Why Would a Former Liberal from the “Left Coast” write The Sneech-Pats of Patriotville: An Homage to Dr. Seuss?

As a child of the 1980’s (a generation raised by a combo of 60’s hippies and Vietnam vets), our teachers and parent taught us that democracy, above all else, meant free speech. It meant that no matter what you thought of someone else’s words, they had a right to say them because “it’s a Free Country”—the most free in the entire world.

On more than one occasion, I recall coming home from school and reporting a bad word another kid had called me to my sympathetic parents, only to be told a little rhyme:

“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

My parents could’ve called the school or demanded a “safe space” for me, as is now the trend. Instead, the values of standing up for yourself, “using your words, not your fists” and allowing others to hold differing opinions held more weight than my “hurt feelings”. Of course words are powerful, they may cause discomfort, but the message is clear: Words will not kill you and everyone has the right to them. Fight words with words, not sticks and stones.

After all, we were the Free to Be You and Me kids, the children of true and hard-won democracy, the grandchildren of the World War II generation, The Great Generation. To allow censorship of any kind was to become like the fascists we defeated, to be anti-democratic.

In 2021, censorship is increasingly accepted by the mainstream and defended as rational. It is also increasingly explained away: “only some of the books are censored, not all of the books” or “the items we are censoring are dangerous and safety is more important than free speech” or “I wouldn’t read that book anyway, so who cares if it’s censored?”

In March this year, amidst “cancellation” of  Dr. Seuss and other prolific writers, I had some odd conversations that all concluded the same way, with the three new buzz words:

“I am offended.”

It occurred to me that the ‘offense’ (which I caused with evidence-backed words) simultaneously halted all debate and pitted me as the villain. You are not allowed to say that. You are not a good person.

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) emphasized the importance of every person’s voice, “no matter how small” (from Horton Hears a Who, 1954). He taught children life lessons through his magical stories, lessons like not judging others by what is on the outside, but by what is on the inside (The Sneetches, 1953). He cared for the environment (The Lorax, 1971) and the uniqueness of each individual (Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? & The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, 1973) He was Jewish and fought fascism through his political cartoons. He won an Academy Award for his documentary films in World War II.

Six Dr. Seuss books will no longer be printed, already having being removed from schools and libraries. Disney is reportedly scrapping the Dr. Seuss themed areas of its parks. This Spring, our nation’s leadership called Dr. Seuss’s books racist. Late night talk show hosts (i.e., paid lobbyists) released statements like: “Dr. Seuss is not cancelled, it’s just time to retire books with racist imagery”. Only five years earlier, our country’s first Black President spoke about the positive impact Dr. Seuss books had on him as a child.

The censorship of Dr. Seuss is couched in the argument that certain images and language in his books are racist, derogatory, or at least “old fashioned” enough to cause irreparable harm to our nation’s youth. Does censorship prevent bigotry or improve public safety? This rationale for banning books isn’t new. The same rationale—causing irreparable harm to the nation’s youth—was used by the infamous National Socialists in Germany to censor and burn books back in the 1940’s.

Watching some of my favorite writers being removed from print this year (or in some cases, re-written/”abridged”), not only Dr. Seuss, but Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie), John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath), Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), Yuri Bezmenov (Love Letter to America) …even Republican Theodore Roosevelt (who created our National Parks and modern conservationism), I am concerned.

Why are such thought-provoking writers being censored (or “Retired”, as some on Late Night refer to their support of censorship)? Moreover, why are they specifically censored while even prominent Middle Eastern leadership, unabashed and outspoken Jewish Holocaust deniers, remain uncensored on major platforms, for example?

Then I recalled a tid-bit from my own youth:

My favorite high school teacher asked us to make a poster that “makes you think” in the form of propaganda. This was in 1994, and we were studying World War II, the issues of propaganda, censorship and Joseph McCarthy—the man who went after Hollywood elite for communism.

I went into the assignment with vigor, creating a poster with pictures of different “types” of people. I wrote the well-known derogatory word for each ethnic group under each picture, with the pictures and words crossed through with large “NO” symbols in red. At the bottom of the poster, I pasted a mirror with the word “YOU” and a big “NO” symbol over the mirror. It was an anti-racism poster, in the form of propaganda. My teacher loved it. She hung it on a window of her classroom facing the outside.

Only a few hours later that same day, my teacher called me to her:

“I have to take it down,” she said quietly.

Our school’s leadership had seen it and called it “shocking” and “uncomfortable”. My poster causes discomfort, she was told. I thought that was the point of art. The assignment was “make people think”. She felt terrible and I could tell by her face that this lesson was the opposite of her intended anti-censorship lesson plan. My teacher was (and still is) a staunch liberal. Before the word lost all relation to the original values of liberalism, I once called myself that too.

“To censor your poster is contrary to everything I teach you.” I recall her saying, as she carefully peeled the tape from the edges to remove it from the glass.

Cancel Culture and Woke may be the current buzz words, but back in my 1990’s high school days we called it “being PC”. Political correctness meant being good. Therefore, anyone who did not act politically correct (and “knows better”) is not a good person.

