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What would you call it when the government tells a library to remove books?
Removal of books from a library. If a library includes material glorifying national socialism would you argue it should be removed as well?
>By that definition, almost nothing is banned anywhere outside of North Korea and similar authoritarian regimes.
I think "liberalism" is the word you are struggling for. Germany is more heavy handed on this then America for example.
"We're not burning books. We're just making a public bonfire of wood products."
> If a library includes material glorifying national socialism would you argue it should be removed as well?
I've seen Mein Kampf in a library.
Should it be kept there because many people keep reading it or do you believe that any library needs curation based on ideology?
Libraries regularly remove books and buy new ones. It isn't some great evil that they don't include a certain book.
There are dozens of stories like this "X book is BANNED" and then it is literally some library not buying it.
A library curating its inventory is effectively a ban to everyone downstream of that curation who no longer has the book available.
The government, by imposing its own list of criteria, is engaging in a form of curation (at least to themselves)
In neither case are the books unavailable for purchase to those who want them, and are freely available on the public market.
I don't really see how we can expect that to scale from policies inherited by adversaries.
We quietly do this kind of censorship all the time -- the government sends fines to public broadcasting channels that use curse words, and limit their stories to those that are generally G or PG rated content.
I am a free speech absolutist, and again, I agree with your position, but I can't find any reason why (ignoring whose list you prefer) a list of preferences that included "family friendliness" would not be just as utile or effective at assisting the surely difficult job of curation as literary value or whatever libraries are using themselves now (which I assume they can still use to exclude books not currently covered by this policy.)
It would be easy to say that the government should have no control over the libraries, but they're public libraries, ergo are functionally just little tendrils off the arms of government already.
Would you say the same if that material as glorifying national socialism? Should library carry such books as long as people want to read them?
You keep repeating this. "If we ban Nazi content, why can't we ban books about Rosa Parks[0]?"
You do see why that's not convincing, don't you?
I don't. I just want you to admit that you also believe in ideological control of libraries.
>[0] https://pen.org/banned-books-florida/
I remember when I was twelve or so reading such a list, which included downloads of these books. I was actually quite interested, which twelve year old wouldn't be interested in reading banned books? As it turned out it was obvious fetish material and I felt quite disgusted reading it. Something of a formative experience I guess.
No.
A "Ban" means the government legally prohibits circulation. Stop these ridicolous word games.
Also, you didn't answer the question: would Facebook removing my ability to post be considered "banning"?
Every library removes books. It is the most normal thing, my library has regular book sales where they let books go. If you want to call distributing books for low prices "banning them" I guess I can not help you.
We are talking about public or school libraries, which are government institutions. When they remove books, based on narrow religious criteria, that is exactly the government prohibiting circulation (your own definition) via those govt-controlled channels of schools and libraries.
Literally not true.
Some other comment of yours: > Obviously not true.
I think the word you're looking for is "inconceivable". And I do not think it means what you think it means.
Obviously the curation is ideological. All curation has to have a framework of ideas. The alternative is randomly buying book.
Just because it isn't a 100% ban on sales and possession also does not mean it is not a ban; it is a ban as far as it goes, schools and libraries, which is a significantly broad swath of a book's availability, especially to young readers.
It is also not "curation". Curation is done based on readership, not some narrow criteria of a particular religion. To the degree that a narrow religious criteria is used to "curate" (enforce presence of book X or absence of book Y) the content of a public school or library, it is also a likely of the 1st Amendment clause against establishment of religion — selecting the only allowed books in a govt institution based on one group's narrow interpretation of a particular religion is a strong action to establish that religion using the levers of government. If it was not such a strong action, they wouldn't be putting so much effort into doing it.
In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to "prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."
Then 99.999% of books are banned as well. Cry about those too.
Yes, of course 99.9%+ of all books ever written in history are not included in any given libraries due to space and budget lconstraints. The librarians included the few based on professional criteria and data.
After <0.01% of the books are included on professional librarians' criteria, you now try to claim that efforts to DELIBERATELY REMOVE some books BASED ON NARROW DEMANDS of a few religious bigots is the same.
Bullshirt.
Of course the numerical result is superficially similar.
The results of choosing books based on the criteria of professional librarians or schoolteachers vs religious bigots is obviously different.
If it were not different in important ways, the religious bigots would not bother putting so much effort into replacing professional librarians.
Any claim that these are the same thing is either box-of-rocks-level ignorant, or intentionally disingenuous. There is no third choice.
Those decisions are not to be made within constitutional frameworks, not by committees of religious bigots who promote ignorance. Stop carrying the water of religious bigots — you'll give the impression that you are one; you already give a strong impression of willful ignorance, repeatedly making the arguments of a simpleton.