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Comment by guywithahat | Hacker News Reader

Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive", while republicans were the ones who opposed book banning in schools. One would argue at least banning (often recently written) books with adult content/porn makes sense, saying a classic is "culturally insensitive" and banning it is just another word for political indoctrination

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Political parties seem irrelevant here. Let educators rather than politicians decide which books should be in a school library.

Which laws did Democrats pass calling for books to be removed from schools? I admit I'm not always paying attention, but I don't remember any.

> Let educators rather than politicians decide which books should be in a school library

We already don't do this though, between state laws, federal laws, and the department of education. I am fine getting rid of the department of education though since it seems you're opposed to it too.

And it was 20 years ago, you'd have to look up the specific policies. The point is acting like this is the first time people have tried banning books from young children in school is ignorant of all recent history

Making a claim and supporting it by effectively saying "go look it up yourself" is hardly compelling. It might be accurate, or perhaps not incorrect but misleading.

This smells a lot like the old "both sides do bad stuff" argument, which often gets over applied to pretend there is no difference in magnitude of the egregiousness when two sides do similar bad stuff.

>We already don't do this though

And even if we did it would still go to shit because "educators" is not an representative cross section of the population and their choices would be ideologically skewed and/or subject to industry circle jerks and fads.

Educators are people that are trained in educating children. I'm not sure why they should be a representative cross section of anything.

Generally institutions have more Democrats serving in them (I suppose it’s a culture fit thing) so it’s less needed for them to pass explicit laws vs just issuing organisational memos or other internal orders.

> it’s less needed for them to pass explicit laws vs just issuing organisational memos or other internal orders.

But issuing organizational memos is not illegal, whereas passing explicit laws is banned by the Constitution. Probably because one is a really bad idea that chills free speech for the whole nation, while the other is just how any community organization operates.

Banning should be an extreme measure only applied in some extremely limited form for the shortest duration possible, if ever. For instance when the book is directly being used to institute violence or hate. While porn should be restricted, it should be in the hands of parents, not the state. Same with abortion, a deeply personal matter, not in the hands of the state or whatever some church things, just because they think they are right. Justice should be blind, not carry a bible or creed.

It should appear evident, and a pretty apolitical stance, but here we are.

Associating good vs evil with politics and perhaps worse, political party's themselves is a problem.

Why do people associate these disparate things? Because they've been trained to...

Sadly, this tribalism is at the root of most of our civil disagreements these days.

>Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive", while republicans were the ones who opposed book banning in schools

Source? I was an adult alive 20 years ago, that wasn't a thing.

> Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive"

And it was rightfully opposed by the majority and by folks who understand the tenability of our rights to the whims of authoritarians, as many, many, many of the actions of the current administration should be.

Can you be more specific? What books were being banned on the state level for being culturally insensitive?

I mean you're comparing the color purple and fucking mein Kampf or the literary equivalent of song of the south.

Come on man. These aren't the same thing. Not everything is the same as everything else because you can torture the principle to vaguely fit both.

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