Thank you for the reassurance. I understand supply and demand, even when it comes to which books a library acquires.
As for the Trans “literature,” your explanation helps, a bit, but not entirely because if the Trans stuff is merely a fad, it has a very long shelf life (pardon the pun), having emerged more than a decade ago and seeming to be escalating, not waning. I know that many (liberal) school districts have been pushing for books in their libraries and classrooms celebrating Trans identity, and getting fierce pushback from concerned parents.
I also know that some cultural “fads” last a very long time. Do you know that CRT was launched into higher ed some 40 years ago, beginning its long, gradual seepage downward through the grades? Now elementary school kids are being ordered to report their pronouns, and CRT literature is in school libraries, while some public libraries promote Drag Queen Story Hours. If those woke, leftist books just sit on the shelves, not being circulated, while Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss are still often read, why shelve the garbage books at all? Librarians must have a great deal of discretion about which books get shelf space, which is obviously limited. Is there a fear of being protested, attacked and “cancelled” if certain books were chucked? (Sometimes it seems better to keep your head down and be quiet, hoping to avoid confrontation and chaos; I understand and respect that instinct.)
You are your librarian wife are fortunate to be associated with a professional school where you say the curriculum remains unobjectionably traditional, if somewhat boring. But that place still sounds like the exception, not the rule, given the extent to which university departments across the spectrum have been overtaken by leftist themes: DEI, CRT, BLM, allegedly systemic racism, manipulation of Covid data, rampant grade inflation. We’ve seen story after story describing aspects of that situation right here at the FP. And I am intimately familiar with the leftist infiltration of medical and law schools, and those professions across the board.
Anyway, I appreciate our discussion, and will continue using my library card regularly. Libraries obviously have an important place in our society; if they did not, people wouldn’t care what goes on there.
The only Swifties I'll acknowledge are the Brown Navy guys who fought with honour to stop Charlie, only to be betrayed by two Presidents, several Congresses, Hollyweird, and campuses across America.
The score-card:- China: betrayed and enslaved; North Korea: betrayed and enslaved; South East Asia: Betrayed and enslaved; Iraq/Kurdistan/Marshes: betrayed and enslaved not once, but twice, the Kurds freeing themselves while hindered by...? The Middle East & North Africa: betrayed, slavery and slaughter abounding. Ukraine: being betrayed; slaughter, corruption, and enforced conscription - slave soldiers - abounding; Russia: ditto. In these two cases corrrupt and evil factions in the US have enabled slavemasters BY COMISSION. Afghanistan: the promise of freedom, but the reality of thirty years of slaughter followed by offering the people as a holocaust to Iblis and shameful surrender.
Israel? Put your trust rather in Yahweh Sabaoth.
USA! USA! USA! Yeah; I don't fucking think so. Get off your fat arses in November and VOTE! It is time to ignore the siren drone of Never Trump and Never America. You rifle is your friend; but do you really want Lincoln and Lee's idea of 'Four More Years'?
Stefanik for Veep? Possibly; but she went straight from college to being a Beltway Babe and has double nought, blank, fuck-all experience of the real world. You want to get away from empowering apparatchicks(sic). DeSantis could work. Split the load: DeSantis does the actual government and Trump handles the vision, media, and the Twitter account :-)
That is only half sarcastic: those are the pairs actual strengths.
The main concern I have with a Trump Second Term is the obfuscation of what actually occurred regarding the "Pandemic". Trump is deeply implicated in the egregious error. One thing that needs exploring is the apparent fact, given the parties that were actually overseeing matters, the response actually looks like a hamfisted attempt to deal with what Trump/the Trump Administration seems to have seen more as a deliberate bioweapon attack than as an opportunistic and accidental public health threat.
The kludge and over-reaction juxtaposed with President Trump's "Chy-Nah" and "bleach" theatre seem to find more of an explanation of leaning into public perceptions of the President's character to deter from the elephant in the room: the China side of the incident looked very disturbingly like the first shots of WWIII and the maskirovka to hide that the fight was on.
