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laurpr2 t1_j1u1x5r wrote

Reply to comment by Ren_tho in I just finished The Giver today. It was as good as I had anticipated. by TheKarolinaReaper

Correct. And notably, a book being "banned" in the US means that in certain jurisdictions public school teachers aren't allowed to make it mandatory reading and/or it's removed from the school library. In other words, the book isn't really banned at all as anyone and everyone is free to sell, buy, own and read it....which is definitely not the case throughout history and around the world.

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TheKarolinaReaper OP t1_j1u3kbx wrote

Very true, I just hope the banning doesn’t reach the level of severity like it has in the past or in other places. Public libraries are already under attack here in the U.S. Banning books is such a scary concept to me.

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laurpr2 t1_j1u3vwd wrote

Well, to get to that point the First Amendment would have to be more or less done away with, which is unlikely to ever happen as long as the Constitution stands given 1) the difficulty of changing any part of the Constitution generally and 2) how closely integrated the First Amendment specifically is with American history and culture.

Edit: lol of course this got downvoted, this sub has a hard-on for thinking American readers are the most persecuted people in the world. Love that y'all think that Ukraine-style confiscation of Russian literature is right around the corner.

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PfizerGuyzer t1_j1ultef wrote

America has a gigantic amount of people with absolutely zero first amendment rights. Prisoners say hello.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vg1wc wrote

Hate to break it to you, but prisoners lose all sorts of rights. Whether they should have access to books like The Turner Diaries is a broader political question that has no place on this sub—not a sign that the government is about to come in and confiscate your copy of The Giver.

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andrew_justandrew t1_j1vqod9 wrote

That's actually very likely to happen. Just ask the U.S. Supreme Court.

Edit, to add: I don't mean that the U.S. Supreme Court currently appears poised to take away any more of our first amendment rights, just that they're really good at taking away rights in general.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vtv6t wrote

There have not even been any local attempts at book-banning in the US, much less a movement at the national level. There is zero reason to believe the Supreme Court will ever condone such a thing, and no legal basis for making that argument, either, as the First Amendment is extremely clear about it's protection of free speech rights.

By "they're really good at taking away rights in general," I assume you're talking about abortion rights. Well, abortion rights were basically created by the Supreme Court based on the argument that the the constitution establishes a right to privacy (this itself is established not explicitly in the Constitution but through a fairly complex legal argument about due process that you're welcome to Google), and because people know you've had sex if you get pregnant, you have the constitutional right to abortion as a means of protecting your privacy. That is tenuous legal footing to start with, all created by the Supreme Court and never placed in the Constitution itself....and what the Supreme Court giveth, the Supreme Court can almost as easily take away by saying "yeah, we think our earlier interpretation was wrong."

Conversely, the First Amendment as it pertains to freedom of speech in the publishing world is incredibly clear. The legal argument the court would have to make to permit book bans, even if they were so inclined to do so, would have to be even more convoluted than the creation of abortion rights....and said book bans would almost certainly be so wildly unpopular that it's likely Congress would act to reinforce free speech rights.

Book banning isn't going to happen.

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andrew_justandrew t1_j1vyjgs wrote

Hey, there. My comment was intended to be more of an off-hand remark as I was scrolling through the comments. I wasn't trying to prompt political debate, although I probably should have realized this possibility when I originally commented. I never said or meant to say that there was any sort of effort towards wide-spread book banning at the national level. My comment was more directed at your remark that the U.S. Constitution prevents rights from being taken away.

I don't really think this is the appropriate place to get into a political conversation about the Supreme Court, so I don't want to provoke further conversation. However, I will say this: I actually was not referring to abortion. I am very familiar with substantive due process, but I have no intention of getting into the specific subject of abortion in a subreddit about books (unless the book is about abortion, maybe...). When I wrote that comment, I was actually thinking about a Supreme Court decision that dropped this summer that held a citizen doesn't always have the right to assistance of a lawyer in court, in defiance of the Sixth Amendment. That was the example of the Supreme Court taking away rights—even enumerated rights—despite the Constitution. This was only the first example that popped into my mind, but there are so many examples of this, all unrelated to abortion, that you're welcome to Google.

Take care!

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laurpr2 t1_j1vzg35 wrote

>My comment was more directed at your remark that the U.S. Constitution prevents rights from being taken away.

I never said that.

I said that to get to the point of book banning (properly understood) the First Amendment would have to be more or less done away with, which is unlikely to ever happen as long as the Constitution stands given 1) the difficulty of changing any part of the Constitution generally and 2) how closely integrated the First Amendment specifically is with American history and culture.

Take care!

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Educational_Cream958 t1_j1u4k8j wrote

I'm not American and I had the book as a set book in high school and it allows for some wonderful conversations.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vfvdf wrote

Me too. Bit of a non sequitur really. Doesn't change the facts that "book banning" isn't really banning and that we should be honest about why the book has been challenged.

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