The New Newspeak.

The late great Rush Limbaugh made a point over his radio career on a technique used by the left, how they are limiting the use of English. Per Limbaugh, “We are losing the language.” Similar to Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984. As an example, Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden (Pre-Dementia, but still dumb) would call judges who overrule unconstitutional precedent (e.g. Plessy v Ferguson) “activist” judges, but a jurist who “finds” law that we mortals cannot observe (Obamacare, the gay marriage ruling, etc) were not. I thought of him while reading this article.

In recent propaganda coming from the liberal media, one of the great themes is book “bans,” a very loaded word. Goes along well with other premises, such as everything not radically leftist is racist, the “Don’t say gay” law in Florida, or the overthrowing of rights when/if Roe v Wade is overruled. Now I found this article in the Washington Post, and it was interesting that it shows a young lady fighting against bans on books, right?

Upset by book bans, teen starts forbidden book club in small Pa. town

As book banning in schools reached unprecedented heights in the United States, 14-year-old Joslyn Diffenbaugh was having none of it.

“It’s really problematic, because books are the only way that you can be in another person’s shoes,” said Joslyn, a self-proclaimed “book nerd,” who lives in the small town of Kutztown, Pa., near Allentown.

She has read several books that have been banned by school districts across the country, including “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas and “All American Boys” by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds, both of which deal with police brutality.

“They were really eye-opening,” said Joslyn, an eighth-grader at Kutztown Middle School. “They are books that make you think.”

As attempts to forbid books increased both in Pennsylvania and in other school districts nationwide, Joslyn felt she needed to do something. Like several other teens across the country, she started a banned book club — where members read books that have been outlawed in schools and then meet regularly to discuss them.

I put in hyperlinks on both of the so-called “banned” books, showing they are available at Amazon.com. This may be shocking, but the fact a book is not stocked in your local public library does not mean it is “banned.” It means the library, which has a limited budget for books (As well as everything else) will not stock books that they don’t believe will get read or are inappropriate to the age group they cater to.

About three miles from where I live, there is a children’s library, catering to the younger generation (Elementary and junior high age). I once tried it for a study area when I was preparing for a promotional exam, but soon discovered it would not work. It had dozens of kids under 10 inside, and in spite of the adults’ best efforts, it was noisy. Now, is this a place for the 50 Shades of Gray series? No it’s not. More the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew crowd. Does that mean the books are “banned?” Absolutely not. This can be appropriate book for the general public library, but not for a junior high library.

For her, the tipping point came in late October, when a Texas Republican lawmaker launched an investigation into school libraries in the state, and compiled a list of 850 titles — written mainly about race and sexuality — demanding that schools reveal whether they carry the books.

Local attempts at restricting books have been on the rise in Pennsylvania, too. In January, the Kutztown School Board voted narrowly to keep “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, in the high school library, despite outcry from some parents and community members.

The soaring efforts to challenge books “compelled me to start something where we could talk about banned things,” Joslyn said.

OK, who are these “parents and community members?” I hear of all these in one article after another, yet they often don’t have any interest in the school. They are not the customer.

Texas pays for public schools by a property tax, sometimes known as the school tax, like many states. So I would ask the author of this story, are these “parents and community members” the customers of the schools? That’s a specific question but needs to be answered. I paid school taxes for over ten years before I had a stepchild in public school, and now that both are out of school, I’m still paying these taxes. So I am a “community member,” and “parent,” but more than that, I’m a customer of the local school boards. I pay the bills, and if so, I can call the tune. The fact I, and the majorly of the tax payers, don’t want racist or pornographic media in a school library doesn’t not show support for books being banned.

Ms. Diffenbaugh, you might want to read a book or three on the rise of the NAZIs and the communists, how they took control of publishing and other media, and burned countless books. Banning books was a government operation to keep knowledge from the general public. From the Smithsonian Magazine:

The unifying factor between all types of purposeful book-burners in the 20th century, Knuth says, is that the perpetrators feel like victims, even if they’re the ones in power. Perhaps the most infamous book burnings were those staged by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, who regularly employed language framing themselves as the victims of Jews. Similarly, when Mao Zedong took power in China and implemented the Cultural Revolution, any book that didn’t conform to party propaganda, like those promoting capitalism or other dangerous ideas, were destroyed. More recently, the Jaffna Public Library of Sri Lanka—home to nearly 100,000 rare books of Tamil history and literature—was burned by Sinhalese Buddhists. The Sinhalese felt their Buddhist beliefs were under threat by the Hinduism of Tamils, even though they outnumbered the Tamils.

Thankfully there is a pushback against the propaganda of the woke liberals infesting our educational and cultural institutions. Not banning books, just showing the public was being done right now. A generation ago, a great actor named Charlton Heston took a stand against obscene music by letting the owners of Time-Warner, the stockholders, know what was being sold by their company. Mr. Heston took the floor (He was a stockholder) and head Cop Killer, all obscene lines to it. He followed it up with reading KKK Bitch, where he fantasizes about sodomizing Al and Tipper Gore’s 12 year old nieces. The room was silent and is a few weeks’ Time-Warner cancelled its contract with Ice T. Was this the primary reason, maybe. But this was not banning music or “art,” it’s the owners of a business telling the management, “We will not tolerate this.”

A more recent example comes from Las Vega, where the mother of a high school student reads the assignment, her daughter was given to the school board.

School Board Silences Mom’s Mic For Reading Her Child’s ‘Pornographic’ Class Assignment Aloud

A Las Vegas area mom had her microphone cut off during her public comments at a recent school board meeting when she tried to read from a graphic assignment she says her 15-year-old child was given in class.

“I’m going to read you an assignment given to my 15-year-old daughter at a local high school,” the mom began in the video.

“This will be horrifying for me to read to you, but that will give you perspective on how she must have felt when her teacher required her to memorize this and to act it out in front of her entire class,” she added.

“’I don’t love you. It’s not you, it’s just, I don’t like your d*** – or any d*** in that case. I cheated, Joe,’” the woman began, quoting from the alleged assignment she held in her hand.

“Forgive me, we’re not using profanity,” the chairwoman interrupted, as the mom’s microphone momentarily went silent.

“The teacher required my daughter to read this pornographic material,” the mother explained…

“…If you don’t want me to read it to you, what was it like for my 15-year-old daughter to have to memorize pornographic material,” the mother asked, before her microphone was once again cut off…

Thankfully the school board has been inundated with very disapproving feedback on this incident and is “investigating the circumstances” of the assignment and will not comment at this time. Translation, they got caught and are being forced to clean up this mess.

Hopefully, Ms. Diffenbaugh can look at the works of concerned parents and others, trying to insure children are not exposed to literature that is not appropriate to them at their age. Assuming she becomes a mother, her perspective will change greatly. I applaud Ms. Diffenbaugh for fighting perceived “book banning.” Hopefully before she leave for college, she  understand what se should really be fighting.

Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.

Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.

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