The First Amendment has pretty straightforward language

Joseph Reed spoke during the public comment portion of the ASD4 Board Meeting on February 12, 2024.

Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Joseph Reed. I have lived in Pendleton since 1989. My wife and I raised three children, all of whom attended and graduated from ASD4 schools, and are successfully navigating life with careers, families, mortgages, and taxes. And something I am also proud of – they all vote. Thank you for your help in all of that.

Tomorrow is set to be a fateful day for South Carolina. A seemingly innocuous new regulation promulgated from the State Superintendent is set to be voted on by the State Board of Education – proposed Regulation R.43-170, the “Uniform Procedure for Selection or Reconsideration of Instructional Materials.” In another place and time, this might sound like a common-sense regulation. Unfortunately, in our current political climate, it’s nothing more than an attack on free speech rights being played out by Christian Nationalists hellbent on censoring anything that doesn’t conform to their version of propriety, another false battle in a fake culture war with Ground Zero being black or brown authors, and the LGBTQ+ community. These people are either clueless or have a tremendous ability to ignore the thing they say they love so much – the Constitution of the United States, which states in the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That’s pretty straightforward language. The irony is not lost on the fact that many of these radical groups have words like “Freedom” or “Liberty” in their name, when what they really want is a dictatorship. I guess a dictatorship is not so bad, as long as you’re the one in charge. For the rest of us, it’s not so good. But dictatorship is the model for these radical groups. Burn the books and silence the authors. You can’t have things like books around – they’re dangerous – they’re full of ideas, full of information, full of stories of adversity, stories of triumph, and stories of hope.

I still have hope that the State Board of Education pauses the implementation of this regulation, and takes to heart the many comments and suggestions that have been made for improvement in the policy. Unfortunately, it’s probably inevitable that we will have a state-wide policy which can result in one citizen essentially deciding for the rest of us that a certain book is not appropriate to have in school. Parents already have the right to opt-out their student from a book they are not comfortable with. But that parent should not have that right over all the other parents. Don’t push your parental choice on me. But that’s a principle of democracy – the majority rules – or at least, it used to be. Maybe we can get back on course and start with not trampling everyone else’s rights.

Thanks for listening.