I’ve said many times: wacky people who want to ban books may align themselves with a political party – but this is in no way the definition of a “conservative” stand. Instead, people who want to ban books – and especially people who approach the issue in such a banannapants way as the people in this article – are just…embarrassments to society.

And I’ve said this many times also, but there is a good strategy to use if you don’t like a books/don’t agree with the message/don’t want your family to read it: Put It Down.

Go ahead! Choose not to read a book! It’s fine! The world of books is huge, and your time is finite. Don’t read a book you don’t like. But that book is just right for someone else, so set it down and leave it for someone else to enjoy.

Check out this article excerpt about a pretty good response to a group of absolutely terrible humans. You can read the whole article here. Carrying a gun to a library or school board meeting is always, always the wrong answer. Screaming for books you haven’t read, and that aren’t even in the library, to be banned – just because someone you follow online said they were icky – is…so crazy I struggle to process it.

Again: put the book down. Don’t let your kid read it. (Good luck on that; but do what you can.) But the rest of us should still have the choice to read what we choose.

Conservatives join liberals in ‘quiet and polite’ Idaho protest to protect their library from book-banners

“A couple of dozen men, women and children are silently reading books in the shade of apple trees one sunny morning in beautiful little Bonners Ferry, Idaho. But this is a protest.

“We’re having a read-in in support of the library,” explains Billie Jo Klaniecki, a spry 70-something wearing a broad brimmed sun hat and a careworn white shirt buttoned at the cuffs. “We’re here being very quiet and very polite.”

And why does the library need their support? Because the trustees are facing a recall, because the library’s director just resigned under the pressure, and because a vocal group of activists is demanding the banning of more than 400 books from the library’s shelves. Many of the targeted books are about gender or sexuality. And currently, the library does not stock any of them.

“They’ve come into our community with their standards and their agenda and they’re determined they’re going to force it on us,” says Klaniecki. “They carry guns to library board meetings and school board meetings. Carry guns! We don’t need that. This country doesn’t need that.”

And who are these newcomers she speaks of? Well, we reached out to a number of the people pushing the recall and demanding that books be banned. None of them would talk to us.

“In the last several years, there’s been a big influx of people who are trying to come to this area to get away from urban settings,” says Darrell Kerby, an avuncular well dressed white-haired former mayor of Bonners Ferry, where he was born and raised. Like most people around here, Kerby voted for former President Donald Trump. And would consider doing so again.

Just outside town a large billboard reads, “Welcome to Trump Country” in big, bold letters. And in a smaller font, “Go Badgers,” in support of the Bonners Ferry school sports teams. Kerby is a conservative, but also firmly in support of the library trustees and their efforts to resist the would-be book banners.

“This isn’t about Trump,” he says. “This goes beyond any conservatism into almost Nazism, where they’re trying to force their own ideas and religious concepts on everybody else. That’s not America.”

“What I hate to see is my community torn apart like this,” says Lee Colson, who was also found reading a book in protest in the dappled light cast by those apple trees outside the library.

He’s a recently retired forestry worker and a volunteer fireman for more than a quarter century. He sports a thick mustache, a wide smile and a very well-worn baseball cap. He voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. He’s also one of the library board trustees now facing a recall. And standing up to those who want to ban all those books that are not on the shelves but are on that long list emailed to the library in the spring.

“The conflict is that I cannot say we will not get them,” says Colson. “Because if we’re a library, if the public comes and requests those books, we will get those books. That’s what we do.”

And what they do is in accordance with the Constitution. What he’s going through has made Colson more politically aware, he says, and engaged. “The first part of the lesson is to pay attention to your community,” he says. “Be involved. Last week I went to a school board meeting, which I’ve never really gone to before.”

Kerby, the former mayor who also served as a city councilman, agrees this is not just about books. “Obviously it’s not, because they don’t exist. They’re not here. It’s more about, I think, control.”

Under the apple trees, there is concern. Perhaps even anger. But also hope that things will work out.”

You can read the whole article here.