Book banning and other narrow-minded evils

The fact that the "Spuyten Duyvil Library takes a stand against book banning," -- published in The Press on March 6 -- shows there are too many people in this country who don't believe in freedom. As a result, we have many people in power, up to the president, who is once again seemingly trying to make himself a dictator, willing to take what freedom we have away from us.

It's not hard to figure out why they want to ban books. Evil thrives on ignorance. If you wish to use lies to oppress people, you try to suppress the information that will expose your falsehoods.

If you want to tell people that important contributions to this country were made only by white men, you ban books on the contributions of women and people of color. If you want a country controlled by white billionaires, you ban books on labor history. If you want to strip away the social safety net that has literally kept people alive, then you ban books that tell people how much harder it was for most people to survive without it. If you want to paint all U.S. foreign policy as heroic, you ban the truth that contradicts that.

A long-time problem in this country has been how much evil there has been from our leaders and how much public support these villains receive. Not everything is a matter of opinion. When you want to deny people the right to read and watch what they want, that's evil. When you want to deny people the health care they need to survive, that's evil. When you want to dictate what type of relationships people can have, that's evil. When you want to deny working people a wage high enough to live a decent life, that's evil. When you want to cut jobs and programs people need to give tax cuts to the richest people so they can receive more money that they don't need, that's evil.

The debate needs to be on how we create a righteous world. It should not be on whether this world should be righteous or evil.

Richard Warren