The Librarians Will Save Us
A group of 13 “abolitionist librarians” from Ivy League universities… is demanding that their colleagues “immediately begin the work of divesting from police and prisons.” […] The group wants Ivy League librarians to “explicitly name policing itself as the problem” and take actions that will lead to the “complete abolition of law enforcement.”
Something-something “white supremacy” something-something “privilege.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. But really, it’s the same doctrinaire horseshit we’ve seen a hundred times. And according to which, the world will be enormously improved by the “abolition of policing in all its forms.” If that isn’t sufficiently unambiguous, our Ivy League librarians insist that their “ultimate goal” is, and I quote, “the complete abolition of law enforcement… everywhere.” Because “a world without policing” will somehow, rather conveniently, be a world without crime. And because helping people find the books that they’d like to borrow is just too boring and insufficiently high-status for minds such as these.
More than 700 individuals and organisations have signed the petition.
By the way, and before you ask, that sickly-sweet odour is the ongoing decay of your civilisation. A society in which the children of the elite are immersed in such dogma – and are told that their civilisation shouldn’t defend itself against sociopathy and predation – isn’t, I’d suggest, in the best of health. And when these mouthings are deemed high-status, both sophisticated and aspirational, a marker of in-group belonging, then the words preening degeneracy seem entirely apt.
Previously in the world of uppity librarians.
Maybe they’ll get mugged on the way home.
…actions that will lead to the “complete abolition of law enforcement…everywhere.”
Does collecting fines for late books fall under that broad category ?
When you don’t understand human nature and particularly that mysterious cause-and-effect-thingy then all your improvement suggestions are perfect and a blessing for all humanity.
I know that you’re going to be disappointed and hold onto your socks but violence causes police not the other way around. And when everything is violence then there will be LOTS of police.
And who’ll come crying to Momma when some lout refuses to be quiet in their stacks, or perhaps burns their books?
It would be an interesting exercise to go into the library of one or more of these idiots and simply remove a bunch of expensive volumes.
“. . .a world without policing” will . . .be a world without crime.
A world without law enforcement is a world without law. A world without law is, by definition, a world without crime.
I suspect that these keepers of knowledge don’t know, for some reason, exactly what that sort of world looks like and will be so outraged when it smacks them upside the head that they will demand that “somebody,” ya know, “do something.”
To which the only rational response would be to smack them again, harder this time.
Next logical demand – all books etc shall be printed on black paper using brown ink as a counter to all that white paper supremacy.
Given that white is the amalgam of all colours, to claim an identity of black or POC is, by definition, an admission of inferiority.
lowers head below the parapet
I understand that some of these Ivy League libraries keep a lot of high value rare books in stock. Maybe I’ll get a gang together an help myself to a bunch.
And because helping people find the books that they’d like to borrow is just too boring and insufficiently high-status for minds such as these.
That.
I can’t wait for the abolition of da poe lease …. Then I can drive my card as fast as I want while texting. I can eat in a restaurant and walk out without paying the bill. And if I feel like it I can deal heroine with impunity.
Ya .. life with no law and order sounds like fun unless you are a woman a child or a senior … So young men will be having a wild party 24-7- 365 … while the country finishes it’s total shut down and destruction.
y’all better start buying Canadian real estate
One of the unanticipated side-effects of the Internet becoming ubiquitous is that it drove bored librarians insane …
While they apparently realize their opinion matters as much as anyone else’s, they fail to realize that it also matters as little as anyone else’s.
Their demands should not at all be a surprise, given the ‘interesting’ legacy of the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System (Melvil Dewey). Recall that Dewey resigned from the American Library Association due to allegations of sexual harassment complaints and allegations of racism and antisemitism in 1905 (his Lake Placid Club banned Jews, blacks, and others from membership, a policy written by Dewey). He promoted spelling reform, (such as at his ‘Adirondack Loj’, where he advised that “All shud see the butiful after-glo on mountains to the east just before sunset…Fyn vu from Golfhous porch.”
One can only wonder if perhaps the adhesives and paper-finishing chemicals that may linger in books cause some distortion of self-importance and proprieties. Which is not to slander all librarians–we have some brilliant ones in my wife’s family–but this latest move does little to enhance their credibility.
