‘Free speech’ also means the right to read any book
It is appalling to see the Republican leadership of the Georgia State House of Representatives endorse reprehensible proposals that attempt to restrict and censor books in our schools, “Georgia GOP leader backs ‘obscenity’ legislation that echoes what she once opposed,” (News, Dec. 7). Trained as a journalist at the University of Georgia, Rep. Jan Jones knows better than to support this blatantly anti-American legislation that she once courageously opposed. Our legislators need to review the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was written and often invoked in our nation’s better days to guarantee free speech in this country. Schoolchildren should be taught that “free speech” also means they also have a right to read any book. Even a casual reading of contemporary history — from totalitarian China to Nazi Germany to McCarthyism in America — suggests that book banning is a foolish and losing strategy to control a free-thinking citizenry.
Politicians should stay away from our schools and libraries.
IRA K. SCHWARTZ, ATLANTA
Article on GOP ‘insurrection’ unfair and unbalanced
The AJC.com headline on Dec. 30, “Slow Motion Insurrection: How GOP seizes election power,” is an article trying to document an “insurrection” by Republican officeholders who were duly elected and are using legal processes to modify election laws. The linguistic gymnastics used to equate legislative and judicial actions with an unlawful “insurrection” is typical of postmodern written expression, which labels everything the Left disagrees with as “violence.” This highly charged article is all the more ironic. It fails to mention HR1. The proposed law, sponsored by Democrats in the House and Senate, would essentially grab much of the control over local and state elections as a matter of social justice. I thought the AJC was striving for balance, but in putting this article at the top of its stack, it clearly missed by a mile.
GARY O’NEILL, MARIETTA
