiculous political antics of 2024 when he said, “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

Restriction of free thought and free speech is dangerous to a democracy. Now more than ever we must teach our youngest generations about their First Amendment rights. Now is not the time to ban books and reading materials. It’s imperative that we teach them to express their own opinions while respecting the opinions of others. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, if we don’t believe in freedom of speech for all, then we don’t believe in it at all.

There is a much larger specter to challenging books or banning them than meets the eye. It encourages the suppression of free thought and sharing of ideas as writers make book revisions to avoid what they fear might be considered controversy. Even publishers could make a decision to alter books or to shelve a book project for economic reasons if they fear it will be challenged. Libraries or bookstores could refuse to carry books that might be considered controversial and fear differing opinions. The whole idea of critical thinking is that we are introduced to various ideas of thought that differ from our own. How could we ever advance or grow as a society if we all read and thought the same thing? How would ideas be sparked?

The fear of the penalties of censorship is more detrimental to a society than the actual suppression attempt because when a book is banned, it can be found somewhere. In fact, a banned book often becomes a sought after read. The transgression lies in all the unpublished books, unexpressed philosophies and viewpoints by silenced authors and writers that will never see the light of day. It’s the books that will never be written and never read due to the fear of censorship that we should be concerned about now as our future generations will pay the price for this suppression. In a free society, no one should be allowed to tell Americans what they can and cannot read or write.

The late comedian George Carlin used to say, “Governments don’t want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.” The movement to suppress Freedom of Information laws and various other rights is nothing more than leaders wanting to keep a thumb on an unknowing and benign constituency.

Aside from travel, reading has long been respected as one of the most powerful vehicles to open minds to other ways of living and theories of thought. I’ve talked with many veterans who have been exposed to different ways of life through their military travel and most have said that they garnered a wisdom about people, countries, politics and intellectual ideas that they never would have experienced staying in their small town. They also earned an enhanced appreciation for America, “the Land of the Free”, through their travels. Being exposed to different ideas than what we may have grown up learning or believing doesn’t mean that we will suddenly embrace cultural or religious views that may be considered subversive in our small home towns. It does mean that perhaps we can use that knowledge to help our society. There’s something to be said for Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” The responsibility of parents is to guide their children. Creating laws that determine what a child or anyone reads infringes on the rights of parents to guide and rear their own children. Banning books is an attempt to control intellectual freedom. Parents should have that control and influence with their children. As for adults, I think we are capable of selecting our own reading material.

A wise librarian said to me once that if parents want to give their children a leg up in life they need to ensure they have an understanding of the world. In order to have an understanding of the world, children must be introduced to many books about various cultures and experiences that are different from their own. That is the goal and purpose of education and learning. It fosters a vast vocabulary and creates writers and thinkers, and very interesting and intelligent people. Reading is the one activity that influences all other learning and knowledge acquisition.

It’s clear that transparency, information and education have become political weapons in the United States. The current political climate is sending a distinct message that a book can be more dangerous than a loaded gun.

There’s a lot of political speech and projection with the word, “indoctrination” being bandied about to the public. Indoctrination is to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group. Those seeking to ban ideas, concepts and books are those wanting to indoctrinate citizens to their particular points of view. That’s exactly what is happening when books are banned and authors’ ideas are suppressed. People will be forced to accept the mindset and opinions of those in power.

Slowly, the attempts to erase the American dream and our freedoms are being taken away a little at a time. The sad thing is most of the time, people don’t care what is going on until it affects them personally. I believe that transparency, freedom of speech, public schools, libraries, and books are all worth fighting to maintain. They are being attacked daily and they all have one thing in common; they encourage people to think and speak for themselves.

My hope is the next generation of young people will see massive changes in our society and will look back in disbelief at the current climate of attempting to bully and squash free thinking because they have learned better.

In the mean time, let us protect our freadoms, our librarians and libraries, because equality reigns with them. Let’s fight to keep information free to everyone who enters a library and keep books in the hands of anyone who wants to read them. And come November, let us vote judiciously for principles. As Americans, we know from our own country’s history that freedom is something to fight for and we do that by strengthening it, not suppressing it.

Pam Lowe is the editor of the Clay County Courier. Readers may contact Pam at plowe@cherryroad. com