Troy Library Millage

The city of Troy, Michigan, is facing a difficult issue in its August 5th vote. There is a proposal to increase property taxes in order to maintain the city's library system, and it's causing a lot of stress. Not the least of the trouble was caused by the appearance of signs which read about a book burning lined up for the vote day.

No doubt the signs are facetious, and likely planted either by extremist library patrons (extremist library patrons? Conan the Librarian?) or souls who take delight in inflaming passions in areas where the passions are easily aroused. All sides involved publicly have denounced the signage. They both believe that it is horrible to burn books at all.

Yet the truth is that some ideas are not worthy of serious discussion; some books ought not be printed, let alone read, and certainly there are books which simply do not merit even the vague sort of public sponsorship which public libraries by the very nature of their existence must support. There are books and articles which are little more than sophomoric, others which are genuinely vile and depraved, others still of a shallow nature which are nothing more than a waste of space and paper. From a moral standpoint based solely on a given book's content, there are indeed books which call for public censure.

First Amendment rights simply do not apply; no one has the inherent right to publish or read stupidity, effrontery, or insulting literature, in the same way as no one has the right to yell fire in a crowded theater. The only real argument against burning books is that the good guys need to know what the bad guys are up to in order to counter them. The only worthwhile argument against censorship is that it only works when the good guys control it, for the bad guys will surely censor the good books if they could.

The most interesting fact here is that the argument over burning books actually begs the question of whether there should be public libraries at all. In this day and age of Internet and widespread and varied cable TV, it is within reason (like it or not) to question the need for publicly owned and loaned books and newspapers and treatises. Yet that honest political question will now become overshadowed by the work of someone not interested in truth but, rather, in incensing the voting public. That may well be their aim, to shame the voters into supporting Troy libraries merely because those voters do not want to be painted as book burners, even by analogy.

That cannot actually serve the taxpayers. But when the left wants something, decency be damned. And that in itself is another of those vile ideals which ought to be burned from public discussion. Hyperbole serves its purpose, and homeowners must foot the bill.