I'm not joking: there is something very, very wrong with the OTT and lockstep reaction to what was far more a nothing-burger than anything else. You don't attribute agency to viruses but to state and "non-state" actors and far to much time was spent on don't do anything that might otherwise put eyes and minds on just what the hell was going on when we were all in a heightened awareness mode and might just grasp the right end of the stick with all the inevitable consequences of us being gods with the minds of two year-olds.
Enough, I know Americans in particular can't cope with too much reality at a time!
Ramaswamy is only "annoying" if the Democratic Party is still living rent-free in your head and you can't concede in your heart he has more sense in one neuron - even if he is snake-oil, than in your entire brain.
Books aren't being overtly banned; rather they are being ignored and most of the time not deliberately. See why most of the learning of the Classical world has disappeared and the ravings of Xtian loonies exist in hundreds of ancient copies. The 'Archimedes Palimpsest' was only recovered because what it was writen on had been scrubbed to write fucking hymns on! Islam is worse: if it isn't the Qur'an it 999 times won't get a look-in at all. Yes, it is down to ideology; but rarely consciously.
Perhaps we should choose a nice, quiet evening at home to dig up a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Read them. Think this through. Reflect on how l feel about these words, these unfathomablely deep ideas.... Reflect on how those l vehemently disagree with respond to these same ideas. We as a people are finding our way into opposing camps. We must find a way to the center where we can all get along well enough. If that is not realistically possible, to go back to the opening of the Declaration. For me, it DOES come back to consent of the governed. We, the people, DO NOT consent. Honestly??? Who has consented to this idiocy?
Ramaswamy was always in the race to benefit Trump, a bit of a stalking horse, though that's not an exact analogy. He was more of what is referred to in Russia as the "systemic opposition." These are political parties and candidates that are ostensibly in the opposition to Putin and his United Russia party and give the appearance of real democracy with real choices, but are in reality fully loyal and compliant cogs in Putin's autocratic machine.
WAIT! WHAT? “An update from the Court of the Donald (as reported by) via NBC” THAT is surely meant as a joke! Right??!!
NONE of the MSM would EVER give an accurate, honest report on anything Trump. It’s surprising TFP quotes NBS, as if it’s believable, or expects us to believe it!
Hi Oliver, let me ask you a question: when did you stop beating your spouse?
That's the kind of question Stefanik asked Gay. No one at Harvard had publicly called for genocide, so why ask a flammable hypothetical question? Oh yeah, the flammable part.
Also, I see in the news today that Bibi has now said there will be no Palestinian state in any post-war solution. It's interesting that the Free Press doesn't report on that this morning. Why not?
I think you need to watch that exchange again. You are honestly going to argue that it was a hatchet job by Stefanik? Gay was ridiculous. Oh, and you don’t have to use the words “kill all the Jews” to call for genocide but some people actually did. And still do. You must be only seeing and hearing what you want to see and hear.
When a dumbass college student at a protest starts in with the “from the river to the sea” stuff, they are not calling for genocide. Please. When I was in college, I’d bitch about Britain’s treatment of Northern Ireland. Never thought about joining the IRA.
Stefanik asked a hypothetical question, and Gay should have treated it as such, refusing to answer stupid hypotheticals. Only unwise people answer hypotheticals in a structured setting.
I suppose Gay could have been a smartass and responded, “Representative Stefanik, to my knowledge, no one at Harvard has called for genocide against any group, including Jews. Do you have a substantive question you’d like to ask me?” That kind of attitude sure seems to work for Trump.
You saying that someone at Harvard did call for genocide is the first I’ve heard of it or seen it. Do you have a source? All the commentary was why couldn’t she answer a simple question, even if it hadn’t happened at Harvard.
What’s most interesting—and revealing—about Gay is that those who have been whining about cancel culture so long could NOT WAIT to get after some member of the left/woke/whatever and cancel her. And the Penn President. And that douche bag Bill Ackman is still going after MIT’s President, who is Jewish. MFing hypocrites.