When I was attending U Penn in the late 80s the main library had to deal with several chronic masturbators caught in the act in the stacks and another guy who managed to convince female students to take their shoes off and let him massage their feet for “research purposes.”
managed to convince female students to take their shoes off and let him massage their feet for “research purposes.”
[ Peers over spectacles. ]
The left is becoming increasingly disassociated from the average working stiff. Instead their politics are out of touch and elitist, designed more to convince themselves that they are caring, compassionate human beings than to improve society.
As Mike Tyson said: “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth”.
Librarians included.
Civilization has divorced us from this reality and as well the knowledge of this reality, so maybe tearing the walls down enough to let librarians get punched in the mouth from time to time would not be totally bad.
Unexpectedly.
I’m trying to push the term “Activania” to describe academics who think activism is worth sacrificing research & critical thinking.
As far back as the 1990s, I remember being told by a professor that the arts departments were havens of left-wing lunacy, and the most radically lunatic were the Library Science departments. Which made little sense to me at the time, but I do think the complete isolation from anything like the real world has something to do with it.
y’all better start buying Canadian real estate
…that’s not going to go the way you’re anticipating.
“…another guy who managed to convince female students to take their shoes off and let him massage their feet for “research purposes.”
Probably happened right after the authorities shut down his free breast exam for “research purposes.”
the “complete abolition of law enforcement.”
We all have confidence that if someone bashed their way into their home and started to help themselves to everything of value, these fine principled folk wouldn’t call law enforcement, right?
Asking for a friend who is out on parole.
He promoted spelling reform, (such as at his ‘Adirondack Loj’, where he advised that “All shud see the butiful after-glo on mountains to the east just before sunset…Fyn vu from Golfhous porch.”
If only Dewey had lived to see Twitter and text messaging. He’d be so proud!
I suspect that these keepers of knowledge don’t know, for some reason, exactly what that sort of world looks like
If only there were a way for people to record this knowledge, maybe on sheets of paper bound together to keep them in order. We could have great numbers of these things stored together in an organized fashion so interested people could read about things that happened in the past and learn from past mistakes.
I can deal heroine with impunity.
I’ll take one petite blonde heroine with Daddy issues, please.
This is clearly a case where we need to let these fine avant-garde librarians lead by example into the golden future they envisage. Totally defund the campus police at their educational institution, and forbid police from other jurisdictions from entering. Problem solved, and the Year Zero gets kicked off with a bang.
There could be no possible downsides to this.
I’ll take one petite blonde heroine with Daddy issues, please.
I’m terribly sorry, sir, Mr. Whedon just took the last one.
If they have the same mindset as British librarians (as described by Theo. Dalrymple), they’d likely be happy to let you have them.
As far back as the 1990s, I remember being told by a professor that the arts departments were havens of left-wing lunacy, and the most radically lunatic were the Library Science departments.
Two things are very clear since the the internet gave us the joy of visibility into the ivory tower: Library Science is as prog/leftists as any department could be and Education is full of the dumbest people rehashing the worst ideas over and over again.
The group wants Ivy League librarians to “explicitly name policing itself as the problem”
When in fact spinster librarians and other liberal women are REALLY a big source of the problem, at least in the U.S. The 19th Amendment was a horrendous mistake. People who are so emotionally unstable that they cry over election results have no business voting. None.
As far back as the 1990s, I remember being told by a professor that the arts departments were havens of left-wing lunacy, and the most radically lunatic were the Library Science departments.
What the hell IS “Library Science,” anyway? You put books on shelves and measure the rate at which disappear, or something? Isn’t a librarian pretty much a glorified secretary? What’s the fundamental difference between filing a letter and putting a book on a shelf? How long does it take to master the Dewey decimal system – about ten minutes?
Sorry, I’m in a bad mood today.
A world without law enforcement is a world without law.”
Hmm.
I envision a world in which “law” corresponds to “caliber”
To badly misquote the instapundit, the Po Po aren’t there to protect “us”…
…y’all better start buying Canadian real estate
Sorry, but…
Justin.Trudeau.
There goes another great plan.
Sorry, I’m in a bad mood today.
No worries. It’s actually a valid field of study; how to store, catalogue, index and retrieve a large volume of heterogenous things is not entirely trivial, and that doesn’t even get into the logistics of preservation of physical materials.
