You know, leave it to Charlie to start a newsletter with a few sentences about how the GOP is leading efforts to have government literally ban books and ideas from classrooms and libraries and turn it into an attack on Democrats because some privately owned independent bookstores are refusing to sell Harry Potter books or stock books tha…
You know, leave it to Charlie to start a newsletter with a few sentences about how the GOP is leading efforts to have government literally ban books and ideas from classrooms and libraries and turn it into an attack on Democrats because some privately owned independent bookstores are refusing to sell Harry Potter books or stock books that attack trans people.
Well done Charlie, way to keep your eye on the prize. :slowclap:
Dude, you did catch the part about Burbank schools banning "Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Theodore Taylor's The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry", right?
Errrr ... Since I responded to Kevin Senecal's comment, not yours, I don't know why you're getting haughty with me. I didn't even read yours, nor do I think I should have to in order to respond to Kevin.
If you're responding because of an email, you should note that Substack will sometimes send you notifications of people responding to the same comment you did. I don't know why they do that, but if you check, the mail should note I was responding to Kevin, not you.
How is it an "attack" on trans people to discuss realities that don't support the default prescription of rushing adolescents into irreversible hormonal and surgical alteration of their bodies? Many children simply grown out of gender dysphoria with puberty. Some find that talking through their root issues leads them to self-acceptance. And substantial numbers of people regret having rushed (or been rushed) into physical "transitioning."
Why do some people find it so unacceptable, or threatening, to discuss the possibility of less drastic (and ultimately more satisfying) ways that people might become comfortable with themselves as they are?
They don't even do adult sex change until the person has gone through therapy and a pretty long waiting period, like 2 years. I had a friend whose adult child went through that.
Yes, I agree. People, even Mona Charen, seem to think it’s a capricious decision and process. I have a friend who transitioned in her 60s, and it was an extremely lengthy and involved process, even for a mature adult with a medical background and lots of resources.
Well, the doctors don't want to get sued. And no matter how many release forms you sign a good lawyer can always make a case that you weren't in your right mind or you were coerced.
Good point. It’s easy to forget that medical decisions are cloaked in fear of lawsuits. And also fear of violating “standards” - I recently read that the feds are relaxing some of their one-size-fits-all prohibition on pain medication prescriptions because legitimate pain patients were seeking street drugs for relief, after the feds dropped the hammer on prescribing doctors.
Waiting until after puberty for any transition intervention means the secondary sex characteristics are very hard to change, such as the deep male voice, the “Adam’s apple”, etc and makes it unlikely the person will ever “pass” in their new identity, which is very distressing for some.
Firstly: No one is rushing adolescents into irreversible hormonal and surgical alteration.
Secondly: See Firstly
It is certainly not the default position. It's not even the 10th position. Do you even know what's involved in starting the transition process? Or are you just letting the Right scare the bejeezus out of you?
Yeah that's too much. It's personal. They are teachers not criminals. If you're that worried then home school your kids or send them too aa private school.
I've read "Irreversible Damage" and there are no attacks whatsoever on trans people. Because it doesn't cave in to the "affirmation" model it gets labeled bigoted, anti-trans & "Violent".
Affirmation is what every human being is due as a right. I still remember being a first grader attending a catholic grammar school and sitting helplessly as the nun singled out another little girl who was 'the product of sin', meaning her mother was unwed. Even then, it felt wrong although I couldn't articulate why. So I have little tolerance for the politicization of children's genders.
That being said, I don't want to go down the road of book banning. We've seen it before; we know where it leads.
I remember being in a Catholic school. I got 2 new uniform skirts in 2nd grade. I wore them until 8th grade. That's how big they were. My grandmother just kept moving the button over. When I was in 4th grade a Sister Pancratias used to come occasionally and drill us on Catechisim. I stood to answer a question and she went ballistic because she saw I had rolled up the waist band so the skirt ended at my knee. She called me a harlot and vile spawn of Satan. Said I would burn Hell. She foamed at the mouth. I was sure she was going to hit me. I have never been so frightened and mortified in my life. I'm on the other side of 60 now and it still stings. Those Catholics loved to scare children.
