Lincoln, the Library, and Delores Oates

I don’t appreciate it when people popularize lies of any kind, and I find them particularly despicable when they are about a friend.

First: Lacking any substantive argument, local conspiracy theorists and lazy writers have taken to alleging financial misconduct against my good friend Delores Oates and her campaign manager. Alleging she paid him “well over the average” for his work as campaign manager, they have yet to specify what exactly a “just price” for services bought and sold is. In any case, to borrow from the late Christopher Hitchens, “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” I am also sure at least one book could be found in the library to explain how supply and demand works.

Second: It is wrong to force taxpayers to support an agenda imposed on children by third parties behind their parents’ backs.

In his first debate in Ottawa, Illinois, with Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas hoped to resolve the dispute over slavery’s expansion into the Territories through his proposal for “popular sovereignty,” leaving each Territory to decide for itself whether to permit slavery’s expansion. “The great principle,” Douglas maintained, “is the right of every community to judge and decide for itself whether a thing is right or wrong.” Lincoln, however, noticed that Douglas’ “freedom to choose” only extended one way in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision:

“[M]y understanding is that Popular Sovereignty, as now applied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have Slavery if they want to, but does not allow them to not have slavery if they do not want it.” While the issue has changed, Douglas’ logic has lately been adopted on behalf of Samuels Public Library.

The latest demonstration comes from the allegation that Delores is denying the right of parents to educate their children as they see fit. As asked earlier this week in the Royal Examiner:

“[D]o all parents have the right and responsibility to parent their children, or do only you and those who share your religious beliefs get to choose for the rest of us?”

Yet, for all the denunciations alleging a “book ban” or other restriction on freedom is underway, the proposal in question does not even remove books with suggestive material from the building. At present, the proposal is simply to remove them from the children’s section. Which brings me back to Lincoln.

While tolerance and pluralism are necessary for a thriving civil society, Lincoln noticed that for slavery’s apologists, mere tolerance would never be enough. As Lincoln said in his 1860 Cooper Union Address:

“Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections, and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

“The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches, we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.”

Then came the crucial feature of what Lincoln saw was happening. They would accept nothing short of positive support, by force if necessary.

“These natural and apparently adequate means all failing; what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.”

“I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, ‘Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery.’ But we do let them alone – have never disturbed them – so that, after all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing until we cease saying.”

Similarly, Delores has not taken any action to deprive parents of any means by which they can educate their children. Nor should she or any other representative. In addition to still being available at the library, these books are readily available wherever books are sold if parents want them. But this freedom is not being extended to parents who do not want these “values” imposed on their children by third parties. Instead, the ALA is peddling this material behind parents’ backs at taxpayer expense.

The CLS proposal is not without its problems. Its suggestion that the library be placed under the supervision of the Board of Supervisors simply ignores the problem of continuing to pass decision-making authority to third parties. Privatization, however, would leave the library free to determine how to satisfy its patrons as it sees fit while removing the burden of financial support from taxpayers. As Robert Heinlein once wrote, “There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” In turn, severing its taxpayer support and maintaining the freedom of everyone to educate their own children as they see fit would further require the library to answer to consumers and not third-party politicians and bureaucrats.

Moreover, the allegations against Delores have nothing to do with misconduct or censorship. They have everything to do with the same tragic and simple truth Lincoln identified at Cooper Union: “You will rule or ruin in all events.”

Devon Downes
Warren County

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