In my field (software engineering) we work with a vast quantity of software artifacts – binary software builds, development tools, third-party software libraries, containers – and organizing all of those things in a way that makes it easy and quick to find the thing you need is, well, Library Science.
That said, I’m skeptical you need a full university degree to do it, much less a Master’s. I mean, I read a book and I’ve been pretty much good on the topic.
No worries. It’s actually a valid field of study; how to store, catalogue, index and retrieve a large volume of heterogenous things is not entirely trivial…
I’m under the impression that books are usually published with Dewey and LoC numbers already assigned.
What the hell IS “Library Science,” anyway?
Those people you find online who know everything about everything because they read the wiki, Vox explainer, and/or some expert interview on CNN? They’re internet librarians. Just because they organize and store a bunch of documentation doesn’t really mean they’ve read and deeply understood everything in the building.
To be fair, Daniel is correct. It is a valid field, but probably not something that should be a graduate program or any sort of degree field. Maybe this is the original underwater basket weaving? I was about to mention teachers’ graduate programs as well, but I am sure there are a lot of university degree programs that should be devolved to trade schools.
I’m a Yale alum. Its library collections are remarkable. I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the signers of that document are from Yale’s Manuscripts & Archives department, which manages primary source materials, e.g., original materials by notable figures and original documents from private collections. Over the years, I’ve had a queasy feeling that the earnest wokeists who staff Yale’s libraries would be among the first to throw “objectionable” books and manuscripts into the fire.
probably not something that should be a graduate program or any sort of degree field.
Having worked briefly in a fairly large public city library, my impression is that if hotel and restaurant management can get by as a trade or vocational program, so can library management.
Having worked briefly in a fairly large public city library, my impression is that if hotel and restaurant management can get by as a trade or vocational program, so can library management.
The people who did most of the work in libraries when they actually had books in them were called Library Technicians. They had two year certificates from a community college and most of them were more practical managing things than the lady with the degree and the title Librarian.
When I say, “when they actually had books in them” I’m referring to my experience visiting three separate college campuses with my son. The “libraries” were mostly big, bright spaces with lots of seating and a remarkable paucity of books.
The city library in my town seems to be more a kind of youth and community centre than a book repository. Look carefully at the stacks and it becomes apparent they’ve spread out the books to hide the fact they have more shelf space than material.
I’m trying to push the term “Activania”
We need a term for cowards who side with bullies because the bullies claim to stand for good things.
I’m a former professor. Spent a lot of time in libraries, in lots of colleges, including Yale’s. Can confirm all of this, in spades. Even the other leftwing lunatics in academia think the LIS (that’s “Library and Information Science”) persyns are out there.
Most “libraries” at most American universities are just coffee shops that also loan out the occasional laptop. You have to do serious spelunking to even see a book. I’ve had more than one upperclassman tell me they don’t even know where the campus library is; toward the end of my time in the ivory tower, I strongly suspected that more than half of a given class had never set foot in it.
Yale’s main library is a beautiful old building. The rare book library is physically hideous, but full of beautiful things. In both cases, though, the people in charge of maintaining them would happily consign all of it to the flames.
It’s simple, really.
These librarians view themselves as part of the vanguard.
The prisoners they release will become “security” for the vanguard.
The prisons will become “reeducation camps” for enemies of the vanguard.
Their leftist utopia is just ahead. They can almost taste it.
No police? Who is going to force us to wear masks? Who will arrest us for mis-gendering?
I don’t think the librarians have thought this through.
There’s a petition on a Google doc that can be signed as many times as you wish in “solidarity.” It’s a fun troll opportunity. I’ve already signed it as “Michelle Obama’s Nutsack” and “Mike Litoris” and my organization as the Union of Lesbian Librarian Cat Owners.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf3FGw1CmK0OOeBgImXE8wnbBeP3NjKws9Jfujf-Ij36uOjQg/viewform
Instalanche…
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/418206/
Instalanche…
Trousers on, everyone.
Who ya gonna call?? Ghostbusters!!
No furreal – who else is there to call??
the Union of Lesbian Librarian Cat Owners
Just saw a young
foolwoman wearing a pin that read “cats not kids”.She’s going to regret that later.
