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No art or literature can flourish if it is to be measured by the political views or private lives <br /> of its creators.No society of free people can flourish that draws up lists of writers to whom <br /> it will not listen,whatever they may have to say. <br /> 4. There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine <br /> adults to t6e reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts <br /> of writers to achieve artistic eapression. <br /> To some, much of modern expression is shocking. But is not much of life itself shocking? <br /> We cut off literature at the source if we prevent writers from dealing with the stuff of life. <br /> Parents and teachers have a responsibility to prepare the young to meet the diversity of <br /> experiences in life to which they will be exposed,as they have a responsibility to help them <br /> learn to think critically for themselves. These are affirmative responsibilities, not to be <br /> discharged simply by preventing them from reading works for which they are not yet <br /> prepared. In these matters values differ,and values cannot be legislated;nor can machinery <br /> be devised that will suit the demands of one group without limiting the freedom of others. <br /> 5. It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label � <br /> characterizing any eapression or its author as subversive or dangerous. �I <br /> The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to ' <br /> determine by authority what is good or bad for others. It presupposes that individuals must I <br /> be directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not <br /> need others to do their thinking for them. <br /> I <br /> 6. It is the responsibility of publishers and Gbrarians, as guardians of the people's <br /> freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or <br /> groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large; <br /> and by the government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to public I <br /> information. ' <br /> It is inevitable in the give and ta.ke of the democratic process that the political, the moral, <br /> or the aesthetic concepts of an individual or group will occasionally collide with those of I <br /> another individual or group. In a free society individuals are free to determine for ' <br /> themselves what they wish to read, and each group is free to determine what it will <br /> recommend to its freely associated members. But no group has the right to take the law <br /> into its own hands, and to impose its own concept of politics or morality upon other <br /> members of a democratic society. Freedom is no freedom if it is accorded only to the <br /> accepted and the inoffensive.Further,democratic societies are more safe,free,and creative <br /> when the free flow of public information is not restricted by governmental prerogative or I <br /> self-censorship. i <br /> 7. It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom <br /> to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and <br /> eapression. By the eaercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate <br /> that the answer to a "bad" book is a good one, the answer to a "bad" idea is a good <br /> one. <br /> 15 <br />