Edward Walsh: On book bans, Moms for Liberty sure has a narrow view of liberty
Edward Walsh was the previous director of the Department of Christian Education for the Baptist Convention of New England, so you might expect him to have some sympathy for the folks at Moms for Liberty and their quest to clean up America’s school libraries. But his op-ed in the Charlotte Observer goes in a different direction.
If banning books in the libraries of our public schools and classrooms sounds dystopian or an action that only could transpire in totalitarian regimes such as that of Putin’s Russia, you might want to take a deep breath and learn more of the growing organization titled Moms for Liberty.
Our Founding Fathers — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin to name a few — were intelligent, free thinkers who read the classics of the literature of their era.
In addition, they were not Christians, they were Deists. Jefferson was known to have a copy of the Islamic faith’s holy book, the Quran, which he often consulted. Our Constitution was hammered out by way of compromise giving us the freedom of and from religion.
He offers some personal and historical perspective as well.
Banning books which offend a particular group of citizens and their religious/moral beliefs is a slippery slope into the darkness of the tyranny of the minority.
The banning of books has a long and tragic history in world history and is raising its ugly head once again in our nation. The impact of a warped and distorted sense of Christian nationalism and a depth of ignorance as to the origin and intended audience of the Critical Race Theory has spurred the growing cult of book banning in the growing presence of Moms for Liberty.
His bottom line on that group is blunt.
Moms for Liberty represents a tyranny of the minority seeking to subjugate the majority to the organization’s narrow view of “liberty.”