Dear Editor:
I just wanted to write in response to Cynthia Walker and her
pretense to high moral standards concerning the library and the
materials they provide to our community.
Dear Editor:
I just wanted to write in response to Cynthia Walker and her pretense to high moral standards concerning the library and the materials they provide to our community.
I must admit she is right on one account. In my most recent visit to the Gilroy Library I discovered some of the most dangerous literary materials ever produced. Books and magazines and Internet sources that contain the very seeds of insurrection and disloyalty.
One of the most egregious of those materials is the Constitution of the United States. Could there ever be a more subversive work of literature than this outgrowth of an illegal social uprising extolling such chaotic ideals as “freedom of speech” and “freedom of association?”
But these havens of dissent and sedition, these libraries, if they are to be used only be for moral edification, must be shut down entirely. For even if Ms. Walker got her way and all computers were equipped with “Jesus” filters, little real benefit would result.
This information is from the National Coalition Against Censorship:
“One type of filter blocked the home pages of the Traditional Values Coalition. Another blocked the monogamy-advocating Society for the Promotion of Unconditional Relationships.
CYBERsitter blocked the Amnesty International Web site. I-Gear blocked an essay on “Indecency on the Internet,” and the home pages of four (innocent) photography galleries.
Net Nanny, SurfWatch, Cybersitter, and BESS, among other products, blocked House Majority Leader Richard “Dick” Armey’s official Web site upon detecting the word “dick.”
SmartFilter blocked the Declaration of Independence, Shakespeare’s complete plays, Moby Dick, and Marijuana: Facts for Teens, a publication by the National Institutes of Health.
SurfWatch blocked the University of Kansas’s Archie R. Dykes Medical Library (upon detecting the word “dykes”).
WebSENSE blocked the Jewish Teens page.
X-Stop blocked Carnegie Mellon University’s Banned Books page, “Let’s Have an Affair” catering company, and, through its “foul word” function, searches for “The Owl and the Pussy Cat.” http://www.ncac.org/issues/internetfilters.html)”
This is not to even consider that many of our kids can easily outwit these robotic tools, born as they were, at a keyboard.
The simple truth is that Americans cannot be trusted. Unfortunately, we must allow them their freedom anyway because we made them a promise.
Parents are welcome and encouraged to accompany their children to the library. They are also encouraged to instruct their children about appropriate materials for viewing.
And lastly, while many are petrified at the idea of doing something like this, every now and then a complete stranger will say to a youngster (without asking the librarian’s permission first,) “Son, does your mother know you look at that stuff?”
I close with the words of a great subversive:
“You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken – unspeakable! – fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse – a little tiny mouse! – of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.” ~ Winston Churchill
Bill C. Jones, Gilroy
Submitted Friday, Feb. 20
to ed****@****ic.com
