Georgia’s Senate passed a bill Thursday that would ban libraries from spending public or private funds on services offered by the American Library Association, which a Republican member of the chamber called a “Marxist and socialist” group.
The measure, Senate Bill 390, passed by a vote of 33 to 20. Democrats opposed it, saying the ALA offered libraries invaluable services and had long defended free speech and artistic expression.
But one of the bill’s authors, Republican Sen. Larry Walker III, said the group’s agenda and politics were inconsistent with Georgia’s conservative values.
“This is not an attack on libraries,” he said. “It doesn’t ban any books.”
I once saw a comment that said, “If libraries didn’t already exist, there’s no way you’d get Republicans to agree to the concept of paying taxes to fund them.”
I think about that a lot. Guess he was more right than he knew.
[…] the group’s agenda and politics were inconsistent with Georgia’s conservative values.
In other words, supporting open access to a broad range of varied information is against their conservative values. Not that that’s news to anyone following conservative behaviors, but it must be emphasized for those that don’t.
Alongside that, undercutting a source of funds may not be banning books, but it absolutely reduces the operational capacities of libraries that were benefiting from them, in effect removing a range of books the libraries might otherwise provide.
Which is why their trying to knee-cap the internet.
Experience guides my way; anything a politician says before or after “think of the children” has nothing to do with actual childrens safety and everything to do with undermining your constitutional rights
Every single time. Without fail.
Grew up in Oklahoma, way back when. Fucking with library funding was unthinkable. Banning books was unthinkable. That was Nazi shit, unthinkable. What’s next? State sponsored book burnings?!
That must’ve been a long time ago. Oklahoma and East Texas have been on this path since at least the Regan era.
Just when I thought Georgia was on the upswing
Progress is rarely a flat line
Progress is never a flat line. Incrementalism only exist to erode our rights, not gain them. Rights are cemented hard and fast with a pen stroke. Incrementalism is the 10000 lawsuits chipping away at it one nib le at a time. 50 years of that and look, Roe gets overturned.
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Would have been nice to see the cities as pie charts, as probably none of the cities are 100% voting for a party. So it’s a big difference if Clayton is 50% + 1 Dems or 75%.
Does he know what Marxism is?
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Bans private funds for it? Two new again how Republicans are the party of free market and small government.
Gotta save that money for the book burnings.
Is anyone keeping a history of everything they’re trying to do? A record should be available to pass the same laws against churches
