Ben Shapiro: “Not having books in school libraries is not the same thing as banning the books”
Published
Citation From the March 24, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Who's trying to censor 1984? Who's trying – 1984 is a book about the evils of communism. You think a lot of right-wingers were attempting to censor 1984? I'd like to see your work on that, show your work on that. By the way, Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, is one most overrated pieces of crap ever put to paper. It is a garbage overstatement of every case. It's – the attempt to use it as some sort of slander against people who are pro-life, for example, is just absurdity at every level.
But, again, it's not being banned. Not having books in school libraries is not the same thing as banning the books. It is a decision as to whether those books are appropriate for, say, fifth graders or fourth graders, for example. But the left doesn't want them to make the decision. It's all about who makes – not even the decisions that are being made. This is about who are the institutional gatekeepers. Who gets to make the decision about what your kid learns. The left says, we want to do it and we don't want parents to have any part of that. And in order to achieve that, they're just going to lie about what it is they wish to teach your children. When they occasionally tell the truth, that's when parents start to backlash very, very strongly.