Again. You are only seeing and hearing what you want to see and hear. I didn’t say that anyone at Harvard “called for genocide.” But you don’t get a pass being a “dumbass college student at a protest” either. If you say things like from the river to the sea and Harvard admin knows about it and doesn’t shut it down how are they not complicitly endorsing what that means? Please. Gay got called out for that. And then she got called out for not being able to say that Harvard has a code of conduct that doesn’t allow you to say anything you want because it’s a protest. And Gay is hardly canceled. She’s still at Harvard pulling in almost a million bucks a year. I’m certainly not crying any tears for her.
After reading this, I went to my local school system website, and did some digging into the "catalog" in our schools. Similar findings. After further researching the ALA and it's president (Emily Drabinski), I am committed to defund my local library, unless and until there is a more "balanced" governance in place. What a train wreck!
After Nellie’s TGIF blurb about magnets and this commentary on Vivek, I’m feeling sad and worried that my beloved Common Sense could become that which it stood against: unnecessarily bias-driving news. I get it; sounds like a hyperbolic claim —presumptuous! But here’s what happened: I had to get the context from community notes on Twitter (now X). That is not The Free Press & TGIF bar I’m used to!
I clicked through to James Fishback's piece on debating, and I'm gobsmacked, bouleversé au fond. We gotta get back to Lewis and The Abolition of Man. In Hebrews it says, "Let us go outside the camp and bear the shame He bore." All we can do is what parents do... repeat, repeat, repeat... the truth, the truth, the truth... with love.
Thank you for doing this research💗
Thank you for the reassurance. I understand supply and demand, even when it comes to which books a library acquires.
As for the Trans “literature,” your explanation helps, a bit, but not entirely because if the Trans stuff is merely a fad, it has a very long shelf life (pardon the pun), having emerged more than a decade ago and seeming to be escalating, not waning. I know that many (liberal) school districts have been pushing for books in their libraries and classrooms celebrating Trans identity, and getting fierce pushback from concerned parents.
I also know that some cultural “fads” last a very long time. Do you know that CRT was launched into higher ed some 40 years ago, beginning its long, gradual seepage downward through the grades? Now elementary school kids are being ordered to report their pronouns, and CRT literature is in school libraries, while some public libraries promote Drag Queen Story Hours. If those woke, leftist books just sit on the shelves, not being circulated, while Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss are still often read, why shelve the garbage books at all? Librarians must have a great deal of discretion about which books get shelf space, which is obviously limited. Is there a fear of being protested, attacked and “cancelled” if certain books were chucked? (Sometimes it seems better to keep your head down and be quiet, hoping to avoid confrontation and chaos; I understand and respect that instinct.)
You are your librarian wife are fortunate to be associated with a professional school where you say the curriculum remains unobjectionably traditional, if somewhat boring. But that place still sounds like the exception, not the rule, given the extent to which university departments across the spectrum have been overtaken by leftist themes: DEI, CRT, BLM, allegedly systemic racism, manipulation of Covid data, rampant grade inflation. We’ve seen story after story describing aspects of that situation right here at the FP. And I am intimately familiar with the leftist infiltration of medical and law schools, and those professions across the board.
Anyway, I appreciate our discussion, and will continue using my library card regularly. Libraries obviously have an important place in our society; if they did not, people wouldn’t care what goes on there.
Re: Kelce brothers ...
I love football ... and I love the Chiefs and Travis ... but my goodness, can't these guys have a conversation without the F-word every two seconds?
Why is reporting you don’t agree with always “reporting breathlessly” but your reporting is never “breathless”? Just wondering.
The only Swifties I'll acknowledge are the Brown Navy guys who fought with honour to stop Charlie, only to be betrayed by two Presidents, several Congresses, Hollyweird, and campuses across America.
