Book-burning was also a central strategy employed by Mao in the murderous “Cultural Revolution” of 1966 through 1976.īook-burning is always a detestable act. Book-burning was a major feature of Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jewish people and their contributions to society. British troops vengefully torched the United States Library of Congress during the War of 1812. The Great Library of Alexandria and its manuscripts were burned several times, including a partial destruction when Julius Caesar laid siege to Alexandria in 48 BC and a complete destruction when Caliph Omar invaded the city in AD 642. In 213 BC, the newly crowned Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the torching of books so that he would not be compared to rulers of the past. The suppression and destruction of authors and their books has always been a weapon of repression. It’s the next-worst thing to book-burning. But censorship is the suppression of speech or public communication, whether it is conducted by governments or private institutions or an Internet petition. Many people mistakenly think that only governments can censor. All attempts to silence political, religious, and philosophical viewpoints are wrong-headed and a violation of our American freedoms. To me, viewpoint censorship is always wrong, no matter who is doing it. I’ve seen attacks on our First Amendment freedoms from both the Left and Right. What’s at stake here is a vital and transcendent principle-the principle of free speech. I don’t care about the politics of the author or the politics of the petitioners. If you want to know, I’m sure you can google it easily enough. I’m not going to say who the author is or what the book is supposedly about.
The petitioners state, “We are not calling for censorship.” Yet the point of their petition is to demand that a publisher cancel a book deal and deplatform an author. Fact is, none of the petition signers have any idea what’s in the book, because it hasn’t been written yet.
The publication of the book in question would not destroy anyone’s rights. How I use my speech is 100 percent my call. Hold it right there! How can you say you “care deeply” about free speech-then complain that someone “misuses” free speech by speaking or publishing a viewpoint you dislike? The word free in “free speech” means that no one else gets to decide how I use (or “misuse”) my speech.
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