You're so right; they LOVED scaring and humiliating children. These were people who should never have been let near children.
We should swap horror stories about catholic parochial school sometime. Just one for now: we weren't allowed to wear jewelry or make-up to school. Over the Christmas break one year, I was at choir practice preparing for midnight mass. Since it was vacation, one of the older girls showed up in make-up and hoop earrings. The nun went OFF! Grabbed the girl's earrings and pulled them off - her ears were pierced. The nun swept this bleeding girl over to the convent to scrub her face and bandage her ears. Then the nun came back to practice as if nothing had happened. That poor girl stood there with a red face and band-aids on her ears until we were done. We were all too scared to do anything. And the worst part? That nun never got in trouble for abusing that child.
Pretty sure Charlie's point is that illiberal impulses aren't confined to the right. Although, I haven't seen liberal legislatures passing laws banning certain books as 'unacceptable.' It's only conservative legislatures that have harnessed their illiberalism to their authoritarianism and passed book and speech bans. One side is objectively worse than the other.
The 'private-sector' bannings are happening in more than just a few indy bookstores. Last I checked, Target is not a mom and pop general store. And he does clearly draw the distinction between the two in the newsletter that government censorship is worse than private-sector censorship. But we are developing a very unhealthy anti-free speech culture in this country due to actions amongst both progressives and maga-nationalists (won't even call them conservatives anymore). When the ACLU and the Office of Intellectual Freedom in the ALA aren't defending free speech, we've got a problem.
I think the Bulwark is trying to be balanced. As an Independent there were things about both parties I didn't always agree with. But with the election of Trump, the Republicans crossed a line. Now they're just beyond the pale. But there are still Democrats I don't agree with. But they're not scary crazy.
I agree. The troubling thing is there are people who fit the description, but they are not "newsworthy" Today only tv game show clowns or people who are telegenic and make outrageous and stupid statements (the dumber the better) get any media attention. A smart and moderate politician doesn't get notice at all.
Your observation ties in with a newsletter I just read, about how Trump’s slate of endorsements are all personalities he knows from TV. This current situation reminds me of the old Peter Sellers satire movie “Being There”. Time to rewatch it!
Max E, GG, I am reading what you are saying about Charlie, Mona, and maybe the Bulwark in general not being able to resist trashing Democrats in the midst of writing about the truly democracy-destroying words and action of the Republicans. I would be interested in hearing what anyone on this comment board who also reads the Dispatch has to say on this issue.
I read and subscribe to both, but find the Dispatch a lot guiltier on this point. Jonah Goldberg, for one, simply cannot seem to stop himself from adding some criticism of Democrats to whatever he is writing about, and he is not the only one.
I am really worried that the result of the current Republican Party taking over the government, especially if Trump is re-elected in 2024, will be the dooming of the 200 plus year America experiment. This does not mean that I think we shouldn't criticize anything the Biden Administration is doing, but I do think we should be screaming very, very loudly, about the fact that we'll have way more to worry about than Joe Biden's "gaffes" if the current Republican Party members take over governing in 2025.
I find the Bulwark, especially JVL, but also Charlie, Mona, and the rest, much more on the same page with me about this than the Dispatch.
I agree, I subscribe to both...though I would point out, the Dispatch wasn't as bad before Biden won...they had a lot of center left guests for the pods and pieces too...it changed subtly, and I think it is the tribal thing, though they do not like Trump, they are used to slagging dems and see themselves still a conservatives first
I am not familiar with The Dispatch. I think anti-Trump Republicans have forgotten how high the stakes are in this midterm election. So many pundits seem casually resigned to a Republican sweep in November, but that will be The End of our democracy. Republicans will then have all the machinery in place to steal the 2024 election and by definition all future elections. I’m very worried that the urgency has evaporated because Trump himself isn’t on the ballot, in spite of how definitive this November will be for our democracy. And I haven’t heard much lately about the scheme for a Republican House to elect Trump as Speaker. We cannot afford this complacency from Never Trump Republicans!
