{"id":207672,"date":"2021-03-10T10:30:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T15:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=207672"},"modified":"2021-03-10T10:30:14","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T15:30:14","slug":"shapiro-why-dr-seuss-had-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/shapiro-why-dr-seuss-had-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"SHAPIRO: Why Dr. Seuss Had To Go"},"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\">14<\/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%2Fshapiro-why-dr-seuss-had-to-go%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=207672&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--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/fb_image-15.jpeg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>This week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would stop the sale and distribution of six classic volumes from the great children\u2019s author. Those volumes, said the company, violate its commitment to \u201cmessages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship.\u201d The books include portrayals of people \u201cin ways that are hurtful and wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Society has long held that activity that damages others ought to be curbed. John Stuart Mill posited the so-called harm principle \u2014 the belief that activity that harms someone ought to be condemned or even barred \u2014 in the mid-19th century. But Mill refused to conflate harm and offense: Being offended wasn\u2019t cause for sanction of another.<\/p>\n<p data-slot-rendered-dynamic=\"true\">Broadly speaking, society agreed with this formulation. But in the past few years, this formulation has been completely turned on its head. Now offense is not only considered a harm; it is considered the&nbsp;<em>chief&nbsp;<\/em>harm in our society. Physical injury, after all, is merely physical. But mental or emotional injury \u2014 that threatens our very sense of identity. Because we find our identity in our own sense of self-creation, any societal denial of that sense threatens our identity. As Carl Trueman writes in \u201cThe Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self\u201d: \u201cThe era of psychological man therefore requires changes in the culture and its institutions, practice, and beliefs that affect everyone. They all need to adapt to reflect a therapeutic mentality that focuses on the psychological well-being of the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-slot-rendered-dynamic=\"true\">When individual self-creation becomes the chief goal of a society, institutions must be torn down \u2014 institutions, after all, foster a set of rules that may not be conducive to individual self-creation. Informational flow must be dammed \u2014 after all, information may allow others to take a different, objectively based opinion about you than you take subjectively about yourself. Books must be burned \u2014 after all, books carry with them implicit messages that may threaten your sense of yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Iconoclasm becomes the order of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Our societal turn from actual, measurable harm toward subjective, psychological harm places us on the road to complete devastation of our culture and our rights. Now anyone who offends \u2014 or even has the potential to offend \u2014 can be, and indeed ought to be, fired. Now any book \u2014 no matter how old or how inoffensive \u2014 can be, and indeed ought to be, banned. Now any kernel of information \u2014 no matter how true \u2014 can be discarded.<\/p>\n<p data-slot-rendered-dynamic=\"true\">This formulation puts all power in the hands of those who are most easily offended \u2014 or at least those who claim to be.&nbsp;<em>The offense itself is the weapon.&nbsp;<\/em>Legal torts require damages; societal torts merely require a claim of damages, without evidence. No one can explain just how a drawing in \u201cIf I Ran the Zoo\u201d has contributed to actual racism; there are no recorded incidents of a single white supremacist citing \u201cAnd to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street\u201d as a formative source in his racist worldview. But any academic with a computer and a degree in postmodern nonsense can take those books off the shelves simply by claiming that offense is&nbsp;<em>possible&nbsp;<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div id=\"content_2_btf_wrapper\" class=\"adunitwrapper content_btf_wrapper mv-size-300x250\" data-wrapper=\"content_2_btf\" readability=\"59.5\">\n<div class=\"mv-outstream-container\" readability=\"14\">\n<p>In the end, the only literature allowed will be the literature that adheres to the values of our postmodern world \u2014 a world in which we are not expected to conform to societal rules but society is expected to conform to our own acts of self-definition. That means your child reading \u201cI Am Jazz\u201d but never \u2014 never, Gaia forbid! \u2014 the Bible. It means goodbye to cultural icons, large and small \u2014 goodbye to all vestiges of the past, replete with their \u201cbigoted\u201d value systems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>It means that the purges have only just begun.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><span class=\"s1\"><em>member<\/em><\/span><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would stop the sale and distribution of six classic volumes from the great children\u2019s author. Those volumes, said the company, violate its commitment &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1893537,"comment_status":"close","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":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"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\/207672","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1893537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}