You Can Ban Books, But You Can't Ban Truth
Ideas will spread faster than government efforts to stamp them out
The fascist wave of book banning in public schools is depressing and dangerous, but let's also take Mr. Rogers's advice and look for the helpers, like Ryan Higgins, owner of the Comics Conspiracy comics shop in Sunnyvale, California. When Mr. Higgins heard last week that the McMinn County School Board had banned Art Spiegelman's graphic Holocaust memoir Maus from its eighth-grade language arts curriculum, he rush-ordered 100 copies of The Complete Maus, because he had a feeling the book would very soon be hard to find.
No, this is not a story of eBay profiteering. Higgins wanted to have at least 100 copies to give away free to anyone who wanted one in McMinn County. As Higgins told the Washington Post, the comic book memoir — in which Spiegelman tells the story of his father's survival of Auschwitz as well as the story of his own painful relationship with his father, Vladek — changed the way he thought about comics and what they can be, and how he understood the Holocaust.
One of the sure ways to recognize that democracy is dying is when ideas become the enemy. When people react to ideas that threaten them by banning the media that present them, it’s a short distance to groupthink and official oppression. So when the McMinn, Tennessee, County School Board banned the graphic novel, Maus, from its curriculum last month, not everyone took the decision sitting down.
This is the story of how Ryan Higgins became our Hero of Free Thought. He could have, like most Americans, bemoaned such a short-sighted and ignorant decision. Higgins, though, decided to do something to make a dent in the air of short-sighted ignorance and censorship in McMinn County.
Higgins offered, via Twitter, to send a copy of Maus to the first 100 children in McMinn county who wanted one. All they had to do was to send him their address via direct message. It’s costing the children and their families nothing; Higgins is covering the shipping.
Reading Maus opened my eyes. I remember thinking, "This is about more than superheroes fighting bad guys." It was heartbreaking and emotional, and it brought a whole new window to something I had little knowledge about….
It’s a brilliant piece of work that gets across its message to readers of all ages. That’s the thing about comic books — they’re great for every age bracket. It’s crazy that anyone would want to remove Maus.
This isn’t the first time Higgins has done this, either. As he’s come across stories of other banned comic books, he’s stepped up and taken similar action. And in the 16 years he’s owned his comic book store, he’s made sure to have copies of Maus in stock.
One has to wonder what the McMinn County School Board felt they’re protecting students from. In the Internet age, it stands to reason that students have been exposed daily to far worse than anything they’d come across in Maus. Students need to learn about the Holocaust, a subject that seems to be taught with less frequency these days.
Surveys have shown that American students are increasingly less familiar with the facts of the Holocaust than past generations. This gross educational error cannot be allowed to continue. Before long, we’ll have an entire generation who know nothing of the six million Jews murdered by the Third Reich.
At the risk of giving the book-banners any credit at all, the controversy over their small-minded move is sure to introduce Maus to tens of thousands of new readers — various editions of both the two-volume original and the complete, one-volume edition spent the weekend at or near the top of Amazon's best seller list[.]
As is often the case, when someone tries to suppress an idea, it brings more attention to that idea. In the case of Maus, it’s well-deserved. I must confess that I’ve never read the book, though I’ve been meaning to pick it up. I plan to rectify that oversight soon.
The effort to stamp out ideas, especially in today’s hyper-connected world, can never truly succeed. Someone somewhere will recognize what’s happening, sound the alarm, and others will pick up the battle. Maus, which hasn’t received much attention until recently, deservedly hovers near #1 on Amazon. The fine and righteous people on the McMinn County School Board undoubtedly never intended for that to happen, but they have only themselves to blame.
Ideas have a way of taking on a life of their own, especially when they’re connected to the truth. You might think you’re limiting who has access to that truth, but all you’re doing is giving it oxygen and ultimately exposing even more people to it.
In a functional democracy, ideas and truth are the coins of the realm…and they’re tough to stamp out. The harder you work to suppress them, the more they will make their way to new eyes and ears. Unfortunately, in a world where information travels faster than the speed of light, governments have yet to learn that suppressing ideas is no longer possible.
Not as long as people like Ryan Higgins walk this Earth.
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