The score-card:- China: betrayed and enslaved; North Korea: betrayed and enslaved; South East Asia: Betrayed and enslaved; Iraq/Kurdistan/Marshes: betrayed and enslaved not once, but twice, the Kurds freeing themselves while hindered by...? The Middle East & North Africa: betrayed, slavery and slaughter abounding. Ukraine: being betrayed; slaughter, corruption, and enforced conscription - slave soldiers - abounding; Russia: ditto. In these two cases corrrupt and evil factions in the US have enabled slavemasters BY COMISSION. Afghanistan: the promise of freedom, but the reality of thirty years of slaughter followed by offering the people as a holocaust to Iblis and shameful surrender.
Israel? Put your trust rather in Yahweh Sabaoth.
USA! USA! USA! Yeah; I don't fucking think so. Get off your fat arses in November and VOTE! It is time to ignore the siren drone of Never Trump and Never America. You rifle is your friend; but do you really want Lincoln and Lee's idea of 'Four More Years'?
Stefanik for Veep? Possibly; but she went straight from college to being a Beltway Babe and has double nought, blank, fuck-all experience of the real world. You want to get away from empowering apparatchicks(sic). DeSantis could work. Split the load: DeSantis does the actual government and Trump handles the vision, media, and the Twitter account :-)
That is only half sarcastic: those are the pairs actual strengths.
The main concern I have with a Trump Second Term is the obfuscation of what actually occurred regarding the "Pandemic". Trump is deeply implicated in the egregious error. One thing that needs exploring is the apparent fact, given the parties that were actually overseeing matters, the response actually looks like a hamfisted attempt to deal with what Trump/the Trump Administration seems to have seen more as a deliberate bioweapon attack than as an opportunistic and accidental public health threat.
The kludge and over-reaction juxtaposed with President Trump's "Chy-Nah" and "bleach" theatre seem to find more of an explanation of leaning into public perceptions of the President's character to deter from the elephant in the room: the China side of the incident looked very disturbingly like the first shots of WWIII and the maskirovka to hide that the fight was on.
I'm not joking: there is something very, very wrong with the OTT and lockstep reaction to what was far more a nothing-burger than anything else. You don't attribute agency to viruses but to state and "non-state" actors and far to much time was spent on don't do anything that might otherwise put eyes and minds on just what the hell was going on when we were all in a heightened awareness mode and might just grasp the right end of the stick with all the inevitable consequences of us being gods with the minds of two year-olds.
Enough, I know Americans in particular can't cope with too much reality at a time!
Ramaswamy is only "annoying" if the Democratic Party is still living rent-free in your head and you can't concede in your heart he has more sense in one neuron - even if he is snake-oil, than in your entire brain.
Books aren't being overtly banned; rather they are being ignored and most of the time not deliberately. See why most of the learning of the Classical world has disappeared and the ravings of Xtian loonies exist in hundreds of ancient copies. The 'Archimedes Palimpsest' was only recovered because what it was writen on had been scrubbed to write fucking hymns on! Islam is worse: if it isn't the Qur'an it 999 times won't get a look-in at all. Yes, it is down to ideology; but rarely consciously.
In the midst of all of these thoughtful comments I’m just here to vote for Jason Kelce.
I think that Mr. Gardner misunderstood his assignment and thought he was supposed to run down the other brother instead of build up his subject.
Perhaps we should choose a nice, quiet evening at home to dig up a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Read them. Think this through. Reflect on how l feel about these words, these unfathomablely deep ideas.... Reflect on how those l vehemently disagree with respond to these same ideas. We as a people are finding our way into opposing camps. We must find a way to the center where we can all get along well enough. If that is not realistically possible, to go back to the opening of the Declaration. For me, it DOES come back to consent of the governed. We, the people, DO NOT consent. Honestly??? Who has consented to this idiocy?
Ramaswamy was always in the race to benefit Trump, a bit of a stalking horse, though that's not an exact analogy. He was more of what is referred to in Russia as the "systemic opposition." These are political parties and candidates that are ostensibly in the opposition to Putin and his United Russia party and give the appearance of real democracy with real choices, but are in reality fully loyal and compliant cogs in Putin's autocratic machine.
