How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
On the last week of every September, we celebrate Banned Books Week. This is the rather ingenious marketing ploy of various bookseller and library associations to highlight the fact that sometimes people don't like school libraries carrying or recommending various books.
Virginia had a recent incident of this when a parent complained about the anti-Mormon themes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet. As a result, the Albemarle County School Board voted to remove the book from its sixth-grade reading lists. And that's what counts for a "ban" these days.
Or, as Jonah Goldberg pointed out in a recent column:
When the American Library Association talks about censorship of books, it invariably refers to "banned or challenged" books. A "banned" book is a book that has been removed from a public library or school's shelves or reading lists due to pressure from someone who isn't a librarian or teacher. In practice, this means pretty much any book that's pulled off the shelves of a library can be counted as "banned." Even so, that's very rare, which is why the ALA lump "banned" and "challenged" together. Moreover, it's crazy. If the mere absence of a book counts as a "ban," then 99.99% of books have been banned somewhere.
Meanwhile, a challenge happens when someone — usually a parent — questions the suitability of a book. If you complain that your 8-year-old kid shouldn't be reading a book with lots of sex, violence or profanity until he or she is a little older, you're not a good parent; you're a would-be book-banner.
Now, I happen to think that there are all sorts of problems that come with deciding which books will and won't appear on shelves at public libraries, much less on curricula. But let's not get carried away.
And what's more, let's check ourselves when it comes to swallowing the propaganda of these "top banned book" lists that the ALA puts out every year. Take this list which shows which of the top 100 classic novels have been "banned or challenged." In addition to Gatsby and 1984, we have Lolita by Nabakov. That is one of the best books I've ever read and yet I'm pretty sure that if my public school had it on a sixth-grade reading list, I'd object. Now I'm a book banner.
But more than that, how come these lists never highlight books we all want nowhere near our children's curricula? Books such as Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The Turner Diaries, The Satanic Bible?
I'd be much more impressed with the ALA and their sister groups if they spent Banned Books Week highlighting the threats at school libraries to Kill Without Joy: The Complete How To Kill Book and The Anarchist's Cookbook or various other evil, violent, racist or otherwise problematic books than decades-old complaints about Faulkner.
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Dec '10
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
I admit to having been a paying dues member to the ALA. Right now, I'm not, and I hope to keep it that way. But as a former English teacher and current librarian, I have had to bite my tongue about banned books for most of my life. Using the broad ALA definition of banned books, librarians are the greatest book banners of all. We get to control the content of shelves because we are "professionals" capable of making these decisions. And you can guess which ideological direction these purchases lean. I think the whole event helps librarians feel important because our day-to-day job seems rather dull.
I'm not quite sure how this profession made defending pornography and protecting the rights of criminals to access sensitive information its greatest concern.
Apr '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
Given my spotty success in donating books by certain authors to the library, I think there's easily some definition shenanigans going on with regards to the term "censorship."
If a librarian wants to keep a book from being available at the library, it's an administrative decision.
If someone who goes to the library wants to do the same, it's censorship.
Jul '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
I have to start by saying that I am only 23, so take my comments for what they are worth. Books should never be banned! Parents should regulate what their children have access to because that is simply good parenting. With that said, what an adult chooses to seek out and read isn't anyones concern.
How can we hope to educate people on the pros and cons of ideas if we ban the works that contain them? Mein Kampf changed my life. It didn't make me a NAZI, but it made me see the flawed thinking, the faulty logic which lead to its conclusions. As a result of the awakening that it brought about, I now see the faulty logic present in the progressive and socialist movements in the United States.
This is sort of Ricochets broken record playing through my own loud-speaker, but I think this really all comes back to parenting. Good parents can shape their children and use books to enlighten and expose them; bad parents who don't pay attention will lose their children in books that they aren't prepared to digest. ITS THE PARENTING STUPID! [I'm not calling you stupid]
Sep '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
C. U. Douglas: Given my spotty success in donating books by certain authors to the library, I think there's easily some definition shenanigans going on with regards to the term "censorship."
If a librarian wants to keep a book from being available at the library, it's an administrative decision.
If someone who goes to the library wants to do the same, it's censorship. · Sep 19 at 9:28am
Exactly! As a former school librarian. I know that "selection" was a huge part of my job. The publishers also have a lot of influence, as they're always trying to be on the "cutting edge", pushing the most recent "alarming" social issues, often presenting only one perspective.
Mar '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
My favorite banned book story concerns the eighth-grade teacher from a Maryland middle school who, a few years ago, became so incensed by the ALA's then-current list of banned books that she included them all on her recommended reading list for her young charges. As a result, parents found their children's recommended reading list included The New Joy of Gay Sex, a book which (according to Publishers Weekly, quoted on Amazon.com) had a " nonjudgmental, even accepting attitude toward 'the kinkier aspects of erotic life.' These aspects included sex with animals, sadomasochism and 'intergenerational love affairs' such as the relationship between an 11-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man." Publishers Weekly further described the book as "(a)n uninhibited, no-holds-barred sex manual illustrated with 60 explicit line drawings and eight pages of color paintings . . ."
