Banned Books discussion

This books is being challenged to be banned from NC schools.

http://www.slj.com/2013/11/censorship...

I find it funny that this is going down in Boone, as the biggest things in the whole town are fly fishing and Appalachian State University. I guess the locals like trout more than higher education.

I'm a North Carolinian ... well, I have been for the last 30 years. I live in one of the more liberal area of the state but I still see this kind of activity.

I firmly believe that the minority rights must be protected but it doesn't mean that we can allow minority opinions to censor what others read.

Thank you, Wes, for sharing the article.

Utterly ridiculous. I LOVE Allende as an author, am slowly working my way through her more easily obtained published works, & this was a WONDERFUL book!

Those who want books they find problematic and offensive banned from classrooms always claim that it is somehow their freedom of expression that is being denied and thwarted when books they personally find offensive are included in the school curriculum, are read and discussed at school, university, college. Yes, these individuals do absolutely have the right to find any given books offensive, and those who are parents also have the right to perhaps limit what their own children are permitted to read (although I also think that children, especially older children and teenagers have the right or should have the right to defy their parents, to openly and without shame read what they want to read and not what their parents dictate they should be allowed to read).

However, it is the ultimate in hypocrisy and dual standarding when the potential banners, the challengers of books pontificate about their freedom of speech and human rights but then believe that they somehow have the right or should have the right to impose their worldview, their narrow-mindedness on everyone. But frankly, the schoolboards etc. who cave in to these individuals and special interest groups are equally to blame, and perhaps sometimes (or even often) more to blame for this, because all it takes for democracy and freedom to be thwarted and lessened is or at least can be for individuals, for groups, for society to cave in to special interest groups, to cave in to those individuals who strive to dictate what people read, how people think, how people are supposed to act, and the list goes on and on.

Also, and finally, it never ceases to amaze me that especially in the United States of America, supposedly "the land of the free" there is (even today and perhaps even more so today) such a strong and undemocratic movement by some to get books banned and censored. Listening to special interest groups and individuals is an important aspect of democracy; caving in to special interest groups (imposing the views of the few on the many, on everyone) is the very opposite of democracy.