EDITORIAL: 'You do you, and let me do me'

Censorship has been around for a while.

Modern-day censorship evangelists fall far short of their earliest predecessor. Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti buried 460 Confucian scholars alive around 210 B.C., just so he could control how modern history was recorded.

The emperor followed that up a couple years later by burning all the books in his kingdom.

So the passionate patrons of North Idaho libraries who believe society is going to heck in a handbasket because of some materials made available by library trustees are modest compared to history’s maddest censorship mongers. And history is replete with plenty of them, through every age and every medium.

This is nothing new to you; you’ve read articles and seen news broadcasts aplenty about the topic since you were old enough to pick up a newspaper or turn on a TV or radio. But few people have enunciated the argument for letting professional librarians and their supervisors do their jobs in this alleged Land of the Free better than Dr. Sara Morrow.

Consider these paragraphs from reporter Devin Weeks’ recent article about the latest debate over local library materials:

Longtime Hayden resident Dr. Sara Morrow, who has homeschooled her children for eight years, expressed her appreciation for public libraries and how the library has been an invaluable resource for her family.

"As a child psychologist, I would like to validate everyone's concerns — there absolutely is a crisis in pediatric mental health unfolding, and as a professional in the field, I would like to reassure you it has nothing to do with the books in the library," she said. "There are far more powerful influences at play in the state of children's mental health."

She said it's a complicated era to be a parent, and that it is parents' sole responsibility to monitor their children's choices in the books they read, their behavior on the internet and social media, screen time and friends with whom they associate.

Morrow said it is a parent's job to enforce each family's values to teach and guide their children, and that she has huge concerns about the banning of books that could benefit other people.

"Humans are diverse; that is one of the strengths and beauties of human beings," she said. "To ban books is a violation of our basic freedoms. As an Idahoan, I have always so appreciated that we have this unspoken agreement: 'You do you, and let me do me.' That is being an Idahoan, and that is powerful freedom and liberty. To ban books is oppression; to empower one group's ideology at the disservice of everyone else is oppression."

To that we say, "Amen, Dr. Morrow." Don't suppose you'd be interested in any future library trustee vacancies?