What is the problem with Legislators in Missouri?

[msc545]

Missouri House Republicans voted to defund all of the state’s public libraries, in a proposed $45.6 billion state budget that will soon move to a vote in the GOP-controlled state Senate.

[RealMarek]

Their problem is the same as that had by all the legislatures: the United States is an empire not just externally and internally, with an elite that attempt to suppress cultures and impose universal ideologies that are not and never will be universally held. It was difficult enough when America was much less diverse, but with extreme diversity politics as structured in this country becomes an existential threat to everyone’s beliefs and way of life.

There is a different approach that might work better: the millet system. It was designed for a diverse empire like America. In the millet system, each religion administered civil law over its adherents and collected taxes to hand over to the sultan. The sultanate only intervened when there were cases of inter-community conflict. When it was functioning well, the empire was very distant from every day life and decisions about how people lived.

Well, there is no reason we couldn’t do the same thing here except for lack of imagination. Why not have people organized into voluntarist communities that share a uniform set of characteristics, whether these be religious, cultural, or militantly secular. These communities would conduct education and, for internal affairs, administer law. People would be free to apply to be reassigned to a different community, but would be expected to conform to the laws and to respect the ideological beliefs of that community. Therefore, one community might restrict intersectional literature from the reach of children and have prayer in school while another could have drag queen story hour for preschoolers on the daily. Those communities that foster the greater health and commonwealth of their members will naturally prosper and those that do not will naturally fail.

I would suggest there is very dark reason we cannot live alongside each other with a true diversity of communities, beliefs, and cultures. Specifically, the long-standing missionary/universalist impulse that has animated the eastern seaboard elite from the time of the Puritans to the present intersectional ideologues that cannot tolerate people believing what they want to believe and living how they want to live without guidance from the national level imposed by force.

[slatyb]

Educated people mostly don't vote Republican.

[Anonymous]

The state passed a law that effectively banned hundreds of books from public school libraries. LGBTQ material seemed to be the main target. The ACLU filed a lawsuit on obvious first amendment grounds, so the GOP response was to pull all library funding. Censorship has returned in a big way to conservative politics as part of their culture war. It’s not just Missouri either. There is a coordinated effort in numerous states to ban books or cut library funding punitively. You have to question the motives of a party that seeks to block access to information. It reeks of fascism.

[XiJinping]

Censorship has returned? LOL Where have you been? Facebook, Twitter, the FBI, the Justice department, the white house...

[Anonymous]

Meanwhile: Missouri Republicans Voted To Allow 12-Year-Old Girls To Be Married.

[goaded]

They're Republicans. They love to project. "It's a slippery slope", they say, if you allow brown people, or women, or gay people rights, but the slippery slope is always to the right and the left has to push uphill. Stop pushing and you lose the right to make your own health decisions, you might (on the same basis) lose your right to contraception, or to marry the person you love. They might stop short of banning inter-racial marriage, because that would actually affect one of the SCOTUS "justices".

[DryGermanGuy]

In Florida the Republicans just banned a graphic novel about Anne Frank in the libraries, because it "trivializes the Holocaust". A book about ANNE FRANK.

[OlderAndWiser]

Wrong. One school removed the book because of its sexual content. Red more than just the headlines because many sites on the internet get it wrong!

apnews.com/.../censorship-books-school-libraries-holocaust-anne-frank-bb65349704ab2dae1ac90a0f9856d7b9

[DryGermanGuy]

I saw it in a German-language report. I guess they were imprecise in their translation. Also, that doesn't mean that other schools will not pickup the same nonsense.

[OlderAndWiser]

"Nonsense" is a very judgmental term. This is a difference of opinion and most parents in the US support not having books such as this in school libraries.

[msc545]

@OlderAndWiser Only a nation of illiterate would support people with no qualification other than "parent" being allowed to ban books.

[goaded]

Wait, so the book, adapted from the dairy of a victim by someone whose parents survived the Holocaust, was banned for "minimising the Holocaust"?

"“Even her version featured the editing out of the entries about sex,” [Moms for Liberty leader Jennifer Pippin] said, referring to the original diary."
"She" (meaning Anne Frank) didn't publish a "version" of her diary, edited or not, SHE WAS DEAD! Killed by the Nazis.

There's no way the objection was about "minimising the Holocaust".

[msc545]

@goaded Republicans will smear and lie about anyone to get their Nazi politicians elected.

[exitseven]

This may be a response to having drag queen story hour for preschool kids. It certainly seems extreme. I will wait to pass judgement before I get all the facts.

[goaded]

Texas is banning books that mention farts.

[exitseven]

@goaded Titles?

[goaded]

"... three books from Dawn McMillan’s “I Need a New Butt!” series... and four other children’s picture books with “silly themes and rhymes,” like “Larry the Farting Leprechaun,” “Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose”; “Freddie the Farting Snowman” and “Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts,” according to the complaint"

www.nbcnews.com/.../llano-county-texas-weighs-closing-local-library-federal-judge-orders-b-rcna79173

[exitseven]

@goaded These books are not banned. The school has just elected not to spend public funds to buy them. There is a big difference.

[goaded]

They already have the books, they weren't allowed to put them on their shelves by Republicans. The Republicans banned the library from putting them on their shelves.

Now those Republicans lost a court case against them, they are considering closing down all the libraries rather than letting anyone borrow “Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose”.

[lottiebannotie]

So no libraries no abortions but plenty of guns I'm on my way to the land of the free 😂

[FilmGuy93]

God, I hope that isn't true. Physical libraries are, I would argue, the single most buildings in a society.

[TryMeBee]

Maybe they're just illiterate..