Humans are considered to be the most innovative and creative species that exist on this watery rock that we call earth, but I for one must disagree. Although my views of our species have already been more towards the negative, I must say that after reading Slaughter House Five by Vonnegut I must say that the image humans, and I, have painted defining how we live in this world with each other is heresy within itself.
One aspect that especially disgust me about people is that some of them are ignorant enough to place bans on literature that many have never read. Among these books that have been challenged and banned in recent years include Twilight, the Chocolate War, Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, and more. In the last decade alone there have been over 100 books that have been challenged or banned. This type of outrageous ignorant behavior has been leading the way of disgust, offence, and outrage by everyone in the pursuit of knowledge and person growth. Many of these books were written with the message of kindness and love and equality at their core, but in history these values are not upheld, rather smothered under the wrath of ignorants and illiterates.
This type of oppression is equal to that of Hitler and Mussolini and other tyrants and dictators. The squandering of new ideas and disposing of basic morals that guide a person through life, upholding the values of the most prominent document in American history, the Constitution of the United States of America, which state quite plainly that people should be able to have "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."
I agree that it's horrible to even consider banning a book based on petty problems like language and subjects the challenge the ideals consistent with the country. For example: our American ideal states that sex and sexual content is taboo and shuns those associated with either. So the American public (like schools and parents) feel like "protecting" our children from those "dangerous" ideas by challenging or banning anything that touches that topic and completely disregard the lesions and values that the literature revolves around. This IS the very thing that totalitarian regimes do.
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