You might be an enemy of the state if you've read these books...

We advise people to purchase and own, in print form, books that you deem important and will want to read, or to have your children or grandchildren read.

Why?

Because western governments want protection from books that promote human liberty and reveal government totalitarianism, and will use the force of law to keep you from them.

In the UK, for instance, there is a government program first initiated to root out Islamic extremism that now attempts to root out "right-wing" extremism.  If you have read Adam Smith, C. S. Lewis, George Orwell, or Tolkien, you qualify as an extremist.

In the US this week a federal judge temporarily blocked the implementation of a new NYS law that will make "hateful conduct" on social media a crime, ruling that the measure violates the Constitution’s protection of free speech.  Full story here.

The law defined Hateful Conduct as “[T]he use of a social media network to vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” 

A Cambridge dictionary definition of "vilify" is "to say or write unpleasant things about someone or something, in order to cause other people to have a bad opinion of them."

The people writing these kinds of laws know that they are unconstitutional. These laws are not intended to be constitutional; they are intended to increase state power and to silence those who oppose an increase in state power.

There is only one small logical step from banning thoughts and speech of a certain kind and banning the books that teach the thoughts.  Fahrenheit 451 was fiction when written.

The Spectator essay is by Douglas Murray, and is titled, "Can you really be radicalized by British Railway Journeys?"

"There is also a reading list of historical texts which produce red flags to RICU. These include Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, as well as works by Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. Elsewhere RICU warns that radicalisation could occur from books by authors including C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley and Joseph Conrad. I kid you not, though it seems that all satire is dead, but the list of suspect books also includes 1984 by George Orwell."

Read the whole article here.