Among acts that evoke a sense of outrage — even horror — in those who consider themselves educated, book burning is surely near the top of the list. A dramatic, all-consuming censorship, the fires also serve as an enduring metaphor for anti-intellectualism, anti-liberalism, and mob mentality across the free world. But let’s be honest, most people don’t really have a problem with the concept of burning books. Most people just don’t want their books burned.

In America, a broadly-shared belief in the value of free speech has kept our metaphorical bonfires confined to a smolder. But today, with that value so greatly eroded, the nation has spiraled into a state of perpetual ideological battle, perhaps most visibly waged in our public schools.

What are the good books all children should be forced by law to read, and what are the bad books that should be banned and burned and erased from history? In a free state, this question is not legitimate. But with our culture now so clearly entranced by the power of censorship, defending liberal values increasingly makes no sense. If the law of the land is burn or be burned, the only rational thing to do is grab a torch.

Welcome to the culture war.

Last week, bluecheck coastal corners of the social internet exploded on news that Tennessee’s McMinn County school board banned Maus, a graphic novel based on the experiences of author Art Spiegelman’s family during the Holocaust.

According to minutes from the McGinn County school board meeting, Maus was removed from the eighth grade curriculum for a handful of swear words and an illustration of Spiegelman’s mother, naked and partly submerged in a bathtub full of her own blood after committing suicide. It was suggested teachers find another book about the Holocaust. But since Tennessee is a red state, McMinn County voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, and Maus is a book about, among many things, race, the decision has been widely criticized as antisemitic, and framed as a significant national story. McMinn’s Maus “ban” is more than the tale of a single, fallen book in a single county no one knew existed before last week. It’s the latest blow in an unrelenting, right-wing assault on education, and free speech, across the country. 

This is a superficially compelling position that is nonetheless divorced from reality.

Yes, it is certainly true a grassroots effort to ban books that fall under the loosely defined category of Critical Race Theory from schools has evolved from angry Twitter chatter into a real, if nascent, political force. It’s also true this force is explicitly interested in censorship, and is broadly popular on the political right. A Texas lawmaker recently launched a threatening “inquiry” into 850 books he found problematic, and just a day before the Maus news broke a small Missouri school district removed The Bluest Eye from library shelves — something much closer to an actual banning, and of a kind taking place around the country. But none of this has happened in a vacuum. It’s also hardly confined to the political right.

In Washington state’s small Mukilteo County, To Kill a Mockingbird was just removed from ninth grade curriculum on grounds the famously anti-racist work is racist. The book met a similar fate in Burbank, California, also in the name of combatting racism, along with several other books including Huckleberry Finn, a story literally about a boy’s journey to help free his friend from slavery. These are just the latest in a years-long string of decisions emblematic of a well-intended but ultimately regressive race obsession from the furthest extremes of the far left, which is absolutely committed to banning books.

It has also frankly been surreal to read about a Republican war on education while living in San Francisco, my overwhelmingly Democratic city. Here, in total defiance of data on Covid safety, classrooms were shuttered for over a year while the school board tried to rename buildings like Abraham Lincoln High on grounds the president who ended slavery was racist. Further positions taken by the San Francisco school board in the name of regressive race politics have included the elimination of advanced math, a targeting of Advanced Placement courses, and the end of merit-based admissions at our top high school. 

“Banning” algebra, if you will.

Similar policy has been proposed for the entire state of California. This would impact a population of close to 40 million people. McMinn County has a population of around 50 thousand, and, again, never actually stopped teaching kids about the Holocaust.

It’s worth considering the unique importance we ascribe to books. What exactly is a book but information, and does the leather binding really make the information special? This is a significant question, because beyond the classroom is a broader national story of now-pervasive censorship online.

You may have supported the removal of Donald Trump, a sitting Republican president, from social media last year, or Amazon’s revocation of services to social media upstarts that refused to follow suit. You may have supported, and may even still support, censorship of discussion concerning the Wuhan lab leak, or the Covid vaccine, or any number of discussions on potential Covid therapeutics and prophylactics. You may even agree we should no longer be teaching our children to honor such historical figures as Abraham Lincoln, a known racist (???). But surely we can all agree there are no free speech heroes in this story. Is banning Critical Race Theory from our public schools wrong because banning books is wrong, or is it wrong because you favor the regressive race obsession endemic of Critical Race Theory? Be honest.

Our problem today is not that America’s political right stands opposed to free speech. Our problem is everyone stands opposed to free speech, and what becomes of a liberal nation that no longer values the fundamental tenets of liberalism?

In a free country, the question of whether one should be forced to believe the popular left-wing thing or the popular right-wing thing is not legitimate. No one should be forced to believe the popular anything. But given what is obviously ideological warfare from all sides, the choice is censor or be censored, and I’m tired of pretending that’s not our reality. I’m tired of playing the free speech guy in a world of polite smiles while most of the country napalms the reading list. And honestly, I’m tired of losing.

So go ahead and burn my books, but when you’re done I’m coming for your library. This way, at least there’s a chance that all the ideas I like will become the law, and all the ideas that you like will be destroyed. An acceleration of our present ideological war will absolutely result in a worse world, but the acceleration will also put a price on authoritarianism. Then, who knows, sober minds from all ideological camps may finally even look around and remember the benefit of liberal values. But until they do? Sorry, I’m over it.

Light the bonfires.

-SOLANA