Liberal supporters of cancelling Dr. Seuss, you're wrong.

I hope these will be my last thoughts on the six books by Dr. Seuss being censored. I only feel compelled to talk about this because a bunch of people on both sides are so utterly wrong.

For context, when I bought my first copy of Defending My Enemy, I spent about five or six dollars on it. The book has gone out of print. I gave my copy of the book to a friend as a parting gift when I was moving away from DC. I decided that I wanted to give the book a re-read. When I looked for a new copy, the same book with the same cover was about $150. I eventually found a book that was being sold off by a library for less money; but, it was more than what I spent the first time.

Cancel culture didn't happen with Defending My Enemy. The publisher just stopped selling enough copies, which is sad, and decided not to make more. As a result, the book that I once cherished only as a source of insight and wisdom has also become a financial commodity.

That said, the decision to stop creating new copies of the book restricts the number of people who can afford to read it. Even libraries are selling their copies. I'm neither rich nor in abject poverty; but, the jump from $5 to $150 is no small calculation when buying a book.

If this were all that happened to those Dr. Seuss books, as most advocates for cancel culture pretend happened, I wouldn't have much of an argument. Really, I'd have no argument.

Your problem, if you disagree with me, is that your argument is a fantasy and mine is reality.

If the publisher just decided to stop publishing those six Dr. Seuss books in the way that Aryeh Neier's publisher decided to stop making new copies of Defending My Enemy--fine. That's not what happened.

First of all, the idea that the publisher wasn't pressured and that the choice to stop publishing the books happened in a vacuum is absurd.

Second of all, more importantly, they didn't just stop publishing new copies. They retroactively took books off the shelves, removed them from Amazon, this has gone so far that people owning existing books can't sell them on eBay.

This is a different issue.

Would I have ever wanted to buy these books? No. Has it ever occurred to me to buy these books? No. Why am I angry about this? Well, here we go--

I've read Mein Kampf in all of its monosyllabic, racist glory and it gave me an insight into the the history of the Second World War. I've read the ramblings of Karl Marx and I understand the evil socialists and communists better because of that.

If publishers want to stop making those books, fine. Nobody has an obligation to use paper and ink to pass along words to other people.

That said, there's an iniquity in reaching back and taking the existing books away. I hate to break it to you (not really); but, you can't claim to really understand the Second World War without understanding the Nazis. Mein Kampf is far more offensive than anything by Dr. Seuss, but, we need to have that book available and not only available to the wealthy. Karl Marx's ideas are responsible for more death and human misery than anybody else in history; but, his books shouldn't be retroactively removed from the shelves and not permitted to be sold on eBay.

Just taking a book off of your printer for whatever reason isn't a problem. This isn't what's happening. This is a strike at the core of liberal values. This is an attempt to pretend that history didn't happen and to accept that free speech isn't a timeless principle but something that just has to role with the times.

Support for this is totalitarian, not liberal.