Unfortunately, Trump gave "bothsidesism" a bad name. The problem Charlie's alluding to today is real, and it's not limited to privately-owned indie bookstores. And I didn't read this piece as an attack on Dems, though reading it this way does minimize the threat associated with free speech "losing its luster" on the left (a state of affairs that shows up in survey research). So: well done, Charlie. Keep documenting the versions of threat that show up on the left as well as the right, however different they may be.
That's fine. However, the nature of the threat from the Right is exponentially worse than the threat from the Left. If you only read this newsletter you'd be led to believe the opposite.
That is not how I read the piece AT ALL. I do not follow your thinking here. After reading it I still think the threat from the Right is worse and more dangerous but I do see that some on the illiberal Left do the same thing on the other "side." Can we not be honest about it? Sometimes both sides DO do it. Even in degrees.
Because both sides do absolutely everything if you look hard enough. Generally only one side is sufficiently mobilized on a particular issue to truly pose an immediate threat though. As JVL pointed out in a post a few weeks ago the right has so many structural advantages for at least a decade that the left can barely hope to do anything but keep a stalemate. The right is also completely mobilized on these illiberal things while the left is very fragmented and the illiberal part is a an isolated part of the progressive piece of the party. Don't let social media fool you into thinking otherwise. Perhaps we should be focusing on the fact we have no water right now and temporarily ignore the fact that our rations will only last another year?
The Right is using government to police speech. The Left is not.
This newsletter spent 8 short paragraphs on the Right using government to limit speech and ideas and then went into a 29 paragraph long tirade about the Left talking about not liking certain books and a couple of bookstores choosing not to sell Harry Potter books (which is also an exercise in free speech).
The Right is using government to actually restrict speech and ban books with the full buy-in of its political leadership. The Left has some far out outliers deciding they don't want to support some speech independent of government and the Left's political leadership has not stepped up to support them.
And what is worse is that these government pursued policies effect textbooks that the whole country will be forced to use. Many of these textbooks will offer a totally whitewashed version of history. And math textbooks too- what is up with that totally egregious use of government power!
I must disagree. Restriction of speech that does not have a nexus with physical violence and is motivated primarily by philosophy or politics is abhorrent, period. That means both the right-wing book-banning/burning and the left-wing speech codes, which often are overreactions to each other. There are plenty of center-left mediums that have noted the excesses of leftist academics, students, and politicians - it's not just an obsession of rightward pundits.
That's true. All my Republican friends are quite annoyed with the extremism coming from the right. And my liberal friends, when I ask about canceling Harry Potter or the classics, roll their eyes at such nonsense.
The privately owned bookstores are also wrong. The law USED to say -- perhaps it has gone the way of antitrust and other guardrails -- that a public business, a business open to the PUBLIC, cannot discriminate, cannot impose the personal opinions of its owners. I suppose the Gay Cake Case stopped all that. But the premise remains that if you are open to the public you must be open to all the public; you cannot pick and choose. If you want to be private and impose your private opinions then open a CLUB! So I'm not saying don't stop GOVT from censorship (does that mean there is no longer such a thing as pornography or yelling Fire! in a crowded theatre??), I'm saying stop BOTH from doing it in public forums.
You got that right. And it's also way fewer people . I know lots of Dems and they aren't like this at all. I also know a lot if Republicans and only some of them are far right crazies.
I'm with you....a fellow Independent. The Republican pols in my area are all Trump all the time, while all Republicans friends don't like him at all. The Democrats are decent, well informed moderate politicians. Their main issues are healthy environment and infrastructure.
You know, leave it to Charlie to start a newsletter with a few sentences about how the GOP is leading efforts to have government literally ban books and ideas from classrooms and libraries and turn it into an attack on Democrats because some privately owned independent bookstores are refusing to sell Harry Potter books or stock books that attack trans people.
Well done Charlie, way to keep your eye on the prize. :slowclap:
Dude, you did catch the part about Burbank schools banning "Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Theodore Taylor's The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry", right?
Those books were removed from the mandatory curriculum. They weren’t banned from the library, is what I just read. Still, I don’t like it.
