Given the ever-more extreme race to the right by Missouri’s Republican leaders lately, it was perhaps only a matter of time before one of them suggested the government should start dictating what books public libraries can and cannot carry. That’s the essence of a proposed new rule by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. The stated purpose, of course, is to protect vulnerable children from that most threatening of societal scourges: librarians.
Like Republican Senate nominee Eric Schmitt’s cynical attacks on Missouri school curriculum, this is a solution in search of a problem. Unless the problem is that Ashcroft, a potential 2024 gubernatorial candidate, is worried some other Republican might try to challenge him from the political right. He thus joins Missouri’s growing list of GOP figures willing to trash fundamental principles of a free society in their ever-spiraling quest to pander to the angriest elements of their base.
Ashcroft, whose official duties include the largely symbolic title of state librarian, announced Monday that he’s filing a proposed administrative rule that would make that role chillingly literal. It would create a state certification process under which state-funded libraries would have to create written policies explaining how they choose books “in considering the appropriateness for the age and maturity level of any minor” — and file that policy with Ashcroft’s office or face loss of state funding. It would also require libraries to create a process for parental control over what books their kids can check out, and to refrain from displaying “age-inappropriate materials” in places where kids might see them.
Then there’s this passage in the proposed rule: “No (state) funds received shall be used to purchase … materials in any form that appeal to the prurient interest of any minor.”
Prurient as determined by whom? It doesn’t say. But it’s not hard to guess.
Ashcroft doesn’t offer a single example of inappropriate material to justify forcing librarians around Missouri to file their book-selection policies with the Politburo, er, state. But his statement comes close to acknowledging what culture war nonsense it all is by declaring that he wants children “to be ‘children’ a little longer than a pervasive culture may often dictate.”
No, it’s apparently the part of the culture that still reveres the world-opening realm of books that is, Missouri’s state librarian says, a threat to children. The scariest part is to imagine what Ashcroft’s competing conservatives will have to suggest now in order to get to his right. Book barbecue, anyone?
This editorial first appeared in The St. Louis Dispatch. This commentary should be considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or editorial policy of The Dominion Post.
