[JumpCrisscross]

Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten. If your kid is going to be corrupted by going into a library and finding a book that's naughtier than your taste, they're probably ahead of their similarly-corruptible peers who aren't in a library at all.

[burnished]

Their findings are that the book bannings are really for the purpose of

Virtue signal by people in positions of institutional power to voting-age parents interested in school choice, parental rights, and wedge social issues to the detriment of non-voting age students Reject and exclude topics that challenge a perceived status quo from the public discourse (e.g. non-heteronormativity, non-cis identity, non-traditional gender roles, and non-Judeo-Christian books are targeted

and that

Fortunately, book bans are widely unpopular amongst parents across the ideological spectrum.

It would make sense though given that reading can be transformative for some people but realistically I think most folks are worried about everyday problems like teen pregnancy and substance abuse or getting into fights - and to your point if they are off reading unbearable moral philosophy in some library they aren't out screwing around.

[shakow]

> Book banning seems like a strange red line to have forgotten

Has book banning ever been a red line? Many Western countries, from Canada to France through US and New Zealand have banned many books for most of their existence.

[krapp]

Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all.

It is legitimately weird how quickly that seems to have changed within the culture in the light of the moral panic over transgender "groomers" and the antiwoke movement. That, and the sentiment that the government should regulate or nationalize social media, or even make it illegal... and half the country seems to be in a competition to see how fascist they can become before the Supreme Court actually calls them out. It's like someone flipped a switch and suddenly all this dystopian shit was just ok with everyone.

[shakow]

> Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all.

Was it, really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_the_United_...

Controversial, sure; but I'm not sure it was as universally loathed as you seem to think.

[pfannkuchen]

I’m so confused. Book bans in authoritarian nations mean that you can’t purchase the book because the government prohibits it. Is that happening anywhere in the US today?

[krapp]

You're not confused, you're just playing semantic games.

[pfannkuchen]

Congratulations on your apparent mind reading ability. Also I am pretty sure your post violates HN guidelines (is there a way to summon @dang?)

[xyzzyz]

> Until relatively recently in the US, "banning books" was widely considered one of those morally reprehensible things that only authoritarian governments did, and people were outraged that the US did it at all.

This is why I loathe the “book banning” activists, because their entire goal is to confuse people by using deliberately misleading language.

The fact of the matter is that nowhere in the US has any book been successfully banned by any government in recent memory, in the dystopian, authoritarian sense understanding of the term “book banning”. Activists simply decided to call removing books from school libraries “book banning” to deliberately induce misapprehension that this sort of dystopian, authoritarian shit is reality, when it simply is not the case.

[krapp]

Calls to remove books from libraries on the basis of ideology driven by a political party are a form of book banning, the distinction between it and a "ban by government" is one without a difference.

[systemtest]

Reformed Protestant schools in The Netherlands have banned books with curse words, heavy language, sex, occultism and magic. You are not going to find any Harry Potter books there.

School books, the ones you learn from during the curriculum, are also heavily edited so that Christian school still buy them. Bikinis, short skirts, tattoos, female pastors, dinosaurs, astrology, everything is left out of the books out of fear that Christian schools will not buy them. Publishers are very careful with what they put in their books.

https://www-bnnvara-nl.translate.goog/joop/artikelen/uitgeve...

[thfuran]

I'm not in favor of banning books, but "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something.

[JumpCrisscross]

> "it's not the worst thing that could possibly happen" isn't exactly a strong argument for supporting something

Point is if your kid has the initiative to go into a library and find a book, they're probably fine. If they're not, they're going to get far worse from the internet and their peers-the library isn't your problem. Raising them to believe libraries are unsafe is more likely to backfire in the specific aims you're pursuing.

(Going out on a limb and assuming most of the people pursuing these book bans don't have kids in school and, if they do, they aren't in the top 90% of students checking out books from any library.)