The Anti-Information Virus

It began to undermine my faith in democracy. Because I'm a librarian, it triggered an even deeper dread, a chilling fear that our society might careen into a dark period of know-nothing reaction that would lead to worse repression. The organized hostility to discussion and debate over health-care reform, apparently financed by those with the largest stake in the status quo, not only spread lies but also corrupted our political process.

Then came the bitter, dread-filled opposition to allowing the President of the United States to address the nation's schoolchildren. It seemed absurd to one who grew up during World War II, who listened with his family to fireside chats and the Day of Infamy speech. I couldn't believe they would try to muzzle the President!

Alas, that history was not so different. The bitter opponents to FDR and the New Deal were just as strong and noisy then as Obama's opponents are now. It was just as nasty, too, with putrid jokes about Eleanor Roosevelt as rancid as any about Hillary Clinton. A huge dose of conspiratorial paranoia accused the President of trying to bring the United States into the war. The outbreak had all the racism, anti-Semitism, religious prejudice, and xenophobia that are woven into the fabric of American society.

It is reassuring to realize that our democracy and our libraries survived that and all that happened in between—Senator McCarthy, the violence of the Civil Rights Movement, the awful loss of blood from such struggles as those in Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East.

Yet the virus that causes this irrational dread of information and irrational hostility to new ideas is always present. It lurks in the minds of some parents in every American generation. It caused suspicion of comic books and of rock'n'roll and led some to ban the use of tools such as Wikipedia. It brought on qualms over social software like MySpace and Twitter.

The virus, which always breaks out in times of crisis, tells us we must not allow our minds or our children to be “corrupted” by our natural curiosity about sex and love, political views with which we disagree, or religious beliefs that differ from our own. It infects our thinking and makes us so vulnerable that we can't handle any information that doesn't bear the approval of those “experts” who know about the danger. It tells us we are too incompetent to know or be told, too naïve to understand, and too stupid to evaluate and make our own judgments about the validity of what we see and hear. It renders us impotent as citizens to make decisions for our democracy.

Afflicted by that virus, some communities actually blocked the President of the United States from speaking to the children in their public schools. They seem to suggest that only the messages from parents, teachers, coaches, local politicos, and local clergy are more suitable for young minds than a message from the President. How patently ridiculous!

Our society and its libraries have survived wave after wave of this know-nothing fear-mongering, but that does not mean we can simply sit by and watch when a new outbreak brings a more potent phase of hostility to information.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” abolitionist Wendell Phillips told the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852. That was the same year the trustees of the Boston Public Library asked the city fathers to create a tax-supported public library to inform citizens against the terror and ignorance that always threaten democratic self-government. Information is the only source of immunity from the virus that makes us want to muzzle our President.

American librarians have not shirked their duty, but they have not always pursued that responsibility to inform with the zeal and vigor the Boston trustees suggested. Yes, it is an old message, but when attempts are made to prevent the President of the United States from speaking to our children, it bears repeating.

If you aren't allowed in the public schools, President Obama, come over to the library. There you can join all of our Presidents as they give their messages to all Americans, adult and child alike.