Monday, December 5, 2016

Banning Books

Upfront-yes, the language in many books written in a different time period is offensive and shouldn't be used in polite society today. No doubt whatsoever that certain terminology from the 1950's is rude and classless to use today. Not only is it rude but frequent use of certain words does indicate a racist, pure and simple. No, that's not me being PC or an obnoxious social justice warrior. Racial, religious and ethnic slurs are rude and highly insulting.  

None of that is to say that books containing those words should be banned. Quite the opposite. If you can't get by the language used in those books you are no better than a right wing zealot talking about vulgar language in a book about World War II or Vietnam. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is one of the greatest war novels ever written. It's rated R for content and certainly should be. I am sure that a fussy religious person would raise hell about reading something like that but they are missing out as well, big time. It's their loss in the end and does make them a philistine. The exact same thing can be said about the left wing social justice warriors who also want to ban things. 

An LDS in favor of banning books should seriously reconsider their belief immediately. If they are in favor of banning Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, who is to say that the Book of Mormon won't be next? I'm not saying that banning books is an LDS thing, it was just the first thing to came to mind. We all know that the stereotype of book burners is that of religious people-in the past that was true but now it's more likely to be left wing social justice warriors who find the language in Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird offensive. 

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