Security Through Book Burning

Abstract

My theory is that we had all better be a little less prudential in exercising our precious freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, if we want to keep them. Like other rights, they grow weak when not used. This makes life too easy for those who enjoy the sight of brightly burning books. The title assigned me is Security Through Book Burning. A dear old lady I know asked a while ago, What is all this bother about book burning? Why, I always dispose of my old books that way. How else does anyone get rid of books he doesn't want any more? Well, ours is an age of symbols. The shortage of shelf space bothers us all, I hope. We shall simply have to get used to sending books we can no longer keep to the veterans' hospitals and the Merchant Marine Library. Offensive books can be buried. But burning is out. This is now pretty generally realized. The Boy Scouts in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, decided to celebrate Lincoln's Birthday this year by burning objectionable books on the grounds of Fort Butts, a shrine of the Revolution. They ended by withholding the torch and consigning the offensive matter to the town dump instead, when the announcement of their proposed celebration received what the sponsors mildly called adverse publicity. This outcome supports my theory that we need to exercise our freedoms, and bellow and laugh more often and more loudly at those who have forgotten what country they are living in. Nobody denies a man's, or a Boy Scout's, right to junk a piece of printing which he decides, after reading it, that he does not like. But form counts for a lot. In any society, ideas without procedure are a mess; in our society, which has staked everything on the principle of government by laws not men, a breakdown in method means an unholy mess, and points to the end of our society as we have known it. Book burning is a symbol which denies the