Recently, with a group of friends, I had the opportunity to visit Israel and was deeply touched by all that I saw and heard there. It is truly a life-changing experience, regardless of one’s religious beliefs.
As part of our tour in Jerusalem, we visited the world center Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. Like other Holocaust museums, it is a grim reminder of the kind of dark terrorism that one man, endorsed by throngs of believing sycophants, can visit on a gullible and uninformed society.
As I saw the films of the May 1933 book burnings by right-wing radical students in 34 German cities, I could not help but think of the increasing trend across this country for some elected leaders to impose their personal ideologies to ban books in school and other libraries.
Over 25,000 works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames, along with banned works by American authors like Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute.
As a high school graduating senior in 1965, I remember the banning that year of J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” in my school, and the rush by my friends and me to local bookstores to get our copies.
While I agree that there may be wisdom in parents and teachers exercising discretion in age-appropriate reading for children, the right and freedom of the U.S. Constitution for every American to read whatever he or she wants is a right that we must vigorously defend and protect. Those who would impose their false sense of morality to violate my First Amendment rights to read and study and learn are un-American, dangerous, and steeped in conspiracy theories. I and every other American is free to choose what we read. Stifling that freedom must not be tolerated.
Mark E. Hurst, St. George
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