Growing U.S. Support for Book Banning

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
I am 100% against removing books from libraries. Sanitizing history over sexually suggestive writing is completely stupid when porn abounds on the internet. Every kid can access some porn. You can't avoid it. Even with safe search and websense software.

I totally agree on not banning books. My library here in WA has a way for kids to obtain their own library card and I can actually go and look at what my child is checking out. Why ban the books when a responsible parent can help sort out what they will allow their children to view. Then when the child grows up to a young adult, they can go get the books their parents didn't want them to look at so long ago.
Libraries don't lose their books and waste money getting rid of them, kids get to have access to the entire gamut of the librarie's offerings and librarians stay employed. It really is a win for all if they can just agree to let the concerned parents set their own standards. Why do we need the gov't limiting the information just because some kids may not be mature enough yet. Leave the information there and when they mature, they will have something to thumb through.

originally posted by: RealTruthSeeker
Banning books won't make any difference when you have the internet.

Somehow, I don't think you really thought that through. The internet is speeding along towards complete central control. Which means it doesn't matter how many digital copies of something there are. If the authorities decide to censor, they can take them all out (or completely rewrite them) in one fell swoop.

You have to also think about the trend to "cloud computing". Which is a pretty good sign that eventually, they'd like to have absolutely everything stored in the cloud. No personal storage. So. If they have all the data and they have all the power and they have the public on their side, they can simply edit reality AND history at their whim.

A physical book is very difficult to completely eradicate. If you don't get every single copy, you haven't really gotten rid of it. If they wanted to ban even one book, they'd have to literally turn the world upside down and they still would not know for sure they got every copy.

It just makes me nervous when people start thinking the internet and digital storage is a complete replacement for paper. The thing about the internet is that it takes an enormous amount of effort to store data in a way that is secure. Even if you only have a small amount of critical data, you need multiple drives AND multiple locations. And that's assuming someone isn't actively trying to destroy your data.

The temporary nature of electronic media makes it really likely that someone could literally rewrite everything we know and future generations would never have a clue.

Also....

I think it's reasonable to say this kind of a "jump" in public opinion doesn't happen this fast without some kind of a concerted (deliberate) effort somewhere. As is plain to see, most people are pretty easy to manipulate. Sit them down in front of a TV and show them a bunch of "programming" (I just love that word) that was created by people who know what they want and you can pretty much change their entire world view in a few hours.

!/4 of college students agree to banning books in the US?
This is what "higher education" gets us?
I know we aren't terribly smart as a nation goes but that outright banning books of any kind is ok with so many people is very troubling.

Soon this will be irrelevant as TECH will be inoperable. Outta phase and outta time. Welcome to the REAL world Neo!

originally posted by: FamCore
"Growing Support" for Book Banning amongst Americans - some of what is presented in this article I completely agree with (making a conscious effort to prevent young students from accessing books involving sexual situations, etc. in public libraries), but I also think our neighbors and co-workers are falling prey to the tricks of the media, etc. based on what this article is describing :

American support for banning books jumped by more than 50 percent between 2011 and 2015, according to a recently released Harris Poll survey. Conducted last March, some 28 percent of the 2,244 U.S. adults surveyed answered yes to the question "Do you think that there are any books which should be banned completely?"

A 10% jump in 4 years ..

On the school-library front, a full 71 percent expect librarians to keep age-inappropriate books out of the hands of students. In addition, 60 percent think books containing explicit language should be kept from school bookshelves entirely, and 48 percent say the same about violent books. Those surveyed were also largely in favor of shielding students from books containing witchcraft or sorcery (44 percent), sexual activity (43 percent), drug or alcohol use (37 percent), and vampires (36 percent).

This is where it gets interesting..

More unsettling, perhaps, is the fact that 33 percent of Americans don't think school libraries should stock a copy of the Koran, while 29 percent want to keep out the Torah or Talmud and 13 percent would ban the bible. About a quarter think students should be kept from any books that question the existence of a divine being, while about 20 percent want to keep out books discussing creationism.

In addition to the 28 percent who say, yes, books should sometimes be banned completely in America, another 24 percent said they were "unsure" about the answer to this question. And 71 percent support books being rated in the same vein as movies, with 35 percent "strongly" in favor of this plan. Interestingly, there was less support for banning movies (16 percent), TV shows (16 percent) or video games (24 percent) outright.

Again - our society is falling victim to the media and consumerist-mentality, willfully leading ourselves to doom like lemmings or mindless drones

TV and video games don't need censorship, just BOOKS. Yeah, okay...

College graduates were somewhat less likely than those with a high-school education or less to support book bans (24 percent, versus 33 percent).

This is pretty disturbing to me - aside from the author's intentions and parts of this I agree with, the overall belief that books should be banned, etc. is frightening to me. What do you guys think after hearing about this?


ARTICLE

Step 1 - ban books
Step 2 - burn books
Step 3 - replace books with ideas and return to step 1.