With the not-quite cancelation/paid vacation of Jimmy Kimmel, we are told America is facing an un-American, government-propelled censorship campaign never imagined let alone seen. The irony is the people screaming about censorship are the very politicians and bottom dwellers most responsible for the actual, government-propelled deplatforming, cancelation and censorship under Biden’s Handler’s regime. That, boy howdy, was the real thing, including the direct participation and implied threat of the FBI, not that leftist media sites and networks needed to be intimidated to harm Normal Americans.

But all is well, comrades! Ensign Sulu of the Federation Starship Enterprise is leading “Banned Books Week!” I speak, of course, of actor George Takei. Ensign Sulu, the Federation and the Enterprise are fictional, just like banned books, but more on that shortly.

Grapic: Book Cover Photograph. Author

There is one book that is arguably most banned: Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Conservatives want to “ban” it because a child is smarter and more moral than adults, and it’s homosexual. Homosexual? Jim, a slave, and Huck are occasionally naked on the raft. In summer. In the South. On the Mississippi River. And at one point, Jim says: “Come on down to the raft, Huck Honey.” Leftists want to ban it because Twain, slavery, racism, why not and certainly, Trump.  But back to Sulu:

The American Library Association announced Monday that the 88-year-old Takei will serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week, which takes place Oct. 5-11. Libraries and bookstores around the country will highlights books that have been censored, from Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” to Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”

Odd, that. I mean, the Federation has been around since 09-08-66--I’m not sure of the Star Date—and I don’t recall Sulu decrying any of the actual censorship, deplatforming and cancelations of the evil Biden Star Empire. He had four years, and has remained silent even as the Googlozites and YouTubians have admitted they were censoring Normal Americans. The badly made-up denizens of those planets are restoring those they harmed. Nothing but crickets from Sulu and the Federation. Captain Kirk—ahem--busy with various green women, couldn’t be reached to comment.

There really is not, certainly in the modern era, any such thing as a banned book. America is the only nation with a First Amendment and while the Left has labored mightily over the years to do away with or ignore it, it stands and prevents prior restraint. Unlike in England, government can’t prevent a book from being published, nor can it prevent a book from being sold, nor can it round up and destroy books already published and disseminated. Occasionally, dimwits engage in a little theatrical book arson, but they’re dimwits and they don’t burn Korans. Islamists, who they love, will kill them for that, which is a rather final sort of restraint on expression.

The First Amendment restrains government, which has powers. People have rights. If a bookstore owner decides not to carry a given book, that book, which is available from a variety of other sources, has not been banned. Sure, many bookstores tend not to carry books of a conservative, pro-American kind, but that just makes them a bit more inconvenient to find.

A real “ban” battlefield is the public schools, where the American Library Association keeps lists of “banned” books. The top two of 2024 are All Boys Aren’t Blue and Gender Queer, which the ALA tells us are “challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit.”

Translation: they’re as LGBTQWERTY+- and sexually explicit as hell.

The second battlefield is social media, but with the second Trump Administration, that battlespace is once again in the process of being leveled, which means Normal Americans are winning because Democrats can’t compete in the marketplace of free ideas. That’s why they’re screaming that they’re being banned and censored.

Nonsense. Kindergarteners unable to obtain grooming porn from their publicly-funded school library doesn't constitute a book ban. Leftists unable to remove Normal American expression from social media isn’t censorship. That’s a level playing field, where the best, most practical and sane ideas win, which is why Democrats are as popular as Rigelian flu these days.

Graphic: NCC-1701 Prop, FlugKerl2, Wikimedia Commons, CCA-SA 4.0 International

That’s why the Enterprise’s phasers aren’t firing, Scotty has given it everything he has, and Captain Kirk’s evil twin is impotent. Just as the Founders intended.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.