Why do liberals want the Bible out of public libraries?

By Richard F. Miniter @ American Thinker
 

James LaRue, who directs the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (an especially moronic oxymoron if there ever was one), has recently listed The Bible as a “challenged” book – which should cause us to think deeply about why liberal intellectuals want to take the Bible not only out of school, hotel rooms, and courthouses, but also out of public libraries.
Yet not the Quran?  The answer turns out to be very simple and, to the liberal mind, completely logical.  The Quran does not represent the civilization they resent. 

That is, they want to dump the Bible and keep the Quran for the same reason they want to teach minorities about themselves instead of about Western civilization, which alone among the other cultures of the world offers them safe harbor. For the same reason they wish to rid themselves of the biographies of the great industrialists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who raised everybody’s standard of living so dramatically, the study of pioneers, of the British Navy and Pax Britannica and world trade.

For the same reason they wish to expunge words they do not approve of from our speech and writing, the same reason they wish to destroy Christian crosses in the public square and statues of American heroes, storytellers, and founders of great American institutions. All of these and many more ubiquitous symbols, text, speech, and visuals represent an ongoing immersion course in Western history and culture.  As long as they’re up there in our daily lives, it’s as though we’re sitting in Grandma’s living room surrounded by walls of family photographs and listening to stories about that family.

Our family.

This is something liberals can’t stand, because there’s no photo of them on those walls.  Their left-wing theories didn’t invent the electric light or heavier-than-air flight, nor did they break the land and make it livable.  They didn’t drive the spikes on any transcontinental railroad.  They didn’t do any of that.  And on the rare occasion America paid any attention to their blathering, it was always a disaster.  So they loathe any comparison between those like themselves, who only theorize, and those who actually act out their individual dreams and salvation.  They loathe any idea, that is, of an America that exalts the individual.

And all this even as these same liberals scramble after the salaries and prerequisites, the sabbaticals, new government jobs, and pensions society may provide them. Just like obnoxious teenagers who disparage their parents, seek to diminish them in public and among their friends, incessantly lecture them on how they should behave or speak – in short, make their home life a misery.

Yet they demand a heftier allowance.

So maybe it’s time to pack their bags, show them the door, and let them find their own way in the world.  Judging by the looks of Hillary, Bernie Sanders, Bill Ayers, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, The Rolling Stones, and your average hippy today, they’re certainly old enough.  We deserve the peace and quiet.  Indeed, it’s the oldest library rule – which in turn is probably another reason liberals want to destroy them.

Richard F. Miniter is the author of The Things I Want Most, Random House, BDD.  See it here.  He lives and writes in the colonial-era hamlet of Stone Ridge, New York; blogs here; and can also be reached at miniterhome@gmail.com.