Remember When Republicans Were All About "Small Government"?

We shared this yesterday with FL legislators as we referenced HB1069 and SB1320 which would add teachers’ personal libraries to the bureaucratic process of our taxpayer funded media centers.

It restricts the ability for parents/teachers the get the right book to the right child.

— Florida Freedom to Read Project (@FLFreedomRead) March 23, 2023

Yeah, that was actually kinda nice.

One R rep repeated a regular talking point: if parents knew what was on the shelf, they would want this government oversight.

Parents know enough to not be concerned over books on a shelf.

We would like government oversight of guns, but they aren’t pushing for that.

— Florida Freedom to Read Project (@FLFreedomRead) March 23, 2023

One R rep repeated a regular talking point: if parents knew what was on the shelf, they would want this government oversight.

What, the classroom is closed to them?  They're afraid of books?  Of ideas? Do they imagine school teachers keep The Story of O on their shelves? Or Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book? Or The Communist Manifesto?

One of those is hard-core porn.  The others would just be incomprehensible to most public school students.  I was reading Kierkegaard in high school, and while it wasn't the Sunday school lesson I'd gotten in church, it was actually 20 years later before I really began to understand it.  

"Inappropriate" is such a stupid standard for censorship.  Hard-core porn is unsuitable for anybody.  Below that, you're just fretting that your kid will know something you don't.  And frankly, I don't want government oversight over that my kid can read in a public school.

I'm guessing these people don't give their kids much access to books anyway.  That's not a reason to use government to keep my kids, or everybody else's kids, away from books.

One outlier parent having the power to end a career for something the majority of the community would consider uncontroversial is just a great incentive to get into education.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) March 23, 2023

Is it fascism if it only takes one person to overrule all the rest of us? Asking for a friend...