It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
U.S.—A new study has confirmed that people who burn books always stop with just a few obscure, third-tier books with a couple of problematic things, and their book-burning activities never go beyond that, so there’s really nothing to worry about when books start getting burned.
The study covered book burnings carried out by governments and private groups throughout history. In every case, the researchers claim, book burners never went beyond their original targets. They couldn’t find even a single time that destroying a few books led to banning and destroying even more books. Therefore, they say, we’re totally in the clear when people start destroying Dr. Seuss books, because they’ll never move beyond those into more important things.
“Don’t worry, folks — they’ll definitely just stop with a couple of books,” said the head researcher of the study, Dr. Christopher Lyleson. “They usually find a couple of really problematic ones from decades ago and just stop there, their hunger to destroy information and opinions satiated. It’s really an important societal service, to occasionally purge the older works of one or two toxic books. But it always stops there, as far as we can tell.”
“So rest easy!”
Go here to read the rest.
Honestly, if you want a “racist, hate literature,” the Bible comes to mind. Maybe the Koran, but the Koran is the book of a protected “minority” group and it is “just their culture.”
.
Honestly, I am a little surprised I have not seen a Christian bookstore go up in flames yet, or at least reported in the news as such.
Seen on Facebook: “When in History did good people burn books?”
Evidently, the left copied its SOPs from the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.
Your elites and oligarchs need to be replaced.
If you wake up every morning judging others and “looking for racism” you’ll find something to fill you imagination and self righteous ego.
Where and when does it end?
Only when we stop judging everyone and everything, and forgive.
“Where and when does it end?
Only when we stop judging everyone and everything, and forgive.” DWS
Touche.
My second oldest son said the Left’s great victory was in weaponizing Christian virtues and American values in order to destroy both. As I see so many Christians defending what the Left is doing, I can’t help but think that’s why, because they still think the Left is the true incarnation of what Christianity and America were ever all about, even as it moves to destroy both Christianity and America.
“Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.” –Beatty in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The only detail that Bradbury got wrong was that “intellectual” did not become a swear word, as Beatty says it did shortly after the portion I quoted above. Instead “intellectual” became the term for a revered priestly class, including people like Fauci, Al Gore or Bill Gates (for reasons I still can’t comprehend).
Though even here Bradbury is still largely on the money. The reason he gives for people rejecting intellectuals is them hating those they know that act like they are smarter than everyone else. It’s just that now it manifests itself as people say “who are you to think that you know more than our almighty intellectual class?”
Interestingly the issue appears to be proximity, not actual intellectual ability. I’ve had a colleague chew me out for daring to think that I knew more about a specific period of history than Neil DeGrasse Tyson. What made it bizarre was that the chastisement was phrased as “what makes you think that you know more than a scientist with a PhD”…. when both me and the person I was talking to had PhDs. But ours did not “count” somehow, because we were merely part of the people you could meet everyday, rather than the distant and holy intellectual class.
Two groups of intellectuals found themselves in the hereafter.
Group A awoke at a fairly large dining room table. The linens were perfect. The crystal wine goblets were brilliant. Everything was set for a spectacular feast. Just one major detail was missing. The silverware.
No utensils were present.
Suddenly servers came forward with the most breathtaking platters of delights.
Then the waiters carried in the most ridiculous utensils ever conceived.
Each fork, spoon and knife was grossly oversized. Four foot long and one and a half inches wide. Then the servers vanished. The intellectuals in group A spent 3 minutes discussing this incredible situation until one of them started to feed another guest sitting across from him. It started a glorious reaction. All in this group took care of the needs of others sitting across from themselves. They shared laughter as well as the greatest courses of food ever imagined.
Group B had exactly the same circumstances.
They, however, were furious and fought among themselves. Some dove into the dishes with bare hands and resembled pigs eating slop.
The selfish inability to help each other created a brawl that resulted in the remaining food being lost to the floor. Broken dishes, glasses and appetites accompanied the hatred each one had for the other.
The point is that many an intellectual is a caring, humble soul.
Those in the B category?
The distant holy intellectual class…
Let them bring their own silverware to the banquet. That is, if they have the proper attire to enter, otherwise it’s a moot point.
To those of you who are truly brilliant and caring individuals God bless you. Taking time to listen to those who are not brilliant and being patient with them is being a true holy intellectual. Worthy and properly dressed for that glorious wedding feast of the Lamb of God.
Thanks Art Deco, Donald McClarey, Paul, Guy, Foxfier…and so many others who could easily, and rightfully, be impatient with the blue collar Catholic but instead, offer it up and remain polite.
God bless all you class A intellectuals.