Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.
In your heart, you know they’re right. Sure. You know that you don’t possess the intellect, the discretion, the maturity, or, at long last, bubba, the class, to decide on your own what to read. Well, happily for you, your moral superiors at WWWtW have undertaken the task of protecting you from your own so very apparent shortcomings. A list is being drawn up of those books which should be removed from the shelves and incinerated before intellectual dwarves such as yourselves incur irreparable harm by reading them.
Look, it worked in 1933, and it can work again today.
In the words of Fire Marshal, Maximos:
There are books that, by virtue of their publication and continued existence, so corrupt, distort, and occlude the perception of reality that they decrease the sum total of knowledge in the cosmos; these are books that function as intellectual black holes, actively negating knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, leaving the void of ignorance and depravity in place of these. It would have been better for all the world had they never been written, or, having once been written, that they had been consigned to the flames, so that we could discuss the temperature at which ignorance burns.
And, maybe, if we’re all real good, they’ll make us virtual s’mores!
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UPDATE: Kyle R. Cupp of Postmodern Papist had the temerity to visit WWWtW’s crypto-fascist bonfire and to there suggest:
Not into burning books myself. If an author's ideas are wrong or dangerous, let them be shown as such in open, hospitable discussion. Those eager to burn a book may even have something to learn from the author.
This polite and in my opinion, civilized, point of view on the subject of book burning was requited thusly:
Go wring your hands somewhere else.
Posted by thebyronicman March 6, 2008 11:56 PM
Evidently, at WWWtW, not only are the blog authors empowered to quash dissent, but it would seem that every undergraduate sycophant in residence is also equipped with a hook. Caveat emptor.
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UPDATE.1:
It's nice to be remembered. And they even spelled my name right:
Apparently we've agreed to burn Rodak's computer (wink).
Posted by Michael Bauman March 7, 2008 9:19 AM
