OP-ED
Limiting public access to information is authoritarian
It shouldn’t ruffle any feathers in our body politic to state that “slavery is bad.” In fact, most experts would say that such a statement seriously underplays the harm caused by this institution. Forcibly taking millions of Africans from their homeland and condemning them to a lifetime of servitude isn’t good, unless you’re siding with the slave owners. But even some enslavers referred to the system negatively. They realized this was an unnatural, immoral system. For example, the slave owning philosopher Thomas R. Dew famously referred to slavery as America’s “original sin.” While he offered this characterization for selfish reasons — to shift blame onto the founding fathers and away from those wanting to maintain slavery — it’s worth noting that some enslavers acknowledged the system’s depravity. That’s why it’s so troubling that some people today are hesitant to recognize the horrors of slavery. Those who endured this dehumanization or bore witness to it know this all too well. Our nation can’t adopt a “never again” perspective without first acknowledging the harm caused.
In the past five years, legislators in at least forty-four states introduced bans on so-called…