Ray Bradbury wrote about a future in which books would be illegal because many of them contain facts and ideas which upset people, facts and ideas which cause people to worry and to think, facts and ideas which make people uncomfortable. So, in Bradbury’s novel, the government outlawed all books, and people received all of their information and entertainment through television, and then no one was uncomfortable... Squads of “thought police” sped around the cities on trucks which looked a lot like fire engines, looking for concealed books. Whenever they found any, the books were doused with kerosene and burned on the spot, and the owners of the books were arrested...
The disturbing thing about Bradbury’s book is that, unlike many other science-fiction books that deal with the distant future, Fahrenheit 451 (written in 1951) hasn’t been proved wrong simply by time itself. Not at all! Actually, what is shocking to realize is that we’ve come quite close to the society Bradbury writes about. Perhaps books haven’t exactly been banned yet, but it is indeed the entertainment industry that controls people’s minds, and “political correctness” has reached ridiculous levels...
In today’s real, not fictional world, the situation is already somewhat similar to that described in Bradbury’s book. Although books aren’t yet exactly outlawed, it doesn’t mean that the bookstores and public libraries are overflowing with good literature, especially when it comes to non-fiction. What I see is that library shelves are filed more and more with “politically-correct” brainwashing tools varying from Heather Has Two Mommies to several dozen editions of largely fictitious Diary of Anne Frank. These so-called “politically-correct” books, along with television, are used for mass-brainwashing.
We are supposed to occupy our minds with sports on big-screen TVs, video arcades, fast food, even while traveling we can amuse ourselves with cellular telephones, lap top computers and even on-flight computer games. Computerized “chat rooms” that enable us to “speak” to faceless strangers over the Internet are all the rage. Really, how far are we from Bradbury’s broadcast TV “families”? Not that far...
Book authors around the world these days are encountering publishers who are afraid to even touch their manuscripts... On the other hand, brave publishers find that printers are shutting down their presses to controversial volumes... Then again, already published volumes are being consigned to sanctioned burnings by the “firemen”...
As an example, let’s take Canada. If you ask the average Canadian today whether or not he is free to say what he wants and read what he wants, he’ll immediately tell you, “Of course!” And he’ll actually believe it... But, as a matter of fact, Canadians do not truly have those freedoms. Canadian publishers cannot publish any book deemed “politically incorrect” by Canada’s thought police, and no Canadian bookstore may display or sell such a book. When the Canadian police find such books, they straight away seize them and burn them to ashes. [Read here and here] Although the Canadian thought police aren’t as obvious about their mission as Ray Bradbury’s thought police in Fahrenheit 451 were, their mission is, in fact, exactly the same.
The same is true about Europe. In our time, we see the events of Bradbury’s seemingly “science fiction” novel coming to pass every day around the world.
The worldwide list of banned books — books the thought police in Canada or Europe don’t want people to read — has been growing.
Nowadays, the thought police will seize almost any book which has anything in it that might remotely be considered as “politically incorrect.” They put such books on their modern-day Index Librorum Prohibitorum. These books are the ones they believe might make some people uncomfortable or make them think. When the secret police, for example, in Canada find such a book, they seize it and burn it. Of course, usually they’re very secretive about this sort of thing, in contrast to the book-burners in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
Burning books is an event often associated only with the Nazi regime. Certainly, we’ve all had heard terrible stories about those “awful Nazis” in Germany who did such dreadful things as burning precious books. But think about it. Isn’t that is exactly what is happening in Canada today? Canada is so “free” that Canadian Customs officials routinely seize and burn books that travelers bring from other countries. Then, with unabashed chutzpah, the government sends a bill for the cost of seizing and incinerating their book! It is reminiscent of the Chinese policy of sending a bill for the executioners bullets to the families of the executed.
These book burnings take place, yes, in today’s “modern” Canada. Truly the situation in Canada today is perhaps even much worse than it was in Europe in the Middle Ages, when the Church maintained its Index of Prohibited Books. The books that the Church burned were virtually all books dealing with religion in some way other then that of the Bible, books they felt threatened their monopoly on that subject. The books that thought police burn today are almost any books which might cause some of the couch potatoes to think — and then, perhaps, to rebel. And of course, the Church didn’t try to make a secret of its book burning.
Most people today have no idea that this book burning is going on in their countries. They are too busy with their ball games on TV and the comics section in the newspaper. But even if it were explained to them in detail — even if the thought police roared around in fire engines looking for “politically incorrect” books to burn in public the way they did in Fahrenheit 451 — would the sports fans and mall shoppers of the world really care? No more, I suspect, than the contented and comfortable television viewers in Ray Bradbury’s vision of the future, a future in which book-burning was a respectable profession.
Most of the people in America and in Europe believe that they are still free. They can still turn on their television receivers and watch a football game whenever they want to. They can still go into a drugstore and buy a magazine chronicling the pathetic existance of their favorite Hollywood celebrities. This is all they want...
Such is the state of freedom in the West in the early years of the 21st Century...
Also, talking about the Christian Church, they’ve now returned to their policy of burning books as well. However, this time it’s not theological works, but children’s books. Although you can’t burn witches at the stake any more, you can burn books about witches...