I don't either. At any rate, Kevin mentioned banning books from the classroom, which prompted my response to his comment.
I think I see your point. But the Burbank situation wasn’t a book ban at all, rather a curriculum change.
Errrr ... Since I responded to Kevin Senecal's comment, not yours, I don't know why you're getting haughty with me. I didn't even read yours, nor do I think I should have to in order to respond to Kevin.
If you're responding because of an email, you should note that Substack will sometimes send you notifications of people responding to the same comment you did. I don't know why they do that, but if you check, the mail should note I was responding to Kevin, not you.
How is it an "attack" on trans people to discuss realities that don't support the default prescription of rushing adolescents into irreversible hormonal and surgical alteration of their bodies? Many children simply grown out of gender dysphoria with puberty. Some find that talking through their root issues leads them to self-acceptance. And substantial numbers of people regret having rushed (or been rushed) into physical "transitioning."
Why do some people find it so unacceptable, or threatening, to discuss the possibility of less drastic (and ultimately more satisfying) ways that people might become comfortable with themselves as they are?
They don't even do adult sex change until the person has gone through therapy and a pretty long waiting period, like 2 years. I had a friend whose adult child went through that.
Yes, I agree. People, even Mona Charen, seem to think it’s a capricious decision and process. I have a friend who transitioned in her 60s, and it was an extremely lengthy and involved process, even for a mature adult with a medical background and lots of resources.
Well, the doctors don't want to get sued. And no matter how many release forms you sign a good lawyer can always make a case that you weren't in your right mind or you were coerced.
Good point. It’s easy to forget that medical decisions are cloaked in fear of lawsuits. And also fear of violating “standards” - I recently read that the feds are relaxing some of their one-size-fits-all prohibition on pain medication prescriptions because legitimate pain patients were seeking street drugs for relief, after the feds dropped the hammer on prescribing doctors.
Waiting until after puberty for any transition intervention means the secondary sex characteristics are very hard to change, such as the deep male voice, the “Adam’s apple”, etc and makes it unlikely the person will ever “pass” in their new identity, which is very distressing for some.
Regardless, no one is going to do it. A minor needs a parent or guardian's approval. Who is going to do that?
Firstly: No one is rushing adolescents into irreversible hormonal and surgical alteration.
Secondly: See Firstly
It is certainly not the default position. It's not even the 10th position. Do you even know what's involved in starting the transition process? Or are you just letting the Right scare the bejeezus out of you?
You can actually look at a teacher's lesson plans if you asked. He or she would probably welcome it.
Yeah that's too much. It's personal. They are teachers not criminals. If you're that worried then home school your kids or send them too aa private school.
I've read "Irreversible Damage" and there are no attacks whatsoever on trans people. Because it doesn't cave in to the "affirmation" model it gets labeled bigoted, anti-trans & "Violent".
What does that mean? Is it a book?
It's a book. You can make up your own mind how credible it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_Damage
I’ve noticed that many people who want to ban books haven’t even read the “offending” book.
Of course not. That might effect their prejudice.
Affirmation is what every human being is due as a right. I still remember being a first grader attending a catholic grammar school and sitting helplessly as the nun singled out another little girl who was 'the product of sin', meaning her mother was unwed. Even then, it felt wrong although I couldn't articulate why. So I have little tolerance for the politicization of children's genders.
That being said, I don't want to go down the road of book banning. We've seen it before; we know where it leads.
I remember being in a Catholic school. I got 2 new uniform skirts in 2nd grade. I wore them until 8th grade. That's how big they were. My grandmother just kept moving the button over. When I was in 4th grade a Sister Pancratias used to come occasionally and drill us on Catechisim. I stood to answer a question and she went ballistic because she saw I had rolled up the waist band so the skirt ended at my knee. She called me a harlot and vile spawn of Satan. Said I would burn Hell. She foamed at the mouth. I was sure she was going to hit me. I have never been so frightened and mortified in my life. I'm on the other side of 60 now and it still stings. Those Catholics loved to scare children.
You're so right; they LOVED scaring and humiliating children. These were people who should never have been let near children.
