I saw today that a Texas state senator has a list of 850 books he wants removed from schools. The reason is the contents of those books might upset people. It might make them unhappy. This is the reason that Captain Beatty gives for why firemen burn books in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. All these stories about people who never existed doing things that never happened. All they do is cause unhappiness. Isn’t that why the government exists? To make people happy.
The philosophy of these people is so strange to me. They want to keep people safe and secure through ignorance because ignorance is bliss, after all. That is all they want to do. At the same time they’re talking about happiness and keeping people secure in their thoughts they are railing against providing people with economic freedom. They are against student loan forgiveness, paid family leave, universal healthcare, universal pre-K, and on and on. They are against any program that would provide people with true happiness.
An economics book I read earlier this year had the quote in it that happiness is spending time with the people you love that love you. Happiness isn’t avoiding learning that the Founding Fathers owned, abused, and raped their slaves. Happiness isn’t making yourself unaware of The Trail of Tears. Happiness isn’t ignoring the inconvenient parts of history. Knowing all of this doesn’t make me any more or less happy. What makes me happy is seeing the smile on my child’s face when he points at a random car and tells me it is green.
Another book I read earlier this year was The Book Thief. That should be required reading for all these book burners. They should understand what thoughts Hitler said he was protecting the Germans from. That is another thing these book burners say they are doing. They are protecting children. They are protecting them because they might learn the truth and then they can’t believe in their own superiority.
We cannot let these people win. All they can do is hate and attack and look for more and more things to be offended by. They should listen to their own words about erasing history. They never thought history existed in statues. They knew real history existed in books. They only sought to fool their followers into believing their opposition were the ones that wanted to erase history when they are the ones attempting to do it before our very eyes.
David Huzzard Writes 