When Jackson commissioners on May 5 reviewed a draft document outlining the framework of a new county library board upon departure from Fontana Regional Library system, Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper, clad in a Turning Point USA T-shirt, was quick to express her central grievance: “I don’t think [a board member] ought to have a library card.”Bitter laughter erupted from the audience.“I feel like that’s kind of a prerequisite to knowing what’s happening in the library, is to have a library card and be active,” responded Chair Mark Letson.But Hooper wasn’t backing down.“Well to me, it’s like, do you make people that’s going to be on the ABC Board know all about liquor?” she asked.Hooper’s comment analogized two independent bodies not typically ripe for comparison. ABC boards in North Carolina are responsible for “controlling the sale of spirituous liquor.” Library boards do not exist to “control” public access to literature nor are members intended to reflect the will of elected leaders.
This is a news piece, not an opinion piece, by the way.
While serving FRL and JCPL, Richards supported a “juvenile card program” for children ages 15 and younger, requiring “parental consent for use of the library by a minor.” She also proposed a policy to ban “banned book” displays in system libraries. Her motivation to join the board was stated in just three words — “to provide oversight.”
Martinez also backed the juvenile card program and introduced a motion to curtail librarian reports....Blaine is an anti-LGBTQ+ activist. He backed JCPL’s withdrawal, routinely expressing misinformation in the process. His reasoning for wanting to join the board came in a list of handwritten bullet points: “provide oversight, evaluate budgets, evaluate policies, evaluate programs, perform book challenge reviews.”
The thing is, the journalists have a point this time even if it's disabling their ability to report dispassionately. It is definitely true that the Republicans locally view the library as a disagreeable phenomenon similar to a liquor store, one that -- if it must be allowed to exist at all -- needs careful regulation and oversight to prevent harm to young people from exposure to toxic contents. Censorship is the whole reason they have been waging this battle, exactly as their opponents contend. There are stark First Amendment issues in the power play they are attempting.
It is also true, as the Republicans contend, that the prior library governance was running the public library as a platform from which to wage cultural civil war against the values of the local community. That's also definitely the truth, and indeed explicitly in accordance with the American Library Association's published intent for such libraries in rural communities. They are indeed actively pursuing the charge that got Socrates put to death by an earlier revolt: 'corrupting the youth,' i.e. intentionally exposing the youth to ideas that their parents would find horrifying and subversive.
There doesn't seem to be a compromise position on offer, one that respects the First Amendment and also allows the community to enjoy an undisrupted common peace according to local values and traditions. Both of the sides are, in a way, speaking the truth and correct in their assertions; neither side is promoting an acceptable way forward. Even if they didn't despise each other, it's not clear how they could move forward.
The most likely outcome will be that the library system collapses locally, because both sides seem to prefer that it be destroyed than ceded to the other side.
18 comments:
Is that really censorship? The public library is paid for by tax dollars, isn't it? Taxpayers objecting to buying objectionable material with their money doesn't seem like censorship to me. Censorship is when the government tells you what YOU can publish or circulate, not what the government will circulate. It's fine for the people to limit the government.
I believe that all of the books that these people don't want in the public library are freely available for you to buy for your children. They aren't banned. They aren't censored. Just use your own money. The First Amendment implies no right to be provided with free reading material, and not giving it doesn't seem in any way a violation of the First Amendment, as far as I can see.
Now, if we were talking about passing laws to regulate private libraries, sure, that would be censorship with First Amendment implications. But no one's doing that here, are they?
What is more, I think the men who wrote and and those who passed the First Amendment would largely agree. They had no problems with laws against obscenity. I don't think they would have had any problem with the idea that a public library should be designed to support community values. They might in fact say that doing that would be its only proper role.
Of course library boards exist to control public access to literature. There's finite $ to procure it for stocking on the shelves, and someone has to decide what gets bought. The dispute is only over the current political agenda
I think you, Thomas, have accurately assessed the Republicans' sense of it. I do not think that the use of public money gives them license to decide what ideas are fit for the public to have access to; I think the intent of a public library is to give people access to information, so that it is not locked behind pay walls (as journalism increasingly is; as academic and scientific works almost always are these days).
