Burning Newspapers
* Your article “Bonfires of the Profanities” (July 28) presents a frightening scenario. If people are willing to defend the theft and torching of a newspaper or magazine that contains something which is deemed offensive to them, then that same type of censorship becomes respectable for a school district or library to ban or even burn books like “Catcher in the Rye,” “The Great Santini,” or even a Dr. Seuss book.
That kind of thought also provides for anyone who might deem themselves to be “politically” or “religiously” correct to dictate our access to ideas and opinions. The image this brings to me are pictures I have seen of piles of books being burned in places like Berlin around 1939.
I am not a harbinger of doom, but these acts, if condoned, place us closer to that precipice that caused the deaths of millions a mere 50 years ago.
BILL HORAN
Huntington Beach
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