Topic: Book Burning

[amysrevenge]

So, as you could probably guess since I'm hanging out around these parts, I'm opposed to censorship and book burnings and such.

I went with my family to the CBC Book Sale yesterday.  The deal of the day was to buy a canvas shopping bag for $25 and fill it up with whatever fits inside (I got about 30 classic SFF titles, super excited).

There was a small-ish display of books by that fucker Kevin Trudeau, and I was tempted to get another bag and buy them all just so nobody else could get their hands on them.  I could probably have fit the whole pile into one bag.

However, in essense isn't this the same thing as burning books because I disagree with them?

It's a tricky thing, and in the end my greed for the $25 and my general laziness tipped me over into not doing anything (as well as the fact that based on the display, and from asking my wife who visited the sale at the very start and at the very end, the stack of books hadn't really sold anything over the duration of the entire sale).


ETA: I put this here instead of Skepticism because at the core it's an ethical issue and not a specifically skeptical one.

[DeanMorrison]

"The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the supression of ideas."

I think the quote applies here. Furthermore, the less money you can put in KT's pocket, the better. The best approach would be to stake out the book sale and engage in conversation with anyone that picks up the books. Takes a lot out of your day, though. =)

[amysrevenge]

"The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the supression of ideas."

I think the quote applies here. Furthermore, the less money you can put in KT's pocket, the better. The best approach would be to stake out the book sale and engage in conversation with anyone that picks up the books. Takes a lot out of your day, though. =)

No money would have gone to that dude - these were already bought by someone else long ago.  These ones would have been "$25 to the CBC's reading blah-blah charity" which is good, but I don't usually have the energy to argue with chumps in real life (and especially not with my toddler daughter in my care).

[Bombus]

I agree with DeanMorrison.

However an alternative to a stake out might be to write an informative argument aganst the ideas conveyed in the book, print out lots of copies of your argument, and sneak them into the first page of each book.......

Guerrilla arguments!?

[Eternally Learning]

In this specific instance, I wouldn't worry about it.  Most times I go to used book sales I've seen stack of Trudeau's books and they stay put with very little interest it seems.  Still, if someone is really interested in bull-hockey like that they'll find it somewhere.  I also think the scare-quotes around "cures" or "they" in his titles is a nice indicator to most people to just ignore it.

As for a more general opinion; I'm with DeanMorrison.  On top of that, when ideas get suppressed it tends to give them more appeal and allure and let's face it; in this day and age a true book-burning (one where recorded ideas are forever lost in the destruction) is damn-near impossible.

[Chew]

There was a small-ish display of books by that fucker Kevin Trudeau, and I was tempted to get another bag and buy them all just so nobody else could get their hands on them.  I could probably have fit the whole pile into one bag.

The bookstore's inventory system would assume they are selling very well and order even more of them.

[amysrevenge]

In this case, it was a curling rink full of (donated) stacks of used books, not an actual store.  If I had taken them, they would have just disappeared from the earth without anyone even noticing.

[Chew]

In that case, it's best to let people see a bunch of books rotting on the shelf.

[AQB24712]

Although I do like Bombus' suggestion.  Sounds like fun.  Bookmarks with lists of appropriate Web sites on them, perhaps.