The anonymous commenter makes a reasonable point, one where the ALA itself often falls down. They have been engaged in 'collection maintenance' activities that often mean destroying perfectly good classics in order to make shelf-space for woke nonsense. I had a post about that last year:
https://grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-preservation-of-books.html
All this feuding is destroying the donor base of the library, at a time when these same commissioners have spiked taxes through the roof to pay for things they want more than libraries. I think there's good odds that we really will end up with the library closed and the collection sold off, or mulched, or something similar. They don't seem to care at all about the good the thing was intended to secure; they're just busy fighting each other and trying to impose their particular values on people who disagree with them. If they can't do better than that, they won't find a way to sustain what was long a valuable resource.
I do not think that the use of public money gives them license to decide what ideas are fit for the public to have access to ...
Someone will decide, though, so who? Who would you put in charge of deciding what information goes into a public library?
At the same time, if all we were talking about is access to information like newspapers, journals, encyclopedias, histories, biographies, how-to for cars and woodcarving and music, those sorts of things, I don't think this would be a contentious issue. Non-fiction is generally a non-problem.
If the two sides are unwilling to compromise in some way and the library is shut down, that is unfortunate, but at the same time, it's both sides. The side insisting on using public libraries to carry out their moral crusade to proselytize for Marxism and nihilism and the destruction of the republic is just as blameworthy if that happens.
No, I think I want to take that back. It isn't both sides. The left has taken over the academy because conservatives will hire a lefty who looks academically fit, but lefties won't hire a conservative no matter how qualified. That continues on down the line through all of the fields they dominate. They are on a moral crusade and don't care about truth or genuine scholarship unless it benefits their cause. Good scholarship that goes against their cause will at best be ignored by them but more likely slandered / libeled.
They have systematically taken over the universities, the k-12 system, the media -- news and entertainment, and the public libraries. All information has to go through them. They are quite willing to close a public library because they can't put gay porn for kids in it. It's their way or no way.
Conservatives have been quite naive. They kept being good sports, thinking surely some on the left would also be good sports. But they aren't. They stop being good sports as soon as they can get away with it. It's the one-way-ratchet people talk about. Everything always turns left.
Let's also be clear that the left are revolutionaries. They want to utterly destroy our culture and our republic. They want to strip us of our rights to speech, religion, self-defense, etc. They fully intend to enslave us just as the Soviet Union and Communist China enslaved their populations. England, with no right to keep and bear arms, no right to self-defense, people getting locked up for tweets that tell "offensive" truths, etc., is just further along the path they fully intend to take us.
What happened with Trump is that Conservatives finally figured it out. We used to see them as political opponents to be treated honorably while they saw (and still see) us as enemies to be destroyed in any way possible, now including assassination and violent resistance to democratic rule of law. Now a lot of Conservatives understand that lefties are our enemies and that we not only cannot give another inch but must retake a lot of ground if the republic is to have any hope of survival. I hope that the Conservatives do not also turn to violence.
In any case, the left are the aggressors in the culture war. It is a shame that a public library may become collateral damage in their war, but it's on them.
You’ve definitely understood the Republican position. Jenny showed up at the Memorial Day service today wearing a shirt with an American flag that read “If this flag bothers you we’ll help you pack.”
15 years ago I was a Democrat. I still think of myself as a liberal because my concern is for liberty. I just wasn't ever a lefty, so I was never going to fit in once the left took over.
And you write about this very thing just three posts down in "A Quarter-Century Struggle Closes." It's all part of the same thing.
Thomas says "It's fine for the people to limit the government."
I'd have thought that this was a point that Grim would not only agree upon, but would do so emphatically. Why is it different in this case? Clearly the libraries are being misused as government always tends to be misused, and which is the reason you've come to endorse some form of or tendency towards anarchy, right?
This exception leaves me a bit puzzled, honestly.
