David*Macinnis*Gill.com

Robert Cormier is no longer with us. While he was, he was a bril­liant writer, a good man, and a Chris­t­ian who probed the mean­ing of faith, both good and bad. Despite his tal­ents, he was not a man whose many abil­i­ties would lead to the cre­ation of trans­for­ma­tional gram­mar, New Math, word proces­sors, dig­i­tal clocks, and ulti­mately, the down­fall of West­ern soci­ety. Accord­ing a let­ter writer at the Alleghany Times, this is pre­cisely what has happened.

You see, The Choco­late War is in dan­ger of being banned again. This is time, Cormier’s story about a secret soci­ety of school boys has come under attack at Monaca High School, in Monaca, PA. In an effort to sup­port the ban, a cou­ple of cit­i­zens have writ­ten in the Times. In one let­ter, a writer won­ders what has become of the coun­try (one that no longer val­ues hand­writ­ing, gram­mar, long divi­sion, and ana­log clocks) if writ­ers such as Cormier can hide their “pornog­ra­phy” behind the First Amend­ment. The same writer won­ders about the absence of silent prayer in schools, the risk of offend­ing some­one by wish­ing a Merry Christ­mas, or about the fate of a Christ­mas tree becom­ing a mun­dane Hol­i­day tree. The writer is right­eously indig­nant that her free­dom of reli­gion is being infringed, rights guar­an­teed her by the First Amendment…of the…Constitution. Would that be the same Amend­ment that guar­an­tees free­dom of the speech? Free­dom of the press?

Yes, it would.

Another writer bemoans the fact that “unpre­pared” writ­ers are being intro­duced in the class­room and there­fore, won­ders how any of today’s young peo­ple could pos­si­bly become the next Twain or Hem­ing­way or O’Neill. I don’t really fol­low the logic of the writ­ers think­ing, but I think it’s a good thing that Twain and Hem­ing­way or O’Neill have never…been…censored. Would that be the same Twain who wrote The Adven­tures of Huck­le­berry Finn, which is peren­ni­ally included in the Top Ten List of Fre­quently Banned Books? Would they be the same Hem­ing­way and O’Neill whose work has been cen­sored many times?

Yes, they would.

You see, Cen­sors, the First Amend­ment pro­tects equally. You can’t sep­a­rate the free­doms to fit your own devices. If you want the free­dom of reli­gion, even your own idiomatic expres­sion of it, then you have con­cede the same free­dom to every­one. You can’t have it both ways. If you want free­dom of speech for your favored authors, then you have to con­cede it to all authors, whether you value those authors or not. If you want free­dom of the press so that you can pub­lish your views sup­port­ing book ban­ning, then you have to afford all presses the same free­dom. There is no pro­vi­sion in the Con­sti­tu­tion for selec­tive enforce­ment, no ratio­nale for forc­ing the rest of the coun­try to con­form to your par­tic­u­lar definitions.

One of the writ­ers claimed that The Choco­late War is porno­graphic. There is no pornog­ra­phy in it. The writer claims that there is child molesta­tion in it. There is none. The writer claims the book is anti-Christian. It is not.

The Choco­late War is none of the things that the Cen­sors claim it is.

How­ever, you should not take my word for it. You should read the novel your­self so that you can see what’s in it. That’s what the Cen­sors are try­ing to do, by the way–prevent US cit­i­zens from read­ing a book for them­selves. Instead, they would rather tell you what is in it and make up your mind for you.

Don’t let them.