Give Me Liberty
or Give Me Fluff
E Pluribus Unum
On Friday, I enjoyed one of the greatest treats of my adult life.
On the way to the offices of the North American Review, my good friend Emily had a work-related errand. (Emily is managing editor there, and editor of the eMag Mag Pie.) It was the kind of errand you read about in the New York Times, or ArtScene.
Gary Kelley, the fabulous illustrator (whose work has found home in publications such as Time, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker — and corporate gigs like the NFL, the NBA, Barnes and Noble, and the Kentucky Derby) had work ready to be picked up for the magazine.
His studio is a magical place. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves full of miscellany and scholarly monographs. Walls papered with posters from iconic concerts. Gorgeous mid-century modern furniture. And, of course, his drafting table and easel.
On a table along one of the walls, I was intrigued to see a work in progress — an intense portrait of the Führer himself, Adolf Hitler.
Kelley, who also illustrates for books, was fumbling around finding the pieces he’d promised Emily. As he did so, she asked about a stack of items nearby, which also seemed to be in-process. Somewhat excitedly, he informed us that, yes, the publisher he’d just worked with was putting out a second volume, and he would be drawing and painting for that one as well.
The first volume was about the burning of books. The second would be about the banning of them.
“I like having the opportunity to draw these kinds of dramatic stories — I don’t always like to do pretty stuff,” Kelley said.
I chimed in about the subject matter and we had a brief, foreboding conversation about what all three of us perceived as a rise in Fascistic attitudes.
It was one of those abbreviated “we’re all aware and concerned about this” kinds of conversations. The kind where it’s like “onward and upward, let’s not dwell on this.” We had a magazine to get to, and Mr. Kelley had beauty to create.
The kind of beauty that would soon cause readers to look deeply, and for some time, into darkness.
At the risk of a hard Left, I would like to opine about something I’m sure you already know.
Whether you’re “progressive” or “conservative” (and I mean actually conservative, not one of these Conservative in Name Only types who support a strong man), hopefully you know that, in a Liberal society, the free exchange of ideas is essential.
There’s been a tendency of late to conflate the right for parents to have a say in whether their children receive hormone treatments with so called “Culture War” debates. This has resulted in a number of states bleaching their school libraries, probably unnecessarily. Instead of allowing teens to read about things that speak to their experience, these allegedly sober adults are instead attempting to censor their thinking. (Which is, of course, laughable, as there is this thing called the Internet.)
To educate means “to draw forth.” It’s related to concepts in Ancient philosophy, where Socrates was often called a midwife. The process of education involves allowing young people to learn to think for themselves. In this era, like it or not, “identity” is one of the big concepts that young people are working through.
The solution to a perceived confusion about gender in these students is not to try to prevent them from reading the books we think confuse them. Rather, it is to write, publish, and then purchase better books. More, it is to teach them, as best we can, how to actually read.
This is called “Democracy.”1 Tomorrow, we celebrate the first modern stab at it — the decision by a cluster of thirteen young States to secede from the rule of a King abroad and set out to draft a constitution.
Part of the concern about these books is that children often model themselves (although they’d be loathe to admit it) on the behavior of the adults around them. Allowing them degenerate books (I assume the logic goes) will render them vulnerable to predatory misguidance.
But what we’re really doing is showing them that adults act in knee-jerk ways, and that their school library is a political battleground (as almost every institution seems to have become. Perhaps that’s part of Democracy, too).
This is especially unhelpful and disruptive for students who grow up in homes with trans parents, who are getting the message in their subculture that the United States is an oppressive place, where a minority (and it is a minority) of mean people are doing everything they can to deny their existence. And, increasingly, they’re being told that only women and gay men read. (My apologies for my lackluster nomenclature.)
Where is the push to buy more books of a kind to give them a better story?
If you want to go to your local school board meeting and ask them,“What the hell is your purchasing policy?,” please do! That’s democracy, too.
But don’t vandalize gay teachers’ front lawns and, for St. Peter’s sake, don’t scream at the people in the meeting.
We’re better than this.
Instead, pull out a copy of the catalog of the Jefferson library (his personal became the first Library of Congress) and ask “What is this Weak Tea you’re serving?”
Last I checked, we’re still not technically a Theocracy.