As for access to information, almost all the good stuff is old enough to be public domain anyway, and therefore available in everyone's pocket if they want it.
I don’t have a problem with the people limiting the government. But these people ARE the government now. They are the ones to be limited, as for example by holding them to standards of not destroying the common goods their office charges them to protect.
Likewise, I am keenly aware of the bad actions of many on the left. That doesn’t excuse bad behavior by the right. This isn’t a prisoner’s dilemma exercise; someone has to be virtuous or it all doesn’t work. You can’t hold a decent system together with beatings alone.
Your library system may collapse but it's continuation might not be a 'good' in the community. The future of public libraries is “more of the same.” Libraries have been wholly invested in “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” and future changes will only be for the worse. Libraries in large cities are dangerous places since the librarians and board members seem to think their more important duties are to placate the homeless, crazy, drugged, and deviants of their society. Small town libraries have been taken over by liberal American women and librarians who frantically shriek about lgbtq-etc. rights and needs, and who are desperately afraid someone’s child might be exposed to stray moral or religious materials while browsing in the library. I trained as a librarian in the late 60’s and worked in libraries all over the country for 50 years. In long-ago library school I was taught that book slection is a kind of censorship: choosing the best and most worthy and ignoring the bad, biased and trashy. I saw and experienced the slow-then-rapid changes in the publishing and library worlds and it is a very rare new book nowadays that is worthy of buying and reading and keeping. As a small town voter, I will not vote for library referendums any more as I refuse to support libraries as they now are organized. I would urge small towns to organize smaller, volunteer collections of books, perhaps affiliated with churches or town civic clubs. The books could be organized into categories for convenience of browsers, but separation into fiction and non-fiction groups might be enough. My main point is this: old books are cheap and better than new. Book collections that are not purchased by taxes can be selected and evaluated by the people who collect them. Reference functions of libraries are not needed since encyclopedias and magazines, etc. are available on the internet. I am a librarian and I do not associate with younger librarians who, in my experience, are not lovers of books and reading but who are mainly interested in imposing radical standards on their poor, unenlightened communities. Sure, there may be “underground” conservative librarians still working in various capacities, but there is little they can do if they want to keep their jobs. I do not and will not support public libraries or public schools. The work they do is subversive to the purpose of the founders of this nation and to the civic and moral lives of its citizens.
Well, that’s an anarchist solution, at least. It fits with my approach.
Today the commissioners announced a vote to seize most of the library funds and return them to the general county fund to be spent on their preferred priorities.
I’m sorry to see the libraries close, because there are families with kids and older people who make good use of them, and who need some of the resources (like books!) that they can provide. I do not like what some libraries have become, those being political spaces that disagree with the community’s desires, or that at the very least are so presentist that you can’t find kids' books more than five years old. (Some of which is related to well-meaning but misguided federal mandates about the possibility of lead ink in illustrated books.)
LittleRed1
So what would be your solution?
I don't know that the problem can be solved, since none of the people on the two sides seems to want a solution other than victory for themselves and complete, crushing defeat for their opponents.
However, I do remember that when I lived in China back in 2000-1, you could find English-language books in bookstores but only ones from the 19th century and earlier. The Communists, I supposed, had reasoned that this predated the really intense anti-Communism of the Western world, so they could admit such books without worrying a lot about the politics they might smuggle in.
I could imagine a compromise along lines like that. Keep the reference section, keep books that have been around for say 50+ years and have proven literary merit for a generation or more, keep most of the nonfiction and certainly 398.2. A ceasefire, as it were, to preserve the value of the library as a source of education and enrichment for the young or for those too poor otherwise to afford access to the educational materials.
That seems eminently reasonable. In support, IIRC, Mark Twain once quipped that literature was anything that lasted forever, which he reckoned was about 40 years in the publishing world.
Let the damn libraries close. If people want books, they can get them elsewhere. We need public libraries, public schools, public television, and public radio like we need a hole in the head.
Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association doubles down on tweet admitting she's a 'Marxist lesbian,' leading states such as Montana to cut ties with group
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