Letting The Side Down...

Yup, I've gone missing for a few days.  Sorry about that.  New puppy, overtime, big changes around here, and ... well, life in general.  I do recall them telling us as we finished high school that we were ready for the world.  Hardly.

I do know that my children did get a better education than I did, in part from me, and in part from their schooling.  I mean, I left high school never having had to balance a check book, never really exposed to difficult concepts like "which bills to pay when money is short" and the like.  I've learned, over the years.  First step is to insure the roof over your head stays there.  Second would be to insure you can get back and forth, if needed, to the thing that continues to permit you to afford that which you can.  Then worry about utilities - heat, electric, water are kind of essential in that they keep the area under that roof livable.  Food is good.  Healthcare is good.  If you haven't been faced with any hard choices by that point, you're doing damned well.

As we are, these days.  Life, the universe, and everything continues to turn and not look to take a bite out of me.  Granted, I'm back down to a two-person household, with two satellite households that I care for very, very deeply, but they do seem to be moving forward in the world in decent comfort.  So I'm doing good there.

On other fronts, as I noted in the "local" newspaper yesterday, the culture wars have arrived in my home town.  I suppose Burnsville is my home town now, as it is where I have spent a majority of my adult life.  I grew up north of St. Cloud, and left there at the "tender" age of 26.  I lived for a few months in Lauderdale, Edina, and Richfield before moving south of the river to Burnsville for twelve years, a few months short of ten years in Savage, then back to Burnsville for the last 11.  So yup, here I yam.  Short a lottery win, likely to remain for those few years I have left.

But there's a local group called "Mothers for Liberty" who are seeking to have several books banned from the local library.  So here we go.  

The thing is, books are about ideas.  They expose people to different ideas.  I've read books about military service.  About battles.  About outright crimes.  Does that make me a service man?  Does that turn me into a killer?  I've read books about Nazi Germany, Communism, and many other forms of government.  Does that make me a Nazi?  A Communist?  I've read books about slavery.  Does that make me a slave owner?  Or a slave?  

It's ironic how so many groups these days name themselves after that exact ideal which they oppose.  "Mothers for Liberty" are all about censorship.  And I know from books which I've read that it takes very little force at all to convince someone of an idea they might want to oppose if they are unaware of the alternative.  It's all about control of information, all about telling people how you wish them to think.  And there's the other problem - once a system has been designed with bias towards certain points of view, it can be co-opted.  That is, if the folks who think planting cabbage in all of the open spaces might make the world a better place, and enact regulations to insure this happens, when the people who come to power who prefer beets, the cabbages will be rendered extinct, as the beet people will use the same regulations and rules, with a few tweaks, to make the world the way they wish it to be.

If, however, the cabbage and beet people can get together and acknowledge that not only those two, but many other crops can make a menu, well, then we all get to get along with our favorites - and most importantly, we don't give birth to a group who chooses to tell others that beets AND cabbages are evil, come join the carrot army!

The bottom line, when it comes to censorship like this, however, is really that the parents mistrust their children.  I taught my children things every day.  Some were intended.  Some were unintended.  Some were downright mistakes.  But the bottom line is that they did grow.  And more importantly, they grew into adults who could use their brains.  Parents who seek to censor the world their children live in are absolutely afraid.  I understand that now.  They're afraid their children have not absorbed and taken to heart what they want them to think.  They're absolutely terrified that their children have not been turned into Mini-Mes that will save the world for them.  They're just terrified their children didn't adopt their indoctrination.  

I'm not.  I did not seek to indoctrinate my children.  I sought to make them think for themselves.  A person who can think for themselves can evaluate those ideas presented in books, in media, in any sort of information provided to them.  They're capable of discerning the difference between truth, ideas, falsehoods, outright lies, and those who present themselves as the sole authority, capable of calling other information "alternative facts".  We've had more than a few years now of outright lies and deceptive people presenting themselves as authorities.  

Would this country exist with censorship?  Would the idea that every person here is capable of self-governing behavior exist?  Or would we still hold slaves?  Would we see any sort of scientific idea as evil?  It's pretty clear - we're a people of ideas, of advancement, and of the capability to do both great and terrible things.  Thanks to modern DNA analysis, my children know that they are both of central European heritage and have a bit of Jewish ancestry.  So when they read about Anne Frank, they have "blood" in both sides of that terrible history, and they are capable of knowing not only which side was right and which was wrong, but they also can see the steps in history which led from peaceful coexistence to one group shoving other people into ovens and showers to die.  

Censorship that would protect our children from painful history such as this serves to make them less human.  Ideas teach, often right from wrong, and very often, we do find that what was thought to be "right" is eventually confirmed to be downright evil.  Ethnic prejudices have over the years been disproved, and we are now closer to the ideal that all of us have been created equally.  We no longer look upon a part of our population as only three-fifths of a person, we no longer see a "weaker sex" and we know young and old are often equally competent.  Would that soon we could recognize those that seek to censor are merely terrified individuals who do not wish to be challenged on an idea because they know their position is sadly out of touch with the real world.