{"id":1941421,"date":"2023-05-31T16:28:02","date_gmt":"2023-05-31T20:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/leftist-midwits-and-their-media-allies-redefine-banned-books\/"},"modified":"2023-05-31T16:30:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T20:30:58","slug":"leftist-midwits-and-their-media-allies-redefine-banned-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/leftist-midwits-and-their-media-allies-redefine-banned-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Leftist media and midwits change meaning of &#8216;banned&#8217; books."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fleftist-midwits-and-their-media-allies-redefine-banned-books%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1941421&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>The Evolution of the Word &#8220;Banned&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>What does it mean to be \u201cbanned\u201d in the year 2023? The media would have you believe that Florida schools are banning books, the leading edge of the Ron DeSantis fascist wave. But let&#8217;s take a closer look at the historical understanding of the term.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Before the Civil War, southern states <em>banned<\/em> abolitionist literature. That <em>ban<\/em> meant that postmasters (illegally!) searched the mail, seized anti-slavery tracts, and burned them. And it meant that people caught with abolitionist pamphlets faced the likelihood of arrest. The Soviet government <em>banned<\/em> Yevgeny Zamyatin\u2019s work: They seized and destroyed all known copies, told editors and publishers the author was no longer allowed to publish, and sent Zamyatin into exile, where he died without ever seeing his own country again. During World War I, the federal government <em>banned<\/em> literature that discouraged military service, including tracts that criticized conscription. Anti-conscription literature was <em>banned<\/em>: It was seized and destroyed, and people caught distributing it were sent to prison.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Words have had meaning. They can again. When the media use a trigger word, a loaded term that evokes Nazis on the march or innocents being slaughtered in the street, look for the historical understanding of the term. We\u2019re living through a Soviet-level redefinition of language.<\/p>\n<h3>The Amanda Gorman Controversy<\/h3>\n<p>In 2023, the tedious midwit poet Amanda Gorman posted on Twitter that she was \u201cgutted\u201d to discover that one of her poems had been \u201cbanned\u201d by a school in Florida. But as others have already said, Gorman\u2019s boring poem was moved from an elementary school library shelf to a middle school library shelf, without leaving the library:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Staff members on the school\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/leftist-midwits-and-their-media-allies-redefine-banned-books\/\" title=\"Leftist media and midwits change meaning of 'banned' books.\">materials review committee ultimately decided<\/a> four of the five books would be \u201cmore appropriate\u201d for middle school-aged children and thus moved the books to the middle-school section of the library. A fifth book that also underwent review, <em>Countries in the News: Cuba<\/em>, was found to be \u201cbalanced and age appropriate\u201d and was kept in place.<\/p>\n<p>Minutes from a meeting of the review committee show the panel found the vocabulary used in Gorman\u2019s poem was \u201cdetermined to be of value for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utah-school-allows-parents-to-opt-out-of-black-history-month-curriculum-reverses-course\/\" title=\"Utah School Allows Parents To Opt Out Of Black History Month Curriculum, Reverses Course\">middle school students<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Miami-Dade County Public Schools told CNN that \u201cno literature (books or poem) has been banned or removed.\u201d \u201cIt was determined at the school that \u2018The Hill We Climb\u2019 is better suited for middle school students and, it was shelved in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fact-check-florida-school-bans-amanda-gorman-poem\/\" title=\"Florida school denies Amanda Gorman poem.\">middle school section<\/a> of the media center. The book remains available in the media center.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Let&#8217;s not let the media&#8217;s misuse of language distract us from the real issues at hand. This article was originally published at the author\u2019s Substack, \u201cTell Me How This Ends.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>About the Author<\/h3>\n<p>Chris Bray is a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army, and has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles. He is the author of &#8220;Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America from the Revolution to 9\/11 and Beyond,&#8221; published last year by W.W. Norton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2023, being &#8220;banned&#8221; holds a different meaning than in the past. Pre-Civil War, southern states banned anti-slavery literature, leading to illegal mail searches and arrests for possessing such material. The District of Columbia considered a ban but ultimately did not pass it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":1941423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[7066,8755,5103,4717,8806,4188,27990],"class_list":["post-1941421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-banned","tag-books","tag-change","tag-leftist","tag-meaning","tag-media","tag-midwits"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1941421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1941423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1941421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1941421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1941421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}