A Modest Proposal
Sensible Regulation of Books
by
Gary Marbut © 2010 (with thanks to Jonathan Swift)
Owner, Montana Publishing
It is common knowledge that books, and many other publications, may
foster bad behavior, even criminal behavior, and wrong beliefs.
Some books may stimulate hostility towards a helpful government.
Others may actually enable criminal activity. Some books may
expose to public view information about government activity better kept
confidential. People have been injured and killed because of
inflammatory or incorrect information in books or other
publications. There are even books or publications about jihad
and making atomic weapons. Then, there are books that inspire
wrong thinking, such as books disclaiming man-caused global warming or
critical of helpful public officials.
Of course, there are certainly responsible publishers, purveyors and
buyers of books along with the irresponsible players. Therefore,
a system must be devised to help ensure that books and other
publications are only published, distributed and sold by those
responsible persons, and only purchased by people without criminal
history, a history suggesting that they would read the wrong sort of
books or might even misuse the right sort of books.
Such a system is obvious. The federal government must license
publishers, distributors and sellers of books. Every book
published must be individually identifiable, must be traceable to its
point of sale and to the purchaser. Every purchaser must undergo
a simple and noninvasive criminal record check to make sure he or she
is not prohibited because of a criminal record from possessing and
thereby misusing books. It is only sensible that people who are
unstable or have been adjudicated as mentally incompetent should not be
allowed to possess books.
Permitted individuals would still be allowed to trade books with
others, or even occasionally sell books, as long as they do not
actually get into the "business" of selling books as a vocation.
To do otherwise would violate their individual constitutional
rights. Those who are trafficking in high volumes of books,
however, must be licensed just as the sellers of new books, and must be
required to validate their buyers.
It is also obvious that such restrictions would not accomplish their
intended purpose if the restrictions did not also apply to other types
of publications, such as magazines and newspapers. Absent a
broad, fair-to-all approach, some ill-intended person could publish an
unregulated book by simply calling it a "newspaper." To round out
this beneficial exercise, copy machines and computer printers, as well
as all forms of electronic publishing, must be included within the
regulatory mechanism since books may easily be produced from those.
Certainly, the careful employees of government regulatory agencies will
be able to set reasonable rules for what sorts of people should be
licensed, under what conditions, to publish, distribute, sell and buy
books and other sorts of publications, and engage in any other types of
publishing or book consuming.
Such a modest regulation of books with reasonable government oversight
will go a long way towards reducing the bad outcomes too often
associated with the currently unregulated marketplace, where any sort
of person may obtain any sort of book. After all, these books may
be misused with disastrous consequences for our children, our families,
our communities and our Nation.
- End -
Note: For those readers who object that publishing and
buying of books is protected activity under the First Amendment
(although books are not actually mentioned there), be advised that the
exact same scheme proposed above for books is currently applied to all
firearms which are supposed to be protected under the Second Amendment
(and ARE mentioned THERE). If the Second Amendment ("shall not be infringed") may be undercut so seriously, so may the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law").