Book Burners and Elephants

It was a pleasure to burn.

-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“That is what it truly means to think as an antiracist: to think there is nothing wrong with Black people, to think that racial groups are equal.

-Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning

I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

-George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”

What do they want?

When I imagine the world that book-banners and “school choice” proponents seem to want, and when I sense how near we are to that world, I am afraid. It’s hard to take on their perspective, and so the vision is hazy, but it seems to look something like this:

• Public schools will be somehow run directly by parents, without the mediation of elected school boards or appointed officials. Parent groups (which appear “grassroots” but are secretly enabled …