We should swap horror stories about catholic parochial school sometime. Just one for now: we weren't allowed to wear jewelry or make-up to school. Over the Christmas break one year, I was at choir practice preparing for midnight mass. Since it was vacation, one of the older girls showed up in make-up and hoop earrings. The nun went OFF! Grabbed the girl's earrings and pulled them off - her ears were pierced. The nun swept this bleeding girl over to the convent to scrub her face and bandage her ears. Then the nun came back to practice as if nothing had happened. That poor girl stood there with a red face and band-aids on her ears until we were done. We were all too scared to do anything. And the worst part? That nun never got in trouble for abusing that child.
Pretty sure Charlie's point is that illiberal impulses aren't confined to the right. Although, I haven't seen liberal legislatures passing laws banning certain books as 'unacceptable.' It's only conservative legislatures that have harnessed their illiberalism to their authoritarianism and passed book and speech bans. One side is objectively worse than the other.
The 'private-sector' bannings are happening in more than just a few indy bookstores. Last I checked, Target is not a mom and pop general store. And he does clearly draw the distinction between the two in the newsletter that government censorship is worse than private-sector censorship. But we are developing a very unhealthy anti-free speech culture in this country due to actions amongst both progressives and maga-nationalists (won't even call them conservatives anymore). When the ACLU and the Office of Intellectual Freedom in the ALA aren't defending free speech, we've got a problem.
A nice summation of my reservations about Bulwark in general; they can’t resist what-aboutism.
I think the Bulwark is trying to be balanced. As an Independent there were things about both parties I didn't always agree with. But with the election of Trump, the Republicans crossed a line. Now they're just beyond the pale. But there are still Democrats I don't agree with. But they're not scary crazy.
Which is why I wish we had more choices for political affiliation. I think most people reside in the middle, which is oddly unrepresented.
I agree. The troubling thing is there are people who fit the description, but they are not "newsworthy" Today only tv game show clowns or people who are telegenic and make outrageous and stupid statements (the dumber the better) get any media attention. A smart and moderate politician doesn't get notice at all.
Your observation ties in with a newsletter I just read, about how Trump’s slate of endorsements are all personalities he knows from TV. This current situation reminds me of the old Peter Sellers satire movie “Being There”. Time to rewatch it!
Max E, GG, I am reading what you are saying about Charlie, Mona, and maybe the Bulwark in general not being able to resist trashing Democrats in the midst of writing about the truly democracy-destroying words and action of the Republicans. I would be interested in hearing what anyone on this comment board who also reads the Dispatch has to say on this issue.
I read and subscribe to both, but find the Dispatch a lot guiltier on this point. Jonah Goldberg, for one, simply cannot seem to stop himself from adding some criticism of Democrats to whatever he is writing about, and he is not the only one.
I am really worried that the result of the current Republican Party taking over the government, especially if Trump is re-elected in 2024, will be the dooming of the 200 plus year America experiment. This does not mean that I think we shouldn't criticize anything the Biden Administration is doing, but I do think we should be screaming very, very loudly, about the fact that we'll have way more to worry about than Joe Biden's "gaffes" if the current Republican Party members take over governing in 2025.
I find the Bulwark, especially JVL, but also Charlie, Mona, and the rest, much more on the same page with me about this than the Dispatch.
Any comments on this from others who read both?
I agree, I subscribe to both...though I would point out, the Dispatch wasn't as bad before Biden won...they had a lot of center left guests for the pods and pieces too...it changed subtly, and I think it is the tribal thing, though they do not like Trump, they are used to slagging dems and see themselves still a conservatives first
I am not familiar with The Dispatch. I think anti-Trump Republicans have forgotten how high the stakes are in this midterm election. So many pundits seem casually resigned to a Republican sweep in November, but that will be The End of our democracy. Republicans will then have all the machinery in place to steal the 2024 election and by definition all future elections. I’m very worried that the urgency has evaporated because Trump himself isn’t on the ballot, in spite of how definitive this November will be for our democracy. And I haven’t heard much lately about the scheme for a Republican House to elect Trump as Speaker. We cannot afford this complacency from Never Trump Republicans!