What is good? It was good to avoid hurting people’s feelings. It was therefore good to avoid using certain words that may cause such hurt feelings. This made sense. Why unnecessarily hurt anyone’s feelings, if it could be helped? That was when the war on words began. It never intended censorship or restriction of words through government or other means of authoritative control. I believe the initial intent was innocent—to be better, more humane Americans.

Thinking back on that moment, the day my pro First Amendment teacher had to take my artwork down, I now realize that much of today’s Cancel Culture all started way back then. Perhaps it’s our own fault that things were taken too far and so spun out of context, so misused for agendas we knew nothing about… that the honorable values of what it once meant to be liberal have been turned and modified into a very undemocratic paradigm shift for our country, where any view outside a singular narrative is unacceptable and worthy of censorship. The “Progressives” of today have little to nothing in common with 90’s liberalism.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the late nineties was the beginning of a “Slippery Slope”, the making of an increasingly authoritarian culture—and we are sliding faster and farther down the mountain of unintended consequences, including growing limitations on our right to express our thoughts, when we initially only intended to be good.

So what about Dr. Seuss and the irreparable harm he’s causing with outdated imagery and lingo. Is Dr. Seuss hurting people’s feelings? Is he offensive? Even he is offensive, who gets to decide what is and is not offensive—what should and should not be removed from bookshelves?

The “be sensitive” rule however, did not apply to debate and political discourse in the 90’s. The new ideas of “being PC” were only beginning to take root back then. We said what we thought and teachers proudly cheered us on. We 80’s kids had parents who stood up against the powerful elites of their era for issues taken for granted today, like Civil Rights and equal protection laws. Fighting for these issues with words (debate and discourse) and peaceful assembly (i.e., using their Constitutional Rights), they won.

Despite the victory, the mainstream media, news, commercials, late night TV shows on mainstream channels, and every major corporation, all carry the same messages: America must “start over” and “change everything” because it is a racist and terrible country and we therefore need censorship to “fix” things. (Side note: Doesn’t any current Liberal or Democrat find it strange that the same corporations we fought against in the 90’s are now mysteriously on their side?)

The argument that a nation must “start over” due to a “bad past” was the same argument used in “People’s Revolutions” in many countries. Ask any Cuban, Venezuelan, or Guatemalan person who fled to The United States for freedom. I was a child during the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, a tragedy that today’s politicians refuse to call “massacre” anymore, due to the political ramifications. Can you imagine? They can’t say the word massacre anymore and worry about offending dictators?

That country’s people lost their freedom in the name of reinventing a new society, rewriting history and claiming anything outside of the Party’s narrative must be censored in the same of public safety. The Party called anything that contradicted it’s narrative “offensive”; then made it illegal; eventually, punishable by death. They destroyed beautiful ancient statues of Buddha and Confucius throughout Asia. They demolished the fragile artwork, intricate architecture and the entire culture of Tibet, all in the name of “the people”. The Dalai Lama (the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people), who won the Nobel Peace Prize in the 90’s, still lives in exile and cannot return home to Tibet.

Censorship may be misconstrued as a “minor issue”. There are many more important issues, some might say. Our children, our health, our environment, our economy, our security all outweigh such a tiny little problem like taking a few writers off book shelves. Yet in the 90’s, censorship was already well recognized as a root cause of fascism. Censoring Dr. Seuss impacts more than merely a few Dr. Seuss fans. The future of our democracy rests in our ability to teach our children to value and listen to divergent opinions, including opinions they don’t like; to teach them as we were taught, that censorship is wrong, undemocratic and un-American.

In the face of an overly sensitive era, one where we are all too easily offended, if we are not careful about what liberties we give up in exchange for what we are promised in return, we risk losing our democracy and the freedom our country has fought for and defended since it’s Independence from the British Monarchy in 1776. We fought against a Crown (and “government overreach”…) in order to live freely and speak freely, without authoritarian intervention or subjugation.

In my own experience, particularly living overseas and working in conflict countries in Africa and elsewhere for over two decades, I learned that censorship, as well as failing to teach the historical context within which something was written, only creates fear, hatred and resentment. I wrote my masters thesis at Cornell University in 2001 about the perpetuation of such divisions in Africa, through the censorship of words and ideas.

Are American kids still being taught the value of each voice? Are they still taught to hear people who think differently than they do, even when they disagree? Even if it makes them angry? Are they still told the little rhyme?

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Censorship is antithetical to what liberalism once meant. Censorship is “anti-science” (another misused buzz word of our times) because it goes against everything we know about political science and the roots of authoritarianism and fascism.

Censoring books, words, speech or ideas is anti-Democratic, anti-Liberal, anti-Conservative and, most importantly, anti-American. Let’s remind today’s youth about how we solved grievances when we were young: not with Censorship or Cancel Culture, not by silencing our opponents or critics, but rather, with discourse, with debate, with well researched and articulate points backed by evidence, with peaceful protest…

With words, not sticks.