Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the
conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset
our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those,
the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and
their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.
The issues raised by the debate over whether the Harry Potter series should be banned from public schools I find intriguing. Both the pro and anti Harry Potter groups involved in cureent legal challenges have expressed a wide array of viewpoints that represent the opposing ends of the sociopolitical spectrum and the many shades of gray in between resulting in many intensely heated exchanges and debates concerning freedoms of press and speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Despite their differences, there exists at least one point upon which both parties would agree as a matter of principle.
I believe that both sides would agree that each is party is entitled to possess their own opinion
Any attempt to mandate or make compulsory a single opinion must be regarded as an anathema. Every conservative, liberal, moderate or independent regardless of social, economic or political leanings would concur with Voltaire's long held maxim:
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it.
However, the clamor that Harry Potter series has caused amongst the religious conservatives especially in the Deep South for example in Gwinnett County Georgia endangers the ability of
the Republic to endure because, the tensions over this issue have polarized the populace and resulted in cause being brought before a court of law.
The fact that a dispute over a series of books that began its life as an issue at school board meeting has evolved into a court case and made its way into a legal setting is deeply disturbing to me.
It seems to me the continued endurance and health of the Republic requires that individuals take great care and remain wary of utilizing the legal system to impose through force of law an individual viewpoint as Robert Jackson eloquently pointed out in 1943:
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves
exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the
unanimity of the graveyard. Barnette v. West Virginia (1943)