Armed citizens may not be as gentle on the criminal faction as the police. Forty years’ politicization and conditioning have made of the police a mostly gutless and ineffectual force anyway.
If there are no police, what’s the fear of the armed citizen for actions that greet shoplifting, mugging, or even jaywalking with deadly violence?
You want the wild west, then the wild west is coming; and hell’s coming with it. You tell ’em hell’s coming with it!
Law enforcement is abolished.
State funded police is disbanded.
Private individuals create private police.
Librarians: “hey! That’s illegal, call the … Oh, wait”
So, “abolish/disband (state funded) police” = “private police”
And these people are socialists?
If there are no police, what’s the fear of the armed citizen for actions that greet shoplifting, mugging, or even jaywalking with deadly violence?
I suspect that you’ll find that there will be police available for that.
I strongly suspected that more than half of a given class had never set foot in it.
I’m a book lover and I think I went in to the university library once to actually look for something. I understand the purpose of libraries from earlier times, but once you can mail order books, why go to a library? I buy anything I want to read, for professional or pleasure reading.
If there are no police, what’s the fear of the armed citizen for actions that greet shoplifting, mugging, or even jaywalking with deadly violence?
Ask George Zimmerman and Kyle Rettenhouse, likely others…
If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me, top left, and I’ll poke at the spam filter with a stick.
Speaking of defunding the police, I wonder how the let’s use social workers experiment is working out?
Oh my, who could have seen this coming.
Their leftist utopia is just ahead.
We all long for The Glorious World of Next Tuesday.
How racist must you be to insist that we need to stop making things illegal because some people inherently cannot follow rules?
Actually I suspect that the primary intention is to follow the Soviet Union’s solution to this issue – dissolve the police and instead have a “people’s militia” who will be better attuned (as it were) to the politIcal stance of their betters. Thus this “militia” will only attack and “police” those who the party elite believe need such treatment, and who will then get it good and hard just so you will understand who is in control.
As Instapundit has been known to say, “Letting our civilisation’s enemies teach our children may have been a mistake.”
Yes.
But we won’t.
This demonstrates how easily educated, intelligent people can be subsumed into bizarre religious and political cults and end up adopting the most bizarre stances.
Disco was another example.
Actually I suspect that the primary intention is to follow the Soviet Union’s solution to this issue – dissolve the police and instead have a “people’s militia” who…will only attack and “police” those who the party elite believe need such treatment
I do not suspect. I am certain.
G’day, I see that librarians from U. of Chicago support this drivel. U. of C. is in Hyde Park, South Side of Chicago. When I lived on campus in 1979- ’80 the university had a security/police force complete with squad cars of about 100 personnel. At every street intersection on campus there was a security phone for emergencies. Students working late in the library could ask for an escort home by security personnel at night as they returned to their dorms. People made a point of walking down the middle of streets on campus after hours so they could see better and avoid lurking criminals. Every new student was warned never to go on foot north of 47th. street and south of 63rd. To the west was Washington Park – definitely a no-go area – except for a neighbour who had two huge Doberman dogs. To the east was the Lake. The university was in the practice of buying up every property around it that came on the market to increase the area it could control and keep safe. I cannot imagine that the need for police/security has suddenly abated in 2020 due to SJ Wankers singing multiple choruses of Kumbaya. I wonder though if the U. of C. librarians will be willing to give up the security afforded them by the University ‘police’ force in their desire to make the world a perfect communistic place?
Jim
U. of C. is in Hyde Park, South Side of Chicago
Yes. The South Side is an extremely dangerous area. If you have read about Chicago’s high murder rate, most of those murders happen on the South Side.
South side of Chicago? Baddest part of town.
If you go down there you better just beware of a man named LeRoy Brown.
I heard Slim was tougher.
If you go down there you better just beware of a man named LeRoy Brown.
No worries: he’ll turn into a pussycat when the abolish the police.
Slim? You mean that Alabama boy, name of Willy McCoy? Different story about a pool shooting son of a gun.
Letting our civilisation’s enemies teach our children…
Chapter MMMMMMMDCCLXV, not that everything isn’t, these days.
2020, a play in two acts:
Act 1
Act 2
2020, a play in two acts
I couldn’t help but think of Abbott and Costello: ‘Who’s on first, … What’s on second and I don’t know’s on third.
