Clayton Cramer disagrees with Eric Muller’s position on the religious book in the school library, but then goes on to say:
Professor Muller’s liberalism is really shining! Here’s another book that he wants not available: Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment, which is offered for sale at the Manzanar book store.
Muller compares Malkin’s book to David Irving’s work; this is absurd. Malkin isn’t denying that the internment happened; she is making an argument that it made sense under the circumstances. You can disagree with her argument without calling her a liar.
I take it that Cramer is suggesting that Muller is somehow being untrue to his own “liberal” principles, but I don’t quite see why. It seems quite reasonable to argue that the Manzanar book store, like other specialty government-run bookstores at historical sites, should only carry generally accurate history books.
The bookstore must necessarily choose which books to carry: Presumably it doesn’t carry every book ever written about the Japanese internment, but only those that it thinks are helpful to casual lay readers. And many of these readers are likely to read one book on the subject, rather than reading several to decide for themselves which are right and which are wrong. If Muller is right that Malkin’s book is highly inaccurate — even if it isn’t as inaccurate as books that deny that the Holocaust took place — then why should the government propagate such inaccurate views?
Now there may well be some liberals who have articulated hardline views that any refusal by the government to carry a book, in any government-run bookstore or library, is a First Amendment violation (or is otherwise inappropriate). But I have no reason to think that Muller is one of them. What reason is there to condemn him for any supposed inconsistency with his “liberalism”?
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