For these kinds of matters we we tend to set community-approved guidelines and then allow the community to enforce them. This is because we trust our community to best uphold the standards of the community.

What's being done here is a top-down effort by certain political forces to insert themselves into this community-lead governance. They don't want the community to set local standards; they would rather those standards be dictated by the governor, or by some party-approved commission appointed by him.

> Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question

Agreed, but Republicans think this person should be the governor of the state, and Democrats think this person should be someone local from the community. Ironically, it's Republicans who are styled as the party of small government.

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

What you are saying makes sense, but I am only commenting on this in relation to freedom of speech. The government is the government whether it is local or state. So in terms of freedom of speech this is the same thing. In terms of the constitution, local governments are completely subject to the authority of the state government. There is no sharing of power like at the federal/state level.

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ModernMech 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think it all has to do with impact. The point of the first amendment is so that the government cannot create policy to chill speech it doesn't like. That's why we all appreciate it.

A small branch library making autonomous choices about what books to store behind its walls with backing of the local community doesn't stand to chill speech across the state or nation, so the first amendment protection to free speech isn't really implicated. If some podunk town doesn't want to put books about trans kids on the shelves, that's not going to chill speech about trans people across the state or nation.

But when the governor sets policy that no libraries shall have books about trans people, then that's going to chill speech and the first amendment is implicated. Therefore it's unconstitutional, despite flowing from the same derived power source. That's my view anyway, I'm not a lawyer.

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epistasis 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A law must abide by the constitution.

Community norms are not laws, and are much more flexible, have no government enforcement mechanisms, and don't have the weight of the legal system behind them.

These are very different things when it comes to freedom of speech!

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Levitz 3 days ago | parent [-]

That looks like the mother of all slippery slopes to me. I'd be very, very careful around the idea that some workers of the government don't have to abide by the constitution.

	▲	epistasis 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm confused, who here is saying that some workers of the government don't have to abide by the constitution? Certainly I have never said that!

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mindslight 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to increase it to the size where it can go into your bathroom and drown you in the bathtub" - Grover Norquist, via translation from effective results.