Last Sunday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel featured a front-page article about what it called “book banning” in Wisconsin schools. It was a case study in a society run amok and the dishonest media that fuels it.
The article was given a lot of ink and was classic liberal “journalism”. Entitled “Wisconsin Schools Also Banning Books” the article recounted how, since 2021, restrictions were requested for more than 200 books, with about half being restricted after review.
Sources cited by the Journal Sentinel included the Wisconsin American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which is monitoring the requests because many feature characters of color or LGBTQ+. They contend restrictions may be “politically motivated” and could violate “students’ rights to information”. Tim Muth, the interim Director, alleged “…the reasons for pulling these books have to do with school boards’ disagreement with the ideas, with the content, which is an illegal and unconstitutional reason…”.
PEN America, another source, tracks requests to restrict books across the country. This organization exists to defend the right of free expression for writers, artists, and journalists. They observe that prior to 2021 there were only a handful of requests to restrict books in schools and the number has grown significantly since. PEN and the American Library Association (ALA) also note that most of the restriction requests are for books written by or about people of color or LGBTQ+ people.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the ALA asserts there is “evidence of a growing, well-organized” movement to ban books “addressing history, gender identity, sexuality and reproductive health”.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a frequently cited “authority” by liberal journalists when trying to disparage the work of groups they oppose. Founded in 1971 to “ensure the promise of the civil rights movement became reality for all”, they have morphed over the years into self-appointed monitors of hate and extremism describing themselves as “the premier US organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and the antigovernment hard right extremists”.
The Southern Poverty Law Center explains “as the country has grown increasingly diverse, our work has only become more vital”. They have expanded far beyond racial justice and are into what they call LGBTQ rights. They fully embrace the lie of transgenderism.
They also run “Hatewatch” which “monitors and exposes the activities of the American Radical Right”. They have taken it upon themselves to designate two of the parent groups objecting to some books in some schools as an “extremist antigovernment organization” (Moms for Liberty) and “an anti LGBTQ group” (Mass Resistance). Journalists include these designations when writing about these parent groups, implying the designations should be considered important, despite coming from a far-left organization with a far-left agenda.
There are four parent organizations that have been leaders in monitoring the material their children are being exposed to in school libraries and fighting for their removal when deemed inappropriate. They are Moms for Liberty, Mass Resistance, Parents’ Rights in Education and No Left Turn in Education. They are not the lunatic fringe the media would like to make them out to be. They are parents who fully intend to exercise their rights and responsibilities in raising their children.
The attempt to liken serious parental concerns to the book burning of the Nazi regime is a deliberate mischaracterization, seeking to make bogeymen of parents who will not yield control of their children to others. Society has been in decline for decades with immorality high on the list of things that are bringing us down. Sexualizing children and the aggressive liberal push to advance the lie that gender is a choice have made their way to very young children. As parents awakened to the reality of what is going on in some schools, they responded with the intensity the situation requires.
The increase in requests to restrict books observed by PEN America is a direct response to the spread of inappropriate material to minors. PEN’s primary interest in making sure there are no restrictions on people’s freedom to author whatever they choose has nothing to do with minor children’s access to these materials. Likewise, the ACLU forfeits any hope of credibility when referring to this as minor students’ “rights to information”.
Misuse of the English language is a strategy often used to mask the truth by those trying to fundamentally change the country. The ALA’s objection to restricting books because they address “history, gender identity, sexuality and reproductive health” is a deceptive use of words to deflect from the real issues being normalized and promoted: critical race theory, trangenderism, promiscuity, sexualizing children, and abortion.
Here are some facts.
In a 1982 Supreme Court case, the court ruled school boards cannot remove books just because they don’t like the ideas, but they can remove books for “educational suitability and pervasive vulgarity”.
More importantly, in 1997, the Supreme Court ruled the due process clause of the 14th amendment of the Constitution “protects the fundamental right of parents to direct the care, upbringing and education of their children”.
In Wisconsin, state statutes limit “obscene material” and “material harmful to children”. Parents must be the final arbiters of what is obscene and harmful.
Booklooks.org is a resource for parents to identify books that are unsuitable. The following excerpts are from books requested to be restricted in Wisconsin Schools. If the media did their job, we could honestly debate if this is what minors should be reading in school. Judge for yourself.
Melissa by Alex Gino
“While Mom made dinner, George headed upstairs to take a bath. She took off her shirt while the tub filled, waiting until the last possible moment to take off her pants and underwear. She immersed her body in the warm water and tried not to think about what was between her legs, but there it was, bobbing in front of her”.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
“Then he lift his head, turn over, and put his hand on my waist. If I don’t move, he’ll move his hand over to pull and knead my stomach. Soft and slow-like. I still don’t move, because I don’t want him to stop. I want to pretend sleep and have him keep on rubbing my stomach. Then he will lean his head down and bite my tit. Then I don ‘t want him to rub my stomach anymore. I want him to put his hand between my legs. I pretend to wake up, and turn to him, but not opening my legs. I want him to open them for me. He does, and I be soft and wet where his fingers are strong and hard. I be softer than I ever been before. All my strength in his hand. My brain curls up like wilted leaves. A funny, empty feeling is in my hands. I want to grab holt of something, so I hold his head. His mouth is under my chin. Then I don’t want his hand between my legs no more, because I think I am softening away. I stretch my legs open, and he is on top of me. Too heavy to hold, and too light not to. He puts his thing in me. In me. In me. I wrap my feet around his back so he can’t get away”.
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
“The “It’s a girl! No, it’s a boy!” mix-up is funny on paper, but not quite so hilarious in real life, especially when the star of that story struggles with their identity. Gender is one of the biggest projections placed onto children at birth, despite families having no idea how the baby will truly turn out. In our society, a person’s sex is based on their genitalia. That decision is then used to assume a person’s gender as boy or girl, rather than a spectrum of identities that the child should be determining for themselves. …”
We are a society run amok and the dishonest media makes it a one-two punch in the fight for our country. It will be up to us to deliver the knock-out blow.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Dear Readers:
Don’t miss the 2024 Election Integrity Alert below. This excerpt from the editorial pages of the November/December issue of On Wisconsin Outdoors (OWO) is reprinted with permission. To read the complete content, pick up a copy of OWO free at Kwik Trips throughout the state or go to onwisconsinoutdoors.com. We have one year to insist we have verifiable elections in Wisconsin and every voice is needed.
2024 Election Integrity Alert
The WEC has more than 2.8 million ineligible voters on its registration list
As of this writing, the statewide voter registration list maintained by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) includes 7,498,167 voters. But according to the 2020 United States Census, there are only 4,612,300 adults living in Wisconsin. This means that there are 2,885,867 more voters on the WEC’s registration list, than there are people of voting age living in Wisconsin. This has made elections in Wisconsin unverifiable, and is the most important problem that must be corrected before our 2024 elections.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (608-237-9163), Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (608-266-2056), and Brian Schimming, Chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin (608-257-4765) all know about this, but have remained silent on the issue. If we allow it, they will remain silent through next year’s elections. We can’t let that happen. It’s extremely important that you contact them, as well as your state assemblyman and senator, to demand they make removing all ineligible voters from the WEC’s registration list their first priority. *
Nothing is more important than making sure Wisconsin has verifiable elections in 2024, and the most important step toward having them, is removing all ineligible voters from the WEC’s list. Please make your calls, stay involved, and share this article with everyone you can.
*To find out how to contact your state legislators, go to legis.wisconsin.gov.
John Ellis
