I think it’s time we had a little chat about free speech, Stanley Fish notwithstanding. It is to John Locke we Americans owe our Declaration of Independence (if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he’d be in hot water over that plagiarism). And it is his notion of a free and open society that shaped our Constitution, specifically the First Amendment–you know, the one that makes it difficult to ban books, not that folks don’t try.
Librarians are on the front lines in the battle against censorship, as well as for other civil liberties. They are:
defending access to controversial or banned books, staving off budget cuts, and creating and expanding programs to draw more citizens into one of the few remaining genuinely public commons in American life. While the ethic of secrecy often prevails in the gathering and dissemination of corporate and governmental information, the work of a librarian is imbued with just the opposite. Be it in the capacity of archivist, reference librarian or information technology professional, a common thread is the profession’s dogged commitment to safeguarding books, research and information to make knowledge more widespread, not less.
So, to celebrate John Locke’s birthday, I’d like to urge all of you out there to take a moment to thank a librarian. Many of them defend his notion of intellectual freedom daily, a task that our government is no longer fond of. And maybe while you’re in the library, check out a banned book, too. Exercise your right to free speech or you may lose it.