Congressional Democrats demand answers regarding book bans at service academies
President Donald Trump issued a directive calling for the removal of DEI initiatives. In response, the service academies took action to adjust curriculum to remove DEI related material, and to ban DEI related books. A couple of Democrats in Congress fired up a letter asking for information related to the book bans. The article quoted these Democrats as comparing the DEI book bans to “McCarthy-era censorship.”
From USA Today:
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou, is one of almost 400 books banned at the Naval Academy, the New York Times reported Friday.
The House Armed Services Committee Democrats asked the military academies who directed the removal of books, how the books were selected for the ban and if they’ve been taken from the shelves.
“If true, this is a blatant attack on the First Amendment and a clear effort to suppress academic freedom and rigor at the United States Naval Academy,” according to a draft of the letter obtained by USA TODAY. “Moreover, it displays an alarming return to McCarthy-era censorship.”
McCarthy, a Republican who served in the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin in the 1950s, claimed that Communists had infiltrated the federal government. He led high-profile investigations into alleged subversion and espionage, according to the Senate history. A confrontation with the army in 1953 led to the nationally televised hearings that damaged McCarthy’s public image, cast doubt on his allegations, and saw him censured by his peers.
Additional Reading:
Brook, T. V. (2025, April 7). Book ban at military service academies draws flak from Congress. USA Today. Link.
Category: DEI, Military issues
Catch-22 was banned for years at the Air Force Academy. Catch-22 was later on the AF COS recommended reading list. I wonder what would happen if cadets read it today; would they learn something?
They wouldn’t get it…
My dad thought Catch-22 was one of the greatest books ever. And he was career Air Force, 1941-1968.
It was the wrong book to read while paying the Sons of Iraq to not blow us up and using millions of US dollars to rebuild a school the same people (presumably) blew up for daring to educate girls.
On the back of my mission brief chair I put “Capt. Yossarian”.
I hope the LT still regrets giving me that book to reread.
It’s the best catch there is! (Note Yossarian there.)
Such good CGI for 1970!
Gosh it’s almost like someone assembled a squadron of real B-25Js.
Where were these assholes when they were banning Huckleberry Finn and To kill a Mockingbird etc ?
They were busy banning Aunts, Uncles, Native Americans, and tearing down War Memorials.
Old Joe was right, wasn’t he?
What the hell are you talking about?
The left never supported banning Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird.
Did the service academies ban them?
Take a deep breath, have another glass of Kool-Aid and pull the cocklebur out of your pantyhose before shitting yourself. BTW Donald J. Trump is only about two and a half months into his four years in office, isn’t that great?
Watch out, you will make that mollusk head explode.
Waiting…. waiting… waiting….
I can only get so hard…
He’ll get so tired of winning that BOOM!
Pop goes the weasel
Well, somebody did. You think it was the right who banned them?
You might want to spend five minutes or so Googling things before you comment on them.
Oh, and it might be useful to define “ban” first.
Leftist schoolboards banned them because they’re racist. The same kind of lefty dumbasses that wouldn’t let a high school music department perform “The Sound of Music” because it had (GASP) nazis in it. And no book has ever been “banned” in the United States. Every book every written is still available.
‘and sometimes they try to ban their own. An old liberal buddy of mine wanted Vonnegut’s books burned. He borrowed and returned a few of Vonnegut’s books from me. He told me I shouldn’t read any of them, because, they had the “N” word in them. At the same time, the libs love Claud Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land which has countless “N” words in it. I grow weary, I wish they’d make up their minds.
I think I’ve read everything Vonnegut wrote, loved all his books. Didn’t indoctrinate me though. Dumbasses don’t stop to view a book in the historical context in which it was wrtten. You cannot view the past through the eyes and moral of the present. It will not work.
Favorite: “Take a flying fuck to the moon.”
Happy birthday!!!
“Take a flying fuck at a rolling donut”
I wonder if your buddy read Fahrenheit 451.
Bradbury’s best work, imho.
The Illustrated Man collection was my favorite.
It’s okay when NWA and every rapper says it, though…
It’s a cultural thing. Nobody else is allowed to misappropriate lest there be a copyright infringement claim or something.
I have heard “the N word” more in the last couple of years than I have in my whole life, and not by white folks. And I am not including “music” or movies.
