Letter to the Editor: Louisiana Senate Bill 7 is authoritarian

BY MICHAEL RUSSO

In the 1930s and ‘40s, the National Socialist German Workers Party seized control of every newspaper in Germany, shutting down many and controlling the rest with an iron hand. The German people would receive only the information the German government wanted them to receive.

It is the same in present day Russia, in which every independent news agency has been shuttered so that now Russian citizens believe what they are told to believe by their government.

The same process of information control is in its early stages in this country, in the United States of America. Libraries and schools all over the country are being vilified and victimized by self-righteous crypto-authoritar-

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ians for the purpose of denying citizens access to information.

It is certainly understood by those who are behind this movement that people who are kept in ignorance are more easily manipulated, more malleable, more gullible than those who embrace reality through the acquisition of information.

Attorney General Jeff Landry has taken his place among crypto-authoritarians by declaring war on information, by declaring war on public libraries. To believe Landry is to believe that public libraries are dens of iniquity bent on corrupting innocent children and transforming them into degenerate monsters by filling their shelves with “sexually explicit” material and eagerly providing said material to minors. It’s that disturbingly simple.

Based on this very false rationalization, Landry is proposing to limit access to certain kinds of information by certain kinds of library patrons.

In fabricating this issue that has worked for other Republican politicians, Landry has also inferred his opposition to the first amendment. Freedom of the press implies the concomitant freedom to read. For a child’s parent to forbid their child to read something is one thing: it is, after all, the right and duty of every parent to raise their child as they see fit.

It is quite another thing, however, for that decision to be made by the state. Landry’s proposed solution to this imagined problem is legislation that absolves parents of all such responsibility and places that burden totally on librarians. The irony of this level of government intrusion by “small government” officials should be obvious.

But this authoritarian power grab will not stop with public libraries. If Landry’s proposed legislation passes, there will be other targets, other legislation: school libraries and academic libraries will certainly come under Landry’s stern scrutiny.

And after that, newspapers and other mass media, and publishing companies, until no one can say or even think anything not approved by Landry or whoever might happen to hold the levers of power. This is a nightmare scenario only George Orwell could have scripted.

Censorship is a heinous thing. It is sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, oftentimes cos - tumed in the habiliments of virtue. Landry’s campaign to censor public libraries will not end here, should he succeed. It will continue until the absence of freely available information transforms American society into something unrecognizable.

This critique is not intended to endorse giving libraries a free hand to provide inappropriate material to minors. Rather, it is intended to endorse the common sense idea of letting librarians and parents do their jobs without government interference. It is also intended as a warning to ivory tower academics who may think they are above this sort of thing: not only is Big Brother watching you, professors, but he is salivating at the thought of caging you as well.

Senate Bill 7 must not pass.

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Albert Camus

French philosopher 1913 — 1960