A Deep Question in a Times Headline
Or, rather, a dumb question that becomes a deep one if you change the headline a bit
Good Evening:
Oh man! Sometimes the Good Lord doth give with these headlines.
Let us start with the choice of the word “Can” in this headline. This makes the question one of ability, not one of ethics. Can you? Well, yes. You can go out to the Little Free Library in your front yard every day and remove books from it that you don’t want other people to be reading. You can put a big sign on the library that says, “Books by the following authors will be removed from this Little Free Library” and then list the banned authors. You can even remove all books from the Little Free Library and return only those which—after your inspection—meet the approval of your inner censor.
The word “can” makes this one easy. All of these are things you can do.
In fact, the headline as written doesn’t even limit the banning to specific books. It asks whether you can ban books, in general, from the Little Free Library. The answer to this question is also affirmative. I’m thinking of a sign that says: “no books.”
The more interesting question the headline writer might have asked is “Am I An Asshole if I Ban Particular Books From My Front-Yard Little Free Library?”
Here the question becomes more complicated. As a general matter, I think the answer is yes. You shouldn’t be telling other people what to read, and you shouldn’t be trying to use your provision of a public service to regulate other people’s intake and sharing of information.
That said, I would be kind of annoyed if I came home one day, having built a nice Little Free Library for my neighbors use, and found it full of copies of The Turner Diaries or Mein Kampf. And I’m not sure I wouldn’t take the position that my Nazis neighbor can use someone else’s property to distribute their hate. And I’m not sure that wouldn’t remove the books.
If I were inclined to behave this way, I might reason with myself that I am not preventing anyone from reading Mein Kampf. I am simply saying that I don’t want my front yard to be the locus of the exchange of such material. It’s not why I set up the Little Free Library, and nothing obligates me to host such material in the nice little box I made available for book trades. I don’t think I would feel like an asshole.
So go ahead: Ban books. Just make sure you ban only the right ones.
Today on #DogShirtTV, the estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher and Eve Gaumond and I welcomed the equally-estimable Yael Eisenstat on the show to discuss her history of aggravating the world’s richest and most powerful men. It’s a pretty cool streak she has going:
The Situation: The Cult of Unqualified Authenticity
In my column today, I reflect on the confirmation hearing of Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. In particular, I highlight the brash approach Hegseth took when questioned about his apparent lack of qualifications as demonstrative of a broader Trump-era ethos towards governance:
You can see in it so many of the central tenets of Trump’s approach to governance: the contempt for expertise and traditional qualifications; the insistence that the only real qualification is authenticity—and that authenticity is somehow wrapped up in performative masculinity; the belief that sounding tough and being tough are the same thing; and the conviction that complexity necessarily reduces to weakness.
It’s all right there in the nomination of a proudly unqualified individual who frames his lack of qualifications as qualification of a different, more authentic, variety that reflects what he calls a “warrior ethos” America has somehow lost in its infatuation with equity. And this idea has the apparently silent assent of all of the Republican members of the committee and a few, at least, enthusiastic takers.
Today On Lawfare
Managing the Security Risks of Geoengineering
Erin Sikorsky and Tom Ellison suggest that rapid advances in geoengineering research coupled with a lack of effective governance create security risks. Sikorsky and Ellison argue that international consensus on research and increased efforts to reduce misinformation are key to meeting climate and political challenges:
This funding increase means scientific research into geoengineering techniques is proceeding more quickly than efforts to develop the critical norms and rules of the road needed to manage such research and potential deployments. Meanwhile, disinformation and conspiracy theories infuse debates over geoengineering, while geopolitical tensions hamper cooperative technological approaches. These three dynamics—rapid scientific advancement without governance guardrails, a toxic information environment, and heightened geopolitical competition—portend significant security challenges in the coming decades. Navigating this dangerous mix requires both governments and those funding the scientific research to focus as much—if not more—on the social and political side of the geoengineering equation as on the research component.
Podcasts
On the Lawfare Daily podcast, Jennifer Gellie, Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section in the National Security Division of the Justice Department, joins Scott Anderson and Brandon Van Grack to discuss new regulations her office has proposed for implementing the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA):
Videos
I spoke to Anna Bower following the confirmation hearing of Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth. The discussion began shortly after the hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee—for which Bower was present—concluded:
Documents
Following its release by the Justice Department, Tyler McBrien shared the the first half of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report of his more than two-year investigation, a 137-page volume entitled “Report on Efforts to Interfere with the Lawful Transfer of Power Following the 2020 Presidential Election or the Certification of the Electoral College Vote Held on January 6, 2021.” Read Volume I in full here.
Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is Kirby, a baby Asian elephant from the Houston Zoo:
Look at this thing. It’s absurd:
A gremlin, a wretched gargoyle:
It looks like a failed experiment. It looks like it went to war with physics and lost. It looks like an AI-generated image for the prompt “gnome with shell-shock.” It looks like a million-year-old dog that’s given up trying. It looks like an angel pretending to be a baby elephant, but one who’s going to have to repeat its “Be Not Afraid” thing a few times before the message gets through:
We love this Beast with all our hearts.
Go read Rudyard Kipling’s “The Elephant’s Child” to your favorite five-year-old in its honor.
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