“And no book has ever been “banned” in the United States”
Except maybe in Boston. “Banned in Boston” used to be a fairly common phrase, sometimes used as a positive recommendation. ‘Lady Chatterly’s Lover’ and ‘Tropic of Cancer’ are two books that immediately come to mind. ‘I Am Curious(Yellow)’ was one movie ‘banned in Boston’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston
Did I say the left banned them? Reading comprehension asshole. They were banned in schools because of words used on every street in America. These assholes had nothing to say about that. Boy you are a one track tape aren’t you.
Nice to see you back my Conservative friend, I get a kick out of your socialist shtick act which keeps everyone going including blood pressure. See you later Alligator.
The Internet; It’s Not Just For Porn, Anymore.
https://www.newsweek.com/kill-mockingbird-other-books-banned-california-schools-over-racism-concerns-1547241
It will take me longer to type this comment, than it took to find this article.
https://www.newsweek.com/kill-mockingbird-other-books-banned-california-schools-over-racism-concerns-1547241
This search took even less time.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/to-kill-a-mockingbird-huckleberry-finn-suspended-by-virginia-school-for-racial-slurs/
Sheesh! First California, then Virginia, now Kansas!
https://bvnwnews.com/news/2020/09/25/blue-valley-removes-four-books-from-course-curriculum-due-to-racial-concerns/
Freaking idiots
Update your Red Hat Software, Hack post that Newsweek link forty minutes before your post. Commissar can’t look up those links on his own, he is still trying to set up his Venmo account so he can get paid for this past weekend’s Hands Off Rally.
Do you still support Red Hat Linux 8.0?
Oh jeez, you again?
If you’ve seen this, here’s what it means:
WTF? Book banning is a Democrat thing. The cadets are presumably adults and need to research the ways of those that wish to destroy the country, not forget about them.
No one ordered them not read those racist agitprop books. They can still order that grifter garbage literature on Amazon.
C’mon man, you know the right wants every book banned but the Old and New Testaments, King James Version!
Another case of reducto ad absurdiam where any book that has characters or subject of a different race is therefore DEI. I suspect many titles were “banned” with malicious intent to discredit the objective.
The history of the Tuskegee Airman is good.
The belief that pilots must be selected on race to reflect the racial makeup (aka quotas) of the nation is bad.
These subjects are not the same.
Fun fact is that blacks were considered inferior and unfit to become pilots was a plank of the Democratic party mostly found in the Old Confederate states.
If I was at one of the academies (which would definitely ever have happened because I’m a state-school ROTC guy), I would write back, with full confidence that it is true: “we reviewed the data on these books and discovered none of them have been checked out in, oh, never, (except one Cadet Rapone) and we decided to remove them from the shelves as they bring literally nothing to the education of a combat ready junior officer.
We are using the freed up shelf space to install a sculpture of (insert academy-specific tank, fighter, ship here) as we found simply looking at this art does more for readiness than any of the books we removed.
Thank you for your interest.
Next question, please.”
“we reviewed the data…..”
I believe that is standard practice in all libraries. I love the book sales that libraries have when they winnow out all the unread or “obsolete” books. It amazes me what you can learn from “outdated” books, especially about off-topic subjects.
When I go to a library, I like to go to the back shelves. I am always amazed at the interesting books that are hiding beneath the spider webs. Once I found one written by a WWII German Air Force pilot whose job it was to fly allied aircraft that had been shot down and repaired by the Luftwaffe. There were volumes about art history which turned out to be more interesting than I had thought. The bad news is, I have never been able to get to the “outdated book” sales before they run out of the good stuff.
I can still remember in the early 1960s finding an official US Army published book “Handbook of Enemy Forces”( or something like that) published in 1942. Every cliche you ever heard about German and Japanese militaries was in there. Ex., German forces have no initiative or flexibility, etc., due to their authoritarian society. This was, of course, before Kasserine Pass. Much the same things that were/are said about Russian/Soviet and Chinese forces.
“We are using the freed up shelf space to install a sculpture of Robert Edward Lee …..”
For years, I through Maya Angelou was that Caribbean TV psychic lady with the crazy head scarves.
Yes, for many years, I had Angelou confused with Miss Cleo
To be fair, have you ever seen Maya Angelou and Miss Cleo in the same room?
