It's Wednesday, June 14, 2023.

I'm Albert Moller, and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a

Christian worldview.

A lot of discussion these days about book banning and book bans, and as we discussed previously,

we need to be very careful about that language because usually there is no banning of a book.

It is instead a controversy over who gets to decide what's in a library, who gets to

decide what is in a school curriculum, who decides what children will and will not confront

in a library and might read.

The big issue here is a basic conflict, is between those who say that the answer is

professionals should make these decisions or parents should make these decisions.

And state after state, what we have seen is that this is the major conflict.

And we have to understand that this conflict is so deep that people on both sides simply

almost can't understand that anyone would hold the opposite position.

And if you look at this long enough, you understand this exactly what's going on.

For years, libraries have been under the control of professional librarians.

Now, this is something to put in a footnote here.

Professionalization is one of the ways that a couple of things happen.

Number one was called rationalization.

So you establish, okay, these are the rules of how a library should operate.

You walk into a library, this is what you should find.

So, a library should be rationalization means it should be reasonable and it should be the same everywhere.

And so a library in Dubuque should look like a library in Detroit.

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