I was a subscriber to Dispatch. I bailed for that very reason. They are not as intellectually honest as I would like……
Yep, good example. The first throes of my Bulwark love affair is fading . . .
Unfortunately, Trump gave "bothsidesism" a bad name. The problem Charlie's alluding to today is real, and it's not limited to privately-owned indie bookstores. And I didn't read this piece as an attack on Dems, though reading it this way does minimize the threat associated with free speech "losing its luster" on the left (a state of affairs that shows up in survey research). So: well done, Charlie. Keep documenting the versions of threat that show up on the left as well as the right, however different they may be.
That's fine. However, the nature of the threat from the Right is exponentially worse than the threat from the Left. If you only read this newsletter you'd be led to believe the opposite.
I agree; it is private businesses versus the government.
That is not how I read the piece AT ALL. I do not follow your thinking here. After reading it I still think the threat from the Right is worse and more dangerous but I do see that some on the illiberal Left do the same thing on the other "side." Can we not be honest about it? Sometimes both sides DO do it. Even in degrees.
Because both sides do absolutely everything if you look hard enough. Generally only one side is sufficiently mobilized on a particular issue to truly pose an immediate threat though. As JVL pointed out in a post a few weeks ago the right has so many structural advantages for at least a decade that the left can barely hope to do anything but keep a stalemate. The right is also completely mobilized on these illiberal things while the left is very fragmented and the illiberal part is a an isolated part of the progressive piece of the party. Don't let social media fool you into thinking otherwise. Perhaps we should be focusing on the fact we have no water right now and temporarily ignore the fact that our rations will only last another year?
The Right is using government to police speech. The Left is not.
This newsletter spent 8 short paragraphs on the Right using government to limit speech and ideas and then went into a 29 paragraph long tirade about the Left talking about not liking certain books and a couple of bookstores choosing not to sell Harry Potter books (which is also an exercise in free speech).
The Right is using government to actually restrict speech and ban books with the full buy-in of its political leadership. The Left has some far out outliers deciding they don't want to support some speech independent of government and the Left's political leadership has not stepped up to support them.
So they aren't doing the "same thing" at all.
And what is worse is that these government pursued policies effect textbooks that the whole country will be forced to use. Many of these textbooks will offer a totally whitewashed version of history. And math textbooks too- what is up with that totally egregious use of government power!
You're welcome!
I must disagree. Restriction of speech that does not have a nexus with physical violence and is motivated primarily by philosophy or politics is abhorrent, period. That means both the right-wing book-banning/burning and the left-wing speech codes, which often are overreactions to each other. There are plenty of center-left mediums that have noted the excesses of leftist academics, students, and politicians - it's not just an obsession of rightward pundits.
That's true. All my Republican friends are quite annoyed with the extremism coming from the right. And my liberal friends, when I ask about canceling Harry Potter or the classics, roll their eyes at such nonsense.
The privately owned bookstores are also wrong. The law USED to say -- perhaps it has gone the way of antitrust and other guardrails -- that a public business, a business open to the PUBLIC, cannot discriminate, cannot impose the personal opinions of its owners. I suppose the Gay Cake Case stopped all that. But the premise remains that if you are open to the public you must be open to all the public; you cannot pick and choose. If you want to be private and impose your private opinions then open a CLUB! So I'm not saying don't stop GOVT from censorship (does that mean there is no longer such a thing as pornography or yelling Fire! in a crowded theatre??), I'm saying stop BOTH from doing it in public forums.
The law never said that bookstores have to carry every book. There isn't a bookstore big enough.
Wow. Twisted AND Confused. I will retire from the fray..... (but I take your point; thanks for the clarification, if not the abuse.)
You got that right. And it's also way fewer people . I know lots of Dems and they aren't like this at all. I also know a lot if Republicans and only some of them are far right crazies.
and there you have it!
I'm with you....a fellow Independent. The Republican pols in my area are all Trump all the time, while all Republicans friends don't like him at all. The Democrats are decent, well informed moderate politicians. Their main issues are healthy environment and infrastructure.
You're good.