Libraries are hubs for learning, entertainment, freedom, and knowledge. Now, members of our government want to take that away from us. 

      In the wake of hundreds of book bans within the past four years, state governments are simply resorting to closing whole libraries, barring civilians from resources that we’ve had access to for centuries. According to Vox, “Lawmakers in Llano County, Texas, weighed closing public libraries this spring instead of following a court order to return banned books to the shelves.” 

      These are the people that are in charge of our country; people who, instead of following simple court orders, want to shut down whole institutions because they didn’t get what they want. How reasonable.

     America is supposed to be a democracy where we are guaranteed the right to access information under the First Amendment. We are entitled to writing, reading, education, and all the other perks of libraries. These lawmakers want to steal that from us – they want to adopt un-American policies to keep the next generations of students, workers, and other Americans in line.

     A lot of these bans are based on ‘grooming’ accusations. Grooming, according to Metropolitan Police, is when a person “builds a relationship with a child, young person, or an adult who’s at risk so they can abuse them and manipulate them into doing things.” When you put that into perspective, it makes you wonder if these politicians actually know what they’re talking about; where is the ‘relationship’ here? Where’s the ‘trust’?

     Oh, wait – there is none, because it’s not grooming. They’re just saying anything to try and get what they want, which is causing nothing but damage to innocent people. Librarians in particular are under fire; The New York Times reports that, “Some libraries have received bomb threats; others are at risk of having their funding slashed, or even face closure, over disputes about book removals. In some instances, librarians have been harassed, threatened, and called groomers and pedophiles.”

     Librarians, in their heroic resistance to these challenges, are being treated like criminals. It’s very ironically similar to that of the Salem Witch Trials, or even the McCarthy Witch Hunts of the mid-20th century, where innocent people are being attacked by politicians because of plain paranoia. And, like the former examples, they’re being quite hateful about it, too. Some people are even demanding that those books be destroyed, such as Bryan Dawson, the president of conservative newsite 1819 News, who casually wrote, “Burn the freaking books. Burn them. I don’t care.”

     Now, let’s think back to history. Who were a group of hateful and omnipresent criminals who happened to burn books to keep information from the public eye? The correct answer is the Nazis. 

     People are considering adopting Nazi practices to get what they want. If you have any sense of morality, you should be concerned.     

     Another irony within this issue is the fact that this is flat out censorship. According to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the books being targeted mostly consist of books by authors of color, LGBTQ+ writers, and people who write about heavy subjects, like sexual assault.

     Censorship in a country that guarantees the right to free speech and press. Censorship in a country that condemns censorship in other countries, such as China and Russia. Censorship from the people who complain about being ‘silenced’ on social media. The hypocrisy is palpable.

     This whole situation is a battle between American values and hypocrisy. On one end, you have libraries, which are vital in any country as a means for knowledge, technology, and education. On the other, there’s the people who are willing to throw that all away to push a dangerous political agenda; an agenda which, if left unchecked, will leave the future generations of Americans uneducated, philistine, and unaware.

     Forget an American dream – this is an American nightmare.