Photo courtesy of brazosbookstore.com.

As many of you may not be aware, last week marked Banned Books Week, a week long holiday in which we celebrate the storied history of banning books that have made us uncomfortable or deviated from social norms.

To celebrate this proud tradition of censorship, the Highland Park Independent School District in Dallas removed several books from its required reading lists amid complaints from parents that the books contained explicit sex scenes that made them very uncomfortable.

The books were “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” by Garth Stein, “Song of Solomon,” by Toni Morrison, “Siddhartha,” by Herman Hesse, “An Abundance of Katherines,” by John Green, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” by Sherman Alexie, “The Glass Castle,” by Jeannette Walls and “The Working Poor: Invisible in America,” by David Shipler.

I couldn’t be more impressed with the action that was taken by by Superintendent Dawson Orr in dealing with this matter. The courage that he must have possessed to react to the obvious attempts by these authors to corrupt the youth of this country was more than most men could handle.

Alas, some of these authors are still attempting to keep their agenda a secret. Jeannette Wells told the Dallas Morning News that, “My book has ugly elements to it, but it’s about hope and resilience, and I don’t know why that wouldn’t be an important message.”

However, what Wells refuses to tell you is that her and her fellow authors’ true purpose is to transform the youth of this country into sexually driven machines to produce children to feed the armies of their new communist revolution.

However, this story doesn’t come with the happy ending of the far-seeing superintendent stopping the evil authors from corrupting our youth, as even now some unwise and uneducated parents in the district are organizing to have the bans revoked. Little do these parents know, they’re playing right into the hands of the authors’ diabolical plan. These parents truly believe the only reason these books are being banned is that they present students with challenging material.

One such naive parent, Laurie Steinberg, told the Dallas Morning News “These books could have the potential to make some people uncomfortable, but … our children need to be exposed to different ideas and ways of life for others. We’re doing a disservice to our students if we don’t broaden their minds and let them know more about the outside world.”

Little does she know that if we were to “broaden” our children’s minds, we will only open them up to the corruption that these authors seek to ingrain in them.

The most terrifying part of this whole story is the potential implications that will come if these parents were to accomplish their goal of lifting these bans. We will see small children being taught the anarchist manifesto that is Dr. Seuss’ “Hop on Pop,” or the radical animal rights testament that is “Go, Dog. Go!”

I encourage everyone who sees a child reading any of this filth to rip it out of their hands and burn it immediately like any sensible person would. This may be the only way to stop these authors from corrupting the youth of our nation and killing all that we recognize as America the land of censorship and the home of the wholesome sheltered education

Alex Bertsch is the Opinion Editor of The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].