Hi everyone -- banning the books

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 159672

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Tesha" <Jan at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> > 
> > Ken:
> > 
> >Liberal atheists are as likely to ban things as conservative
> >religionists. 
> 
> Tesha:
> 
>    No, I do believe you're quite wrong. Liberals would like you to
> read everything, and cogitate deeply and discover your own belief. And
> as an Agnostic, I feel that anything that makes you be a better person
> is fine - but it is your "doing" - not your "saying" that makes it so. 

Ken:

I think that there are books that liberals try to have banned. The various
writings of white supremicists come to mind. If there are any books 
that should be banned they would surely make the short list but I am
not sure there are books that should be banned.

In any event I did not say books in my original statement I said things
and liberals do occasionally try to ban behaviours they disagree with.
My general impression is that conservatives are more likely to ban
things and liberals are more likely to mandate things but there are
plenty of exceptions both ways.

Also, I did not mean to pick on liberal atheists in case anyone suspects
me of that. Liberal is the opposite of conservative, athiest is the opposite
of christian so liberal atheist is merely the most opposite of conservative
christian that I could think of. I should imagine that there are conservative
atheists. Even though I am very conservative in my christianity when it 
comes to political and social issues I agree with liberal democrats about
as often as with conservative republicans. I don't know what that makes me 
but I think it points out the limited utility of labels like liberal and
conservative. 

> Tesha:
> 
> In fact the "Liberal atheists' would probably do just the opposite of
> "ban" books, they're likely to hand you a book and say.."What do you
> think now?"
> 
> HP and all the other banned books should be the FIRST you read! 
> 
> So what would you say the world can learn from HP that would make
> better people of all of us? Loyality? Strength? Study? 
> 
> what else?
>

Ken:

In regards to the first question, how do you regard Lenin? He certainly
was an atheist. Many people seem to regard Communists as liberal 
when in fact they seem the epitome of conservative to me. Again this
illustrates the limits of these labels. None of us are all that different 
from each other in most respects. Extreme liberals and extreme
conservatives generally converge on much the same types of behaviour.
If you consider Lenin to be a liberal atheist did he not once say 
something on the order of "ideas are more powerful than guns, if we
do no allow our enemies to have guns why would we allow them to
have ideas?" That sounds like a book-banner's attitude to me and in
fact Communist states do ban all manner of books, music, theater,
and movies. Naturally this example has no force if you regard 
Communism as conservative in nature.

You list three things that HP teaches all of us. I have to agree with
Geoff (who is stating Dumbledore's as well as Paul's position) about 
Love. We do not agree 100% on what the right is but the notion that
Right should be chosen over Ease is a good one. The books illustrate
the power of family and friendship. They may yet illustrate that mean,
difficult people are not necessarily evil. They illustrate the danger 
of jumping to conclusions and also the danger of failing to reach 
conclusions. That is a tough lesson because in real life as in HP it
is hard to discern between the two in the heat of the moment. 

Those are the ones that come first to mind, I am sure there are others.

Ken