For example, I read recently about a much publicized book burning case in New Mexico. In December of 2001, congregation members of the Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, held a book burning to destroy what their Pastor Jack Brock called “a masterpiece of satanic deception”: the Harry Potter books. [Read “Church Group Burns Potter Books,” CNN News, December 31, 2001, also PHOTO]
The popular novels about a teenage wizard, the 74-year-old pastor told, “are an abomination to God and to me” and are liable to “destroy the lives of many young people.” [Read also this] Brock announced that members of the congregation were invited to take part in a book burning, such as was described in Acts 19:19-20 of the Bible. At the bonfire, according to the pastor, in addition to the Harry Potter books, “some burned books they felt to be a personal hindrance to them spiritually.” What were the books being burned? They were not only the children’s books, the Harry Potter series, but most extremely improbably, the works of William Shakespeare!
This is by no means an isolated incident. Books about Harry Potter were also among what was torched during a March 2001 burning by the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Penn Township, Pennsylvania. Rev. George Bender also said the event was also inspired by Acts 19:19. [Read “Citing Love of God, Butler County Church Burns Books, Tapes, CDs,” Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh), March 26, 2001] In August 2003, the Jesus Non-denominational Church in Greenville, Michigan, held a bonfire to destroy materials that did not promote God, such as the Harry Potter series, again. Jill Turner, wife of Rev. T.D. Turner, Sr., said, “It’s important for children to know that Harry Potter is witchcraft. It really afflicts their minds.” [Read “Church Group Burns Harry Potter Books, Shania Twain CDs,” Detroit Free Press, August 6, 2003] Meanwhile, members of the Jesus Party in Lewiston, Maine, wanted to have a Harry Potter burning in November 2001, but the town wouldn’t give Rev. Douglas Turner a permit to do so. Instead, the group cut the books up with scissors. “It’s no secret that I enjoy what I’m doing right now,” Rev. Turner said as he shredded a book in the town’s center.
The burning of books is nothing new to Christians. In fact, they invented the practice over two-thousand years ago as a way to promote their faith in Jesus Christ. If truth be told, the origins of book burning are in the Bible! As was already mentioned by those fanatical zeolots who burn the Harry Potter novels, the Judeo-Christian Bible states that anyone who wants to follow Jesus, should get ready to start burning books at the drop of a hat. The Bible teaches that burning someone’s books is a great way to spread God’s word.
According to the New Testament book of Acts, early converts to Christianity burned books of “curious arts.” It says that they “brought their books together and burned them before all men and they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.” (Acts 19:19) Also, a priceless library was destroyed and the Bible celebrates — “So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.” (Acts 19:20)
Once upon a time there were great Pagan civilizations in Europe that enjoyed the highest spiritual culture the world had ever seen. It contained more knowledge, science, wisdom and, of course, wealth than any city had ever known. Then it became Christian and it entered a thousand years of ignorance, squalor and filth, dragging the civilization of the whole of Europe down with it. The world had entered The Dark Ages.
The Christians burned great Pagan libraries, destroyed Classical Culture and created the Dark Ages. They destroyed the works of the great Hellenistic philosophers Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other such great books... The loss of the ancient world’s single greatest archive of knowledge, the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, has been lamented for ages. A Christian, Theophilus (which means “God love him”), is most often associated with the definitive act of destruction of ancient wisdom in the library of Alexandria. Other Christians under Theophilus, the so-called Patriarch of Alexandria, committed acts of the utmost heinousness, following the instructions of Emperor Theodosius. Pagan temples were ransacked, looted and destroyed by Theophilus’s Christian mob. The great library at Alexandria was a collection of the knowledge and written culture of the entire known world. Under the decree of Ptolemy III all visitors to the city were required to give up any written material they had in their possession to the library scribes who would make a copy for the library, or rather a copy for the original owner and the original for the library. This was the mechanism by which there came to be assembled the greatest collection of human knowledge in the ancient world. By the time of Theophilus the library had been collecting scrolls, papyruses and codices for over five hundred years and it was widely regarded as by far the largest and most complete record of human knowledge ever assembled. Civilized men build, stock and use libraries. Alexandria was a civilized Hellenic Pagan city taken over by an uncivilized Christian mob.
Truly, the burning of books is never the activity of civilized men. It is a crime against humanity, and more, it is a crime against posterity. It is an act that can never be forgiven. Civilized men do not burn books. Only tyrants and fanatics burn books. To attack the culture, knowledge, science and wisdom of the ancient world as it was stored in the greatest collection of books ever assembled was an act that transcends the power of our language to condemn. All the words we have to describe such acts and to express our disapproval are fundamentally flawed, they suggest that such acts are beyond the capacity of “civilized Christians”.
Vandalism? Barbarism? Philistinism? Such words are tragically wide of the mark. There is only one word which can truly express the nature of such an act: Christian.
We have seen arrogant destruction of culture by the Christians many times throughout history.
These burnings of books were not so solely aimed at stamping out ideas but for suppressing a culture. A notorious illustration of this was in July of 1562, when Bishop Diego de Landa burned five thousand “idols” and 27 hieroglyphic rolls at Mani in the Yucatan in Central America: he is the main reason that so few samples of Mayan hieroglyphs survive. He blithely observed, “We found a large number of these books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there was not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they [the Mayans] regretted to an amazing degree and which caused them great affliction.”
Wherever Judeo-Christianity has exerted influence, it has ravaged mankind morally, intellectually and physically. Christianity has sought to impose limitations upon the mind. In their beliefs, ignorance is elevated to a holy state. Paul declares: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” (I Cor. 3:19).
The Judeo-Christian dogma has been nothing but a curse upon mankind. This is the mentality which gave history the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, book-burning, a legacy of dark ignorance which continues to have its impact today.
Now, as we strive to free ourselves from all this plague, we should always remember the old quote by the German writer Heinrich Heine about what gets burned after books:
