I really, really thought we were past the point of banning books, but it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong, and it probably won’t be the last. If a handfull of wackos in Howell, MI get their way, the school board will be forced to ban certain books, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (which is the only book on the list that I’ve personally read). Ok, so the whole Jew thing was a teaser, but it’s really not that far off the mark, considering Howell is generally considered the KKK capital of Michigan.

The issue has split the community.

“If you feel that strongly about it put your kids in private school,” said Susan Kley, a member of Friends of Howell Public Schools.

Right. And continue to be forced to subsidize the education of the children of those who’ve ostracized you? It’s fucking bullshit, plain and simple. And it doesn’t matter which side of the fence you’re on – you should never have to financially support something you vehemently oppose.

So I’ll insert the standard libertarian fare: get the government out of the business of baby-sitting brainwashing edukashun, and this problem ceases to exist! But once you have a free* and compulsory system of public education, everyone wants a little piece of the coercive power that determines what is and what is not taught. The whole issue of what is and is not taught raises myriad first amendment and free association questions – which cannot be resolved. These includes banning (or the desire to ban) fictional books, like Slaughterhouse Five (which is an excellent read, FWIW) and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and whatever the Howell kooks put on their list.

But the bigger picture is, how close-minded can you really be, in 2007? They’re pieces of literature. You read them. Sometimes they make you laugh, sometimes they make you cry, sometimes you hate them (e.g., Dickens’ Great Expectations), sometimes you love them. And you discuss them in the confines of your classroom. Then you write your paper, get your C+, and do whatever else it is you do when you’re not reading literature and writing essays. And you forget everything you just read.

IFree and open discussion is the only way to ever resolve the truth of any issue – the truth will not be repressed, despite years of continued onslaught against its virtue. With apologies to J.S. Mill, who said something to that effect over 150 years ago, in his essay On Liberty, and it’s still accurate today – yet we’re still trying to resolve the same question. Only the fraudulent desire requires the suppression of its opposition in order to survive. There is no intellectual honesty, and no merit behind any argument in favor of banning speech – whether it be prose or theater, oration or dissertation.

*Not Free