Comment by simiones | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simiones | Hacker News Reader

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> In the old days you would've had to publish a book to get your message out, and if I saw it a bookstore it wouldn't register, I wouldn't pay money for it, and I wouldn't bother writing an angry letter to send to in the mail because it would have zero capacity to take you down a notch in a public forum.

Ha, if only. If you take a look at the actual history, people often were outraged about books and would destroy or burn them - and that's in the happy case when they weren't explicitly censored by the government. Even as we speak there are people banning books from school libraries and pressure businesses not to carry them.

There are many historical cases of actual mobs forming to protest the presence of a book in a library, or even about a ship known to bring some particularly hated book from overseas!

Not to mention, try to run a book shop even today in a more conservative corner of the USA without carrying the Bible at all, see how long it takes until people start complaining to you.

I wonder if the "banned books" line is earnestly trying to fool anybody. Is it just for internal self-deception? Shibboleth? Mood affiliation?

Maybe it can be said it succeeded in changing the topic from "What's in those books, exactly, and who puts them within kids reach, exactly, and why, exactly?" to arguing about their being or not banned. Was that the play?

That wasn't ever the topic to begin with, but good job proving the point that books aren't immune from righteous vitriol, now or then.

One other thing common between now and then is the pulpit beating about public decency and protecting the children.

Children will discover truths whether you try in vain to shield them or not. It's the duty of parents and communities to guide and teach children throughout that growth process, not to be lazy and bully other parents and communities into sharing and enforcing all their same values in depth.

And don't forget resolving differences with duels! Typing on the Internet pales in comparison.

There have always been books that are inappropriate for school libraries because they are patronized by children, not the general population. Many adults, often those who are not in the process of raising children, seem to forget that. Instead of allowing children to have room to master foundational knowledge it seems people with a particular agenda are more concerned with distracting children and pushing wildly inappropriate content into educational spaces.

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