Somewhere along the line, the people who run our public libraries must have gotten really bored and decided to spice things up a bit. What did they have to lose? Politically they were mostly all on the far reaches of the illiberal left, and they were, after all, using public money. And importantly, they enjoyed little to no oversight of their activities: the books they buy and promote, the programs they sponsor, the exhibits that adorn the library space. None of their activity is constrained by oversight from any elected official, and none is guided by principles of equality, fairness, representativeness that those spending public money should be guided by.
Here are three quick examples of the problem, and a humbly offered nudge that would start to get things back where they belong.
In my Ames Public Library I counted hundreds of books on Social Justice or race issues. There looked to be almost no subjects better represented in their stacks than books about race and race issues. But what was almost entirely missing were books that presented this subject from a conservative perspective.
Thinking it may have been an oversight, I offered to provide new copies of books by notable black authors like Thomas Sowell, Jason Riley, Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, John McWhorter, Wilfred Reilly and Shelby Steele. My offer was rejected flat out. Some were too old, they said – even though they were newer than the vacuous anti-racist books by Ibram X. Kendi, which they had available in triplicate. No guidelines exist for how public libraries represent the public interest with public money.
The second example is the political activism the public libraries now engage in. A public information request showed that the American Library Association (ALA) and the Iowa Library Association (ILA) are politically motivated organizations, pushing out an almost daily stream of social activism, political justice messaging to member libraries.
This political organization was made abundantly clear after the passing of SF 496. The law was designed to remove sexually explicit material from the school libraries, but it was the public libraries that quickly organized, hired expensive lawyers (with public money), hired a public relations firm (with public money), and engaged the willfully negligent Iowa press (The Des Moines Register, Iowa Public Radio, the Cedar Rapids Gazette and others) to fabricate a myth about book bans and the Republican threat to our Constitutional Freedoms.
None of this political theater would have been possible without the millions of dollars taxpayers send to our public libraries and their parent organizations every year. With public money should come public responsibility – not perfect freedom to entertain our wildest political fantasies.
The final example is the most disturbing. While our legislators were crafting reasonable laws that limit children’s access to mind warping sexually explicit material, the public libraries were enhancing their systems to deliver much more graphic, explicit material to children of any age than has ever been found in any school library.
I think it’s fair to ask whether public libraries should be providing sexually graphic eBooks, audio books and streaming movies to people of any age. But I know the vast majority of Iowans would be horrified to find their young children listening to the audio book Lolita, or watching graphic sexual acts in streamed R rated movies.
And yet the public library systems we paid for do just that. Any child of any age can immediately access any of the content in our public libraries, any time day or night, regardless of how inappropriate that material is. Take a look at some of the R rated movies, graphic novels and audio books that are available at Iowa’s libraries and ask yourself how any responsible adult could have ever thought providing this material to six and seven and eight year old children could possibly be OK?
Those who run our libraries have indeed wandered far from their lane. No one has given them the responsibility for the social engineering reigns they have grabbed. No one has asked them to be the moral arbiters of our children’s media consumption.
We have a special responsibility to protect children who cant protect themselves. We require builders to place fences around swimming pools, and parents to use kid’s seats in their cars. So demanding our public libraries to do their part in protecting their young, developing minds from the harm we know comes from inappropriate, sexual material is not asking too much.
Of course parents should do their part. But when our public institutions allow children sitting in the school library or getting dropped off by the bus after school to easily access the most explicit adult content, the parents’ job becomes infinitely more difficult.
The lack of oversight and the steady flow of public money has created a runaway train of political activism that has to be slowed. The very least – and this is my humble suggestion – is a requirement that any entity receiving substantial tax payer support be required to sign a legally enforceable pledge to be respectful of all taxpayers opinions, values and morals. Not just those that happen to align with their leaders’ ideologies.
That pledge should be first to avoid displays or activities that manifest political ideologies. We don’t need the ILA burning up tax dollars pushing out equity messaging to library directors. We don’t need local libraries spending money on displays of happy transgendered youth, or transvestites reading programs for children. We just don’t. And if they spend tax money on materials, like books, journals, videos, etc, every effort should be made to ensure those materials represent both sides of political issues.
This is not an idea that will solve all the serious issues with our public libraries, but it’s a step in the right direction. Effort has to be made to bring the libraries – especially the leadership in the ILA – back into their lane and away from the political siren song that has led them off course.
- Joe Monahan
Boone
I want to add that I spoke with the library directors in Ames, IC, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and davenport about this. All of them acknowledged that the most sexually explicit adult material in their libraries is indeed immediately available to children of any age simply by clicking on the download buttons.
But get this – every one of them pushed the responsibility off on the parents! As if parents aren’t frazzled enough trying to keep their kids away from the hoards of obscene material online, now we have our very own public libraries to fend off!
I asked them if they thought the adult material was appropriate for kids and they acknowledged that it was not. And so I asked them why they didnt take the necessary steps to correct the situation and they had no reply.
They seem to *want* this sort of soft-core porn to be available, or else simply dont care enough to fix their sloppy system.
Unacceptable guys. Fix it or find somebody who can.