In regards to the recent Tribune article, “It’s official: These 13 books are now banned from all public schools in Utah”:
My favorite bookstore, Denver’s The Tattered Cover, furnishes bookmarks featuring the Barbara Tuchman quote: “Books are humanity in print.”
Humanity is the real target behind Utah’s recent book ban. The governor’s unforgivable edict attacks the humanity of the targeted authors, denying readers the opportunity to step outside of themselves and experience the thoughts and ideas of others.
I find it hard to believe that in what we call, with some irony, the 21st century, the dark side still struggles to return us to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the Middle Ages. With their little rat claws scratching away at the rich legacy of humanism and rational inquiry ushered in by the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason one chip at a time, they expose their longing for feudal social control.
Who’s next on the list? That racy Shakespeare, already a target in the Banana Republic of Florida? That naughty Voltaire? The subversives Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau? The evil socialists Jack London and Upton Sinclair? Surely the iconoclast Mark Twain has a place?
And, although this is somewhat of a cheap shot, of which I am not above: When can we expect to see librarians attacked by the state’s minions and marched off to prison, silhouetted in the flames of burning book bonfires?
“Fahrenheit 451″ isn’t far off, is it?
Unjust laws — and the venal, base politicians who railroad them through the process — deserve only contempt. It is now for the courts to clear the air of the stench of this foul legislative excrement and restore some sort of sanity.
Gaylan Johnson, Mundelein, Illinois
