“There is more
than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running
about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian,
Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/ Seventh-day
Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel
feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene,
light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source
of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature,
licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to
speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.” —Ray
Bradbury
In Ray Bradbury’s
futuristic novel Fahrenheit 451, the state burned all books in order
to hide the truth from the people. In the coda to a 1979 edition of
the book, Bradbury wrote: “Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel
Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by
minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, until
the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the
libraries closed forever.”
Today, the forces of
political correctness have managed to replace actual book burning
with intellectual book burning. A recent incident at the University
of Virginia makes my point.
Grant Woolard, a
political cartoonist and graphics editor for the University’s
student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily, had developed something of a
reputation for his politically incorrect cartoons prior to the
publication of his most recent one, “Ethiopian Food Fight.” For
example, a 2006 cartoon entitled “A Nativity Ob-scene” depicted the
Virgin Mary with a rash telling Joseph that it was “immaculately
transmitted.” Still, despite nationwide criticism, the Cavalier
Daily continued to run Woolard’s work.
Perhaps the paper’s
decision to stand by Woolard had less to do with free speech and
journalistic integrity than with the fact that Woolard just hadn’t
pushed the right politically incorrect buttons yet. His latest
cartoon, however, did the trick. “Ethiopian Food Fight” depicts nine
darkened figures with bald, enlarged heads, dressed only in
loincloths, throwing non-food items during a food fight.
Unfortunately for
Woolard, the college community—especially the African-American
community—didn’t read into the cartoon what he intended. The day
after “Ethiopian Food Fight” was published, nearly 200 students
staged a sit-in outside the Cavalier Daily to protest the comic’s
racist overtones. Telephone calls demanding Woolard’s removal from
the school newspaper also started pouring in. Woolard apologized
profusely, explaining that the cartoon wasn’t intended to be a
racist or cultural jab at blacks or Ethiopians. Rather, it was meant
to call attention to the sad reality of famine and poverty
afflicting the African nation. “I am implying,” he wrote to his
critics in defense, “that in a hypothetical situation, were anyone
to have a food fight during famine, these seemingly inedible objects
would be used as ‘food.’” He noted, “This surrealistic hypothetical
situation invites the reader to realize that what initially appears
to be a joke reflects a sobering reality.” However, his critics
refused to be satisfied with anything less than Woolard’s forced
resignation.
This type of reaction
is typical of the totalitarian democracy in which we now live, and
the University of Virginia is a perfect microcosm of what is
happening across the nation. While the notion of free speech remains
enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution, censorship is
no longer a bad word. Instead, it is what responsible adults must
now do in order to ensure that no one is offended or made to feel
inferior.
Yet when we suppress
controversial ideas, we deny free speech. And when we deny free
speech, we cease to be a free society. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Potter Stewart once noted, “Censorship reflects society’s lack of
confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”
No doubt Woolard’s
cartoon was crude and lacking in sound judgment. Yet don’t we have a
particular duty to protect the Woolards of the world—those
politically incorrect few who, while they might be perceived as
irresponsible and lacking in judgment, are in fact testing our
constitutional fortitude?
Ray Bradbury was
right. There is more than one way to burn a book. And it’s a
downright shame that Woolard was forced to resign, because it
would’ve made for a good fight. In fact, we all would have been
better served had the paper chosen to defend his right to free
speech.
In writing about his
own experiences with “butcher/censors,” as he termed them, Ray
Bradbury remarked, “[I]t is a mad world and it will get madder if we
allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin,
nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite,
simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is
the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake
laws.”
If we allow the First
Amendment to be unmade by the forces of political correctness, we
might as well say goodbye to the Constitution as a whole, for it
will count for less than nothing.
Constitutional attorney and
author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford
Institute. He can be contacted at
johnw@rutherford.org.
Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at
www.rutherford.org.
