Ever Vigilant

Kevin Melrose in his blog made many of us aware of the Wall Street Journal’s article questioning the need to champion freedom of information.  After all, the writer says, most of us are not aware of widespread federal bans in recent history. He also points out that citizens have a right to air grievances against the government. To an extent, on those two accouts, he has a point, but it misses the whole issue.  Having many friends on the right and left who are uneasy about some of the books that libraries lend, I can understand some where they are coming from, but their solutions are misguided.

There is still a great need to protect our right to information (which is really right to ideas). For starters, we forget that the freedom of the press was a hard won right. Whenever there have been powerful governments, the tendency has been towards censorship. This spans from fascist states to communist states to dictatorships or theocracies. Freedom of the press in the west is a rather recent privilege, and in much of the world, it still is not.

Secondly, we need to be aware that there are always people or groups, whether liberal or conservative, who would rather have some material be removed. Within a week of obtaining my MLIS, a friend of mine who is a conservative political activist asked me why we have certain books in the library. I told her first that I am everyone’s librarian and not just hers. I also pointed out to her that many of the books that she values most had been challenged. In my current library, in the nine years that I have been here, we have only had one book challenged. That book was challenged because someone felt it was anti-feminist. For whatever reason, there are those who would chip away at our rights to have and express ideas which may not be all that popular to some.

One thing that we have to keep in mind is that freedoms are not irrevocable. A constitution is only affective if it is supported by the majority of the people. Even in our own constitution, there is granted the ability to ratify what it written. We may not experience a coup or revolution in our own lifetime, but opinions can be slowly worked on over the course of generations. It may be our grandkids who do not have access to classics, religious texts or opposing political views. The maintaining of rights necessitates constant vigilance.

At the heart of the issue is a misguided presupposition: that if certain ideas were removed from the public discourse, then the world would be a better place. The problem is that everyone assumes that only the other views will be stricken. History shows us that when censorship happens, it is not the most “right” who wins, but the most powerful. Everyone else is the looser. Also, it need not be the federal government: local governments can be just as threatening to our rights. It is at this level that most of the battles have been waged.

I have two aims in sharing these ideas in this fashion. The first is to address central issues in a coolheaded fashion, which includes listening to the other side. Secondly, I wanted to give librarians (especially new ones) some ideas on how to talk to detractors, particularly conservative ones, about the need for continued vigilance in protecting the right to information. As Thoreau once said, what is the point of the ability to read if we never read anything of any value.