The West is Worth Saving and So Are Our Libraries
What business are we in?
Libraries are said to be the last palaces for the people. A place to read, to hear and to talk about all ideas. A mini model, home, to that great successful social experiment called Canada, America, England and the rest of the West.
The West is worth saving and so are our libraries.
In Canada the right to read what you want, access what you want on the internet and hear whose speech you want to hear in a library is called Intellectual Freedom. This freedom allows people to experience ideas that rouse them – wake them up. Hearts beating, ideas flowing with excitement wanting to share that book, tell that story, talk about the speaker who captured the crowd with their willingness to speak about their experience – something you had wondered about – is it just me? I don’t hear anyone else saying this…
But, as the saying goes, the glass has shattered. Wake up. Stand up. Speak up.
Librarians are trying to trade intellectual freedom in for intellectual responsibility. Like a parasite the term borrows the word “intellectual”, hoping you won’t notice that it traded your freedom for the straitjacket of responsibility.
Who decides? Who decides what and who you need to be responsible for? Apparently a 54-year-old tradition of law of responsibility isn’t enough of a mantle of reason for the librarians, they are expanding their responsibility from being an access point to the palace of possibilities to being the gatekeeper of your goodness.
They have decided they know what is good for you and what is bad for those they want to protect with their paternalistic pattern of saying, “No – not that book – the science is settled! No – not that speaker – their words will wound.” They have gone so far as to advocate for expanded powers of government to control, constrict and choke your freedoms.
Intellectual freedom is being bent until it breaks on the alter of intellectual responsibility.
What will be your response?
What business are you in?
What business are libraries in?
Are they providing books or blankets?
*Author’s notes:
(1) This is a creative text marking National Poetry Month here at Heterodoxy in The Stacks. This piece is designed to stimulate thought, debate and conversation. The author understands it can be an important service for libraries to provide blankets and is not advocating not to.
(2) The author would like to thank the Macdonald-Laurier Institute for the invitation and opportunity to attend the event In Defence of Western Civilization, Douglas Murray in conversation with Brian Lee Crowley.
(3) Additional thanks to Douglas Murray for taking the time time to answer the question this author posed. Murray’s answer, and the event discussion, helped inspire this piece.
(4) If reader’s would like to explore what is meant by “intellectual responsibility”, the author recommends viewing the Closing Keynote from the 2023 Manitoba Libraries Conference titled “An Intellectual Freedom Conversation with Sam Popowich”. This keynote was a conversation between then President of the Manitoba Library Association, Melanie Sucha, and Sam Popowich.
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Thank you for your thoughtful piece! I used to regard rhetoric concerning the "genius of the West" as evoking some form of exceptionalism and triumphalism. Now I interpret it according to tenets of Aristotelian causation: that the genius of the West isn't Material or inherent, but Formal and structural--deriving from a fortunate combination of historical contingency, environmental conditions, human agency and ideologies. The confluence of these forces resulted in a political environment that doesn't just tolerate difference, debate and dialogue, but depends upon it, thereby allowing all manner of belief systems to coexist in a fragile balance that must be constantly nourished and attended to. And one of the institutions charged with maintaining that balance is the public library, by allowing free peoples to access knowledge, information and ideas, so as to be able to continue to engage in that ongoing project. That's why institutional neutrality and intellectual freedom matter: without them, those fortunate conditions that made the nations associated with "the West" tolerant liberal democracies cannot be maintained.
Thank you for this provocative post. I love your opening line: "What business are we in?" You put forth some important questions, but I suggest we broaden the discussion to include private libraries. You talk much of liberty. I'm libertarian when it comes to libraries, but conservative and libertarian--and much more as labels cannot adequately capture my beliefs and habits--in my family life, when it comes to what books my children should read. I agree with you, but I encourage you to consider how private libraries might help your cause (our cause actually, as we likely agree on the importance of liberty with respect to libraries).
The problem here is that we won't all agree on things. Not when it comes to public school or libraries. So how shall we proceed? Men and women will naturally want to censor each other. Are public libraries and public schools really the solution you're looking for? They involve quite a bit of politicking. Certainly you don't love politics? Why not advocate for private libraries? Why not just get rid of public libraries which crowd out the multitude of private alternatives? With private libraries each group can curate as they desire. No longer will you need to post on this topic. Everyone will simply visit the libraries of their choice just as they do grocery stores.