The book banning and restrictions on content in classrooms in Florida are further examples of people being fine with restrictions on speech.
At this point it's pretty disingenuous to lay the blame entirely on the left, or the young.
At this point it's pretty disingenuous to lay the blame entirely on the left, or the young.
Really, the larger ideal of free speech is about the desired orthogonality of distribution channels versus content, and general tolerance for things we dislike. We see the results of its diminishing the strongest where the first amendment to the US constitution doesn't legally apply due to these kinds of distinctions.
Second, does this "Florida issue" include provisions for parents of children that want their children to be able to access those books, to opt out of the restrictions in question? If not, then one can't say the topic is entirely limited to the traditional role of parents deciding what is right for their children. Rather it's also about about controlling what other people's children might read.
Ultimately, both topics are about filtering distribution channels, based on criteria the distribution channel managers deem appropriate - with free speech concerns hinging on how much those distribution channels end up affecting what gets perceived as the total market.
Yes, it does: they are perfectly free to buy or borrow those books themselves. The law is about what’s available in a public school.
I'm not making an argument about what level of opinionated curation is appropriate or justified. Rather it's just disingenuous to say something is censorship when the other team nominally supports it, but then throw out specific reasons why your team's favored censorship shouldn't actually be considered censorship. There are always legitimate sounding reasons for centralized distributors to police the content of speech, and it's also always censorship.
And I also seem to remember news from a couple of years ago that scientists from state-funded institutions (I think this was also in Florida) weren't allowed to talk about climate change.
I think both of these are pretty serious restrictions of free speech.
Sure, the right has also been up to its old tricks in tired corners (it dominated in previous times like the McCarthy era), but lets be realistic about who the modern problem is mainly with in the West or we won't solve it.
In the West the left has dominated restricting speech.
Like the famously left-wing CCP book burning:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_China#Mao_Z...
Authoritarians exists on the left as well:
* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychologi...
so yes, that's why I used the word "historically" and...
"(it dominated in previous times like the McCarthy era)"
...noted the dominance of the right in previous decades.
https://unherd.com/2023/04/did-city-uni-censor-my-gender-res...
This one’s hilarious/tragic because the censored paper was researching censorship.
When a political system has two parties, this is exactly what one would expect.
The book ban proponents and book editors are likely a tiny fraction of the population.
However in a two party system, they are part of their party.
This is what you get.
Not banning but altering would be one form of censorship, e.g., "Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive":
* https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-boo...
"Why I Decided to Update the Language in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Children’s Books":
* https://lithub.com/why-i-decided-to-update-the-language-in-u...
"D&D: WotC’s New Batch Of Errata Removes Racial Alignments, Retcons Drow":
* https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/12/dd-wotc-removes-raci...
To quote George Orwell's 1984: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." The past is being rewritten (as opposed to leaving the original language and simply putting a forward in explaining things).
The Dahl publishers have confirmed that they are only making changes to editions published for schools, and the original unedited books will still be published. Dahl himself authorized changes to his work to keep them marketable.
There's no evidence that the Le Guin books would have been kept from publication if those mild changes had not been made. It appears that we're only even hearing about it as a response to the Dahl controversy.
All together, this seems like piecemeal evidence of works being updated to satisfy contemporary mores, which is something that has been done continually for centuries, not a sign of a growing ideological trend.
Is that the same Dahl that said:
“I’ve warned my publishers that if they later on so much as change a single comma in one of my books, they will never see another word from me. Never! Ever!”
“When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.”
He was referring to his Norwegian roots and to his earlier story of “the greediest croc” in talking to Bacon, who apparently felt just as strongly about the subject, telling him: “There must be no changes to an artist’s original work when he is dead for any reason whatsoever.” Crossing himself in jest, Dahl replied: “I just hope to God that will never happen to any of my writings as I am lying comfortably in my Viking grave.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/25/roald-dahl-thr...
A decade before that quote, Dahl was convinced by the NAACP and others to revise the Oompa-Loompas to avoid the implications of their being "black pygmies".
No, the Dahl books should not have been banned from school either, because they did not contain harmful material. In any case, a content warning or contextual note would be preferable to rewriting them.
That's the popular story, but I constantly see evidence that it's overwhelmingly coming from the right.