Jim
Heh. I was aware of both tunes but merged the two in my head.
https://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/1fej6q/bad_bad_leroy_brown_or_you_dont_mess_around_with/
I was on the road to being a librarian. Well, for a few months anyway. This sort of thing happened a lot. I think the biggest issue is that they’re going through an identity crisis and far left politics fills that void for them. “What does it mean to be a librarian in the digital age?” or some version thereof is asked in every library science class and the answer is almost always something along the lines of “Professional left wing activists! Also, maybe some web design, babysitting homeless people and sharing memes about how everyone’s image of libraries is outdated!”.
Library science grad programs are also half poorly made vocational programs that try to prepare you for a job and half normal grad programs, but with really poorly written research with comically small sample sizes that aim to get the the answers to questions no one is interested in really answering. Out of this confusion there somehow emerges a sort of dumbed down Trotskyism.
They think they are sophisticated by saying that librarians don’t just manage buildings full of books but all of their extra activities and effort don’t add value to anybody’s life. Many people see value in publicly funded buildings full of books- but very few want the government to subsidize shouty know it alls who seem to be morphing into low budget versions of social workers with less training and a disdain for the very idea of knowledge.
My favorite moment from library school was when a guest speaker came in, without being prompted began gushing over that TV (online? whatever) series about Jeffrey Dahmer’s high school years, then spent the next ten minutes talking about how evil doesn’t exist and librarians can’t make moral judgements. No one seemed to see the irony. The upshot of the whole thing was you’re a fascist if don’t want to spend limited library resources on books about gay penguins but also a fascist if you point out that its weird the way librarians always brag about “misplacing” books by conservative authors.
and the answer is almost always something along the lines of “Professional left wing activists!…”
Or, “My job is insufficiently flattering and glamorous. I’ll graft on some leftwing activism and make taxpayers bankroll it whether they wish to or not. That’ll make me feel of more importance to the cosmos.”
I’ll graft on some leftwing activism…
…and generate some world class Christmas woke dickweedery.
@ Farnsworth M M: It’s a shame that some of the old practices for dealing with fools, harpies and scolds and village idiots e.g. ducking stools, stocks and even tar and feathers, have lost favour.
I particularly enjoyed the last sentence: “We must come together collectively and challenge these institutional inequities; St Antony is a community welcoming of all people and we must do better for ourselves.”
In other words do as you are ordered or get out! People like you are not welcome in our – no MY – welcoming community!!
Not The Son Of God.
…and generate some world class . . . .
Christmas lights?
Granting we’re not seeing the details of the lights, but Hanukkah starts on the 10th this year, Yule starts on the 21st, the 25th has one of the Christmases—and that’s just three of the possibilities for DecemberIsh . . . . . . Or mebbe someone decided to just get decorative?—These days lots of stores do have rather the sale of lots of shiny lights . . .
Aside from the letter being utterly silly, there are the reasons for that envelope to have that Happy Holidays time stamp on it . . . especially for anyone being generally decorative . . . .
Hmmm. Things like biographies appear in libraries.
Chuck Yeager, 1923-2020
But WTF do we need libraries for? Damn things are chock full of Danielle Steele and Stephen King crap to promote more new book sales for publishers, but ask about Thomas Hobbes or George Santayana and they look at you like you have two heads.
How racist must you be to insist that we need to stop making things illegal because some people inherently cannot follow rules?
That’s the odd bit. The rules that work best are the rules that most people follow. You’ll find different rules (or different levels of enforcement) in different places around the world. One of the most obvious mistakes in America (and many other places) is the proposition that we could import massive quantities of foreigners and expect them to follow our rules just like any other person already here.
We’ve been hanging onto this delusion for a while but it has finally hit the wall as schools and law enforcement give way to various demands. In this transitional period we are being subjected to different rules for different people. The blacks can riot, loot, and attack almost at will while most others would have their lives ruined. The poor immigrants can sneak over the border and access a bewildering array of private and public programs to help them live and work or just sit on the couch.
… oh: librarians?
Their expressed desires to exclude and eliminate bad-thinkers should wake up a lot of people. Why don’t we, the bad-thinkers who built and maintain this prosperous society, take actions to exclude and eliminate these corrosive progs?
They’ll pass a law banning law enforcement and any breach of that law will be strictly enforced.