And how about some Miss Cleo trivia?
https://momswholove.com/self-love/untold-truth-behind-miss-cleos
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was so right.
Amen.
So, in a way, the dems are actually correct on this.. it IS like McCarthy, as it IS rooting out Marxist bullshit…
I have visited McCarthy’s grave and have some nice photos to remember someone who was concerned about communist influence. Which in hindsight, he was correct.
Could care less.
Thet are college kids. They are old enough to read what they fucking want.
And they usually do.
When they can actually read.
Mostly:
Jeez, I thought that magazine was extinct. But with all that free porn on the internet, I haven’t seen one on a news stand in over fifteen years.
There’s free porn on the internet? Jeez, ya coulda told somebody!
Back during Hack Stone’s lat Okinawa tour, some Karen wrote a Letter to The Editor at Stars & Stripes complaining about pornographic magazines being displayed and sold at the checkout counter of the Yokusaka Exchange. Hack Stone was obligated to pen a responding Letter to The Editor, putting out that the offending products were most likely copies of Cosmopolitan. Then Hack Stone went on to write that Base Exchanges primary mission was meeting the needs of the service members, not dependapotamuses. And if we can demand the removal of products that we find offensive, Hack Stone demands the removal of tobacco products, because despite the fact that Hack does not smoke, he spent an inordinate amount of his Marine Corps career picking up cigarette butts. Not only that, how many man hours were lost on Marines taking a smoke break? And Hack never saw a gaggle of Marines standing in the pouring rain pounding one out from a porno rag.
A few days later, someone from Stars & Stripes called Hack’s office, verifying that yes, Hack Stone was the author of this letter. Hack Stone confirmed that he did write it. A few days later, Hack Stone’s was printed. A historic event, right up there with The Gettysburg Address. Hack sure wishes that he saved that issue.
I’m all for removing DEI related books from those “(Insert command authority figure here) recommended reading lists” but I’m kinda on the fence about removing them entirely. The same way I wouldn’t want Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, or Mao’s little Red Book removed.
Shitty ideas subvert themselves.
Bad art (and logics) should be given enough exposure to oxidize away.
Below: see original work by Dali (just don’t show John Ashcroft!)
I think Dali just liked fucking with people.
I thought it was a statement on the impermanence of beauty and the steely mechanisms that value such God-given riches so poorly by commodifying them in terms of greed and power.
Wait, a joke not intended for me?!
I’d be offended by that but I didn’t go to UC Berkeley.
Next thing you know they will ban certain words.
And want you to say other words that fit their feelings for today. They will be different next week and there will be a test ( of patience).
I can think of 7…
I was like 8 years old when my parents were watching the hearings on our small tv screen.
So is this a case of malicious compliance? In which case, at this point I’d expect these people to get canned for it out of spite.
Or is it a case of someone being so stupid that they actually think this is what the DEI EO was about? If that’s the case, then they should definitely be fired for being so stupid.
I’m thinking both things might be true.
Democrats have 2 speeds: demanding and outraged.
Democrats have one level of enlightenment. It comes from a very dark place. It comes from having their head up their ass, and speaking without thinking.
The book issue is one thing…that still has me flummoxed because the libtards are the true racists and hypocrites, but the one that puzzles me the most is taking away the American Indian girl from Land O Lakes butter and taking Aunt Jamima’s Face off of her syrup. Two very proud symbols of Americana, but the left-wing ray-sist felt it was so terrible. These people are beyond demented. Interested in hearing your take on this Commie. What say you?
Uncle Ben and the Cream of Wheat chef had to go, too. Betty Crocker and the Quaker Oats guy stay. Holy white supremacy Batman! They’re eradicating competitors of color!
The Tapatio guy says “fuck you gringo”!
One particular day Hack Stone and his lovely bride Rosetta were at the Joint Base Andrews Commissary stocking up on necessities, and Hack decided to rest his weary feet on the bench near the checkout line. He shared the bench space with an elderly African American woman, and we were having a pleasant conversation, mostly about recipes, and she mentioned that she went looking on the shelves for Uncle Ben’s Rice, but came up empty. I then informed her that Uncle Ben was fired, and the product is now known as Ben’s Rice with no image of Ben or Uncle Ben. She was quite surprised and asked why. Hack could not provide a logical reason, other than “to end racism”.
If you use Uncle Ben’s, are you a ricist?
I think this applies.