In antiquity the city of Alexandria in what is now Egypt came to be viewed as the great seat of learning and knowledge. This was largely due to its prodigious library, home to anywhere between 40,000 and 400,000 texts. Unfortunately, it's not possible to consult any of them now. As with a lot of ancient buildings it was damaged by fire and war several times, notably by Julius Caesar.
However, although lately this historical account has fallen out of favor (possibly due to politics), contemporary Arab sources say that, upon the capture of the city by the Caliph Omar in 642, he ordered the deliberate burning of the entire collection. Supposedly he justified this mass destruction of knowledge by saying "Either the books agree with the Koran, in which case they are not needed, or they do not agree with the Koran, in which case they are not wanted."
That destruction of knowledge to keep it from spreading is wrong was not lost on Italian author Umberto Eco. He based his best-selling 1980 medieval mystery The Name of the Rose around the efforts of a misguided blind (both literally and symbolically) Benedictine monk to prevent a book of Aristotle's poetry that he considers heretical from being translated. So sure is he that this knowledge is too dangerous to publish that he is willing to kill at least four people to prevent it.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that the burying (not banning, although it wouldn't surprise me if that comes next) of six Dr. Seuss books is far from these catastrophic losses were or would have been. What's disturbing to me is the approval of this censorship by those on the left and among the woke community. These books are far from the first books to be disapproved of or banned from school libraries. However, in the past the left has almost always stood AGAINST the banning of books. Time and again the left has stood against the banning or disapproval of the works of J.K. Rowling (magic and somewhat adult themes), Ann M. Martin (maturation and sexuality issues), Philip Pullman (atheism and church-bashing) and Judy Blume (sexual maturation issues, sometimes discussed quite frankly).
However, there have been exceptions in the past, like Mark Twain (less than politically correct attitudes toward race), and now attempts to bury Laura Ingalls Wilder (same reason). I think I even heard of one anecdote in which lefty parents in one district tried to ban the Chronicles of Narnia, due to the not so subtle pro-Christian underlying message.
The inescapable conclusion is that the left is only against censorship when the material being censored is part of the agenda they favor. Otherwise they will gleefully and smugly censor, crush, and bury any material that isn't part of their agenda, and applaud themselves for keeping those bad, unprogressive thoughts out of circulation.
Six silly kids' books of silly poetry with images that some folks have decided are offensive are hardly consequential in and of themselves. In fact this cancellation looks ironic in light of the fact that they were written by a man very progressive for his time, with messages such as environmentalism (The Lorax), try new things (Green Eggs and Ham), compromise (The Zax), tyranny is bad (Yertle the Turtle) and racism is VERY bad (The Sneetches). The point isn't the books. The point is the precedent that burying them and self-applauding sets. In Nazi Germany you couldn't play American jazz music, because some of it originated with musicians who were black or Jewish. There were over 40 authors of all nationalities banned, either because they were Jewish or because they were communists, pacifists, or had the quaint idea that Germany shouldn't go back down the failed path of empire. In Soviet Russia any kind of non-Communist literature was prohibited including the Bible. Under Pol Pot almost any kind of book was banned, and just being too well-read would get you taken out to the Killing Fields and clubbed to death with a pick or a hoe. The implementation may have been swift, but the idea behind it, that thought that the leadership doesn't like should be banned, was a long time in coming and started with the idea that some thoughts and ideas were just not ok and the world would be better off without them.
My question is, just who appointed the political left the moral censors for everyone else? I'm a grownup, and I'll decide what I want to read or not, thank you. I'm not a parent, but if I were, I'd decide what my children were allowed to read and not., no one else. If I decide I want to read Game of Thrones, which is pretty brutal and disgusting in parts, I'll do it, and if I decide that particular decapitation or disembowelment is one too many and I'm going to put it down, I'll do that too. If I decide I want to read Tom Clancy, with his righty/boy scout/Irish Catholic middle management saves the day ideas, I will, and if I decide to read John Grisham, with his clever outsider outwits the system yet again ideas, I will. If I don't want my young son to read "Oliver Button is a Sissy," because I don't like the message that it's ok not to be manly and into sports, then I'll keep it out of the house, and if I don't want a teen daughter reading the Twilight series because I think it paints an unhealthy view of relationships and what they're about, I'll tell her she can't bring it into this house and if I catch her reading it on the sly there will be the kind of consequences that can't be comfortably ignored and will make her think twice about disobeying again.
My point is these decisions are ones that are supposed to be made at the individual level, and not "curated" by a few executives and administrators who decide this is acceptable and this is not, and if it's not, we're going to bury it and tell those mere ordinaries out there this is not who we are anymore and it's for their own good. Just who is anyone else to tell me who I am? Just who is anyone else to say who we are? How is it anyone's business who anyone else is? I am not interested in having some bureaucrat looking to virtue signal tell me what I can buy and how. I am not interested in some woke techie with a ZZ Top beard and a nose ring decide my ideas are too dangerous to go outside my house. Talk about who we aren't supposed to be. However, the irony is lost on them, I'm sure.
Oh, and one other thing. The people telling us what books need to be yanked from publication are the same people who were toppling statues and saying smugly, "if you still want these people you can read about them in the books." Now the books are potentially getting taken away too. This should bother you. If this doesn't bother you either you are too woke to get through to or too apathetic to care.
In the meantime, what am I bid for this book? You won't just be getting a book of silly poetry, you'll be getting a piece of history and a piece of freedom.
Steven Olivo is a state attorney who resides in New Jersey. The article first appeared on Olivo's personal Facebook page. Reprinted by Don McCullen with permission from the author.