Books contain the collective histories, knowledge, ideologies, philosophies, genealogies, religions, and cultures of nations. Oppressive regimes who wish to rewrite history. For example, Obama started early – his first decision when he moved into the White House was to remove Churchill’s bust, and his most recent is replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 note with that of a black slave. In South Africa, street names and the names of provinces are changed, monuments destroyed school history books rewritten. Other tyrants, like Hitler, love book burnings. In England today, selective history is taught.

From Wikipedia:


In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable and their burning constitutes a severe loss to cultural heritage. Examples include obliteration of the Library of Baghdad, the burning of books and burying of scholars under China’s Qin Dynasty, the destruction of Aztec codices by Itzcoatl.

In other cases, such as the Nazi book burnings, other copies of the destroyed books survive – but still, the instance of book burning becomes emblematic of a harsh and oppressive regime which is seeking to censor or silence an aspect of a nation’s culture.

Book burning can be an act of contempt for the book’s contents or author, and the act is intended to draw wider public attention to this opinion. Examples include the burning of Wilhelm Reich‘s books by the FDA and the 2010 Qur’an-burning controversy.”


So why don’t we have to worry about North American tyrants burning our books? Well, first, less and less people actually read books. More money is spent on Lotto tickets than books, and only a small percentage of the books that are purchased are ever read cover to cover. The organized and systematic dumbing down of North Americans by their Liberal governments, schools, media, colleges and universities has resulted in a semi-literate bunch of texters and TV viewers who wouldn’t know the difference between a sonnet and a doughnut.

Secondly, smart people are storing the good books on digital devices in preparation for the coming realization of Orwell’s 1984 and Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. You can get 4,473 books onto a single Gigabyte and I recently bought a 64 Gigabyte memory stick/flashdrive. eReaders in the hands of smart people abound. Already, Facebook, Twitter, and others are being bullied by the American government (what’s new?) into censoring posts that don’t fit the ruling propaganda. Soon, certain books and publications will be being banned wholesale, but relatively few people would bother to read them anyway.

But why burn books? Because a books provide the best way to actually think the very thoughts of the author, since he is putting his thoughts into writing. As we read Ayn Rand, Orwell,  Sun Tzu,  Patton or Churchill, we are actually enjoying the privilege of thinking their thoughts with them / reading their thoughts and understanding their reasoning and conclusions. This is very powerful. Very dangerous for those who are intent on conditioning the sheeple and persuading them to follow their evil directions.

Robin Elliott    LeverageAdvantage.com  (Pictured above: Coquitlam Public Library)