WAIT! WHAT? “An update from the Court of the Donald (as reported by) via NBC” THAT is surely meant as a joke! Right??!!
NONE of the MSM would EVER give an accurate, honest report on anything Trump. It’s surprising TFP quotes NBS, as if it’s believable, or expects us to believe it!
I wish there was a vaccine for TDS!
Hi Oliver, let me ask you a question: when did you stop beating your spouse?
That's the kind of question Stefanik asked Gay. No one at Harvard had publicly called for genocide, so why ask a flammable hypothetical question? Oh yeah, the flammable part.
Also, I see in the news today that Bibi has now said there will be no Palestinian state in any post-war solution. It's interesting that the Free Press doesn't report on that this morning. Why not?
I think you need to watch that exchange again. You are honestly going to argue that it was a hatchet job by Stefanik? Gay was ridiculous. Oh, and you don’t have to use the words “kill all the Jews” to call for genocide but some people actually did. And still do. You must be only seeing and hearing what you want to see and hear.
When a dumbass college student at a protest starts in with the “from the river to the sea” stuff, they are not calling for genocide. Please. When I was in college, I’d bitch about Britain’s treatment of Northern Ireland. Never thought about joining the IRA.
Stefanik asked a hypothetical question, and Gay should have treated it as such, refusing to answer stupid hypotheticals. Only unwise people answer hypotheticals in a structured setting.
I suppose Gay could have been a smartass and responded, “Representative Stefanik, to my knowledge, no one at Harvard has called for genocide against any group, including Jews. Do you have a substantive question you’d like to ask me?” That kind of attitude sure seems to work for Trump.
You saying that someone at Harvard did call for genocide is the first I’ve heard of it or seen it. Do you have a source? All the commentary was why couldn’t she answer a simple question, even if it hadn’t happened at Harvard.
What’s most interesting—and revealing—about Gay is that those who have been whining about cancel culture so long could NOT WAIT to get after some member of the left/woke/whatever and cancel her. And the Penn President. And that douche bag Bill Ackman is still going after MIT’s President, who is Jewish. MFing hypocrites.
I see and hear what actually occurs.
Again. You are only seeing and hearing what you want to see and hear. I didn’t say that anyone at Harvard “called for genocide.” But you don’t get a pass being a “dumbass college student at a protest” either. If you say things like from the river to the sea and Harvard admin knows about it and doesn’t shut it down how are they not complicitly endorsing what that means? Please. Gay got called out for that. And then she got called out for not being able to say that Harvard has a code of conduct that doesn’t allow you to say anything you want because it’s a protest. And Gay is hardly canceled. She’s still at Harvard pulling in almost a million bucks a year. I’m certainly not crying any tears for her.
After reading this, I went to my local school system website, and did some digging into the "catalog" in our schools. Similar findings. After further researching the ALA and it's president (Emily Drabinski), I am committed to defund my local library, unless and until there is a more "balanced" governance in place. What a train wreck!
After Nellie’s TGIF blurb about magnets and this commentary on Vivek, I’m feeling sad and worried that my beloved Common Sense could become that which it stood against: unnecessarily bias-driving news. I get it; sounds like a hyperbolic claim —presumptuous! But here’s what happened: I had to get the context from community notes on Twitter (now X). That is not The Free Press & TGIF bar I’m used to!
Commenting on the silliest aspect of today's report...
Suzy Weiss describes Travis Kelce as "a male Meghan Markle."
Oh my Lord. THAT's her ending kill-shot for her position in favor of Travis?
My only explanation: Suzy a secret agent in favor of Jason within this Fight Club episode.
I clicked through to James Fishback's piece on debating, and I'm gobsmacked, bouleversé au fond. We gotta get back to Lewis and The Abolition of Man. In Hebrews it says, "Let us go outside the camp and bear the shame He bore." All we can do is what parents do... repeat, repeat, repeat... the truth, the truth, the truth... with love.
Yep, you know the man is strategically positioned to respond to all situations. Well if the plane works. Wish we could just leave him there.