I'm unsure what eventually happened to the teacher, but her courageous stand against censorship was stoutly defended at the time by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post. Who knows. Today the recommended reading list might not even cause a stir.
Jun '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
An excellent insight into what ALA and others like them are really up to can be found in two recent Wall Street Journal pieces by Meghan Cox Gurdon. The first was her June 4 essay, Darkness Too Visible, lamenting the dark and essentially nasty state of so much young adult "literature" today. Ms. Cox Gurdon concluded that excellent piece with this observation:
"So it may be that the book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young. Still, everyone does not share the same objectives. The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives."
For stating a conclusion that should be obvious to any sentient human being, Ms. Cox Gurdon was excoriated by the ALA, among others, which she wrote about in a follow up WSJ op ed on July 2.
The ALA has lost any credibility it once had to dictate what is/is not censorship.
Jun '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
And having just said the ALA "lost any credibility it once had," the question occurs to me: did it ever have such credibility? And just as quickly, the answer to that question occurs as well. One man's free speech will almost always be another man's censorship (i.e., being called a book burning nut for simply daring to question whether a particular book is age appropriate is, in itself, a form of censorship against the questioner).
Sep '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
"So it may be that the book industry's ever-more-appalling offerings for adolescent readers spring from a desperate desire to keep books relevant for the young. Still, everyone does not share the same objectives. The book business exists to sell books; parents exist to rear children, and oughtn't be daunted by cries of censorship. No family is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives."
And they always wonder why kids don't like to read.
Mar '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
Goldberg is right, and to put it bluntly, the ALA and ACLU are flat out lying about "banned books". What they're doing is spreading the specter of book banning to cover for their policies of usurping parental authority.
Apr '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
This really isn't about book banning - it's about book selection. These books remain available to any reader that wants to find them in a different venue. And parents have a right to participate.
My wife has a masters in library science and a key task for librarians (and the basis for their expertise) is the selection of books. No library can shelve every book, and so some selection process is necessary. Talk of "banned" books is a distraction; the issue here is who will have input on book selection, and the profession does not want outside input that does not ratify their decisionmaking.
I had the opportunity to look over some of the wife's course material on this subject, and there was a marked hostility to those who challenge books, regardless of reason. It's been almost a decade since her work, but I recall that these materials did not refute the merits of those challenging specific books but rather criticized them generally as "busy bodies" and the like. In short, the professional librarians just didn't like getting input from lay people about how to perform their services.
Jun '10
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
I agree with tenor of the others on the thread: the ALA is highly misleading about this whole banned books thing.
Let me address one of the examples Mollie identified in her post (removing a books from a reading list). Speaking as a Mormon, I don't recall the slightest angst from the fact that some less than complimentary things are said about Mormons in A Study in Scarlet. I'm convinced there isn't a single person who will change their view of my Church because of something Doyle wrote decades ago.
It's called keeping things in perspective. And I like Sherlock Holmes.
May '10
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
My youngest son took a copy of Mein Kampf into school after I told him the story of that particular volume: it is stamped inside with the words Konzentrationslager Dachau: Kommandantur. My father "liberated" it from the camp library shortly after he himself had been liberated from the camp. I keep with it a copy of a chit issued by a US Army doctor, authorising my father to eat in the soldiers' mess while he helped in the treatment of the outbreak of typhus which overtook the camp after liberation.
Such things bear witness - the story gave his classmates an understanding of how families they knew were touched by these events. That makes it so much harder for lies to displace the truth.
Oct '10
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
Used to read the Ian Fleming, James Bond series when in the fifth grade. Not likely available to the youth of today. Great stories.
Perhaps the Lefties would like to see a certain cookbook back on the shelves
Apr '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
I'll have to re-read A Study in Scarlet. I don't remember it saying bad things about Mormons, only about particular Mormons who were bad men.
I can't see re-reading Mein Kampf as a terribly constructive use of my time. For one thing, it wasn't all that explicit. It was anti-semitic, but it didn't call for the extermination of the Jews. It rejected the idea of a two-front war, and proposed an Anglo-German alliance. It was not the road map to WW II and death camps that I was told it was.
Obviously it's not a children's book, but I wouldn't object to (older) children reading it.
Apr '11
Re: How Many Libraries Carry Mein Kampf?
I'll have to re-read A Study in Scarlet. I don't remember it saying bad things about Mormons, only about particular Mormons who were bad men.
I can't see re-reading Mein Kampf as a terribly constructive use of my time. For one thing, it wasn't all that explicit. It was anti-semitic, but it didn't call for the extermination of the Jews. It rejected the idea of a two-front war, and proposed an Anglo-German alliance. It was not the road map to WW II and death camps that I was told it was.
Obviously it's not a children's book, but I wouldn't object to (older) children reading it.