Twelve Stones Podcast, Ep. 8: Burt Whaley, Representative-elect for the 138th

 

The Tyranny of the Miller Test: Cross Post from Hick Christian

By David Rice

UTurn in Education’s Logical Fallacies are legion as they attempt to explain why Sexually Explicit Materials belong in the Library. Their arguments support Government’s Control over Americans.

 

When debating library content policies, we often encounter several logical fallacies used to shut down community discussion. I have identified several fallacies in UTurn in Education’s Public Comments from Dr. Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk. Understanding these fallacies can help us engage in public discourse and learn to ignore arguments that add little value to it.

Appeals to Authority Fallacies

The Supreme Court

• "The Supreme Court decided this with the Miller Test."

• "Legal experts have settled this matter."

• Assumes court decisions are infallible and eternal

• Ignores that courts regularly overturn precedents (like Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition modifying Miller)

• I argued this before, but I will share it one more time. The Miller Test has been modified by the 2002 Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition. It made it legal to publish child porn as long as the images were hand-drawn or virtual. This created a boom in “legal” child porn that we now find in our libraries, curated by our librarians. It doesn’t make it right. It only makes it legal—and disgusting.

   

  The Credentialed Expert

• Using academic credentials (like a PhD) to lend weight to legal arguments

• Implying expertise in one field transfers to expertise in constitutional law

Suggesting education trumps community standards is like stating the Director in Brave New World is always superior to John the Savage’s critiques. The irony of calling John a savage is that he’s not the savage. The director, with all their elitism and education, empowered by an oppressive world government, is the savage.

Appeals to Time and Tradition Fallacies

The Age

• "The obscenity law has been in place since before I was born."

• Suggesting longevity equals correctness

• Using personal lifespan as a measure of legal validity

• If this was a valid reason for a law, should we reinstitute Draconian Laws? Or what about the Rule of Thumb, where men could not beat their wives with a stick wider than their thumb (which was an improvement over beating them with a stick larger than their thumb at the time.) Old or new doesn’t guarantee the law is valid or good—you need more than tradition or novelty to determine the validity of a good law.

The Settled Law

• The audience is left to assume her age, but let’s assume we've been using this standard for 50 years.

• This implies older decisions are automatically better.

• However, this ignores technological and societal changes.

• Why should the Miller Test be valid considering the technological changes since it was first introduced in a Mail-Order world? The court which made this decision never imagined a world where porn could move around the world in seconds, much less days or weeks. The definition of community isn’t the tiny isolated hamlet it once was. Parents cannot fight against Sexually Explicit Materials that move faster than they can, and Publishers (which act as the gateway porn industry for young children) know that and count on it.

Circular Reasoning Fallacies

The Community Standards Loop

• "It's acceptable because it's in the library."

• "It's in the library because it's acceptable."

• "The community accepts it because the Miller Test says they should."

• The community isn’t allowed to decide whether they like it or not. The Library staff chose to buy the book without community input, and since the Publisher is permitted to publish, it is allowable for the Library staff to buy the book. The Community Standard of the Miller Test never even comes into play. There are no discussions about whether the Publisher should be allowed to publish it or not or if the government should change the law. Power is all there is, and the Marxists have it in abundance under this system.

The Legal Authority Loop

• "It's acceptable because the Miller Test says so."

• "The Miller Test says it's acceptable because communities accept it."

• "Communities must accept it because it's legally acceptable."

• Similar to the above loop. You cannot question this logic because we don’t want to admit its fragility. We don’t want you to realize that the communities might not accept it. We have determined that they do, despite all the people attending Library Board meetings nationwide fighting against these books. It’s not a problem; it’s a small group of radicals. Ignore the fact we are trying to use lawfare to sue into oblivion private citizens into silence. Ignore the fact we are using the power of the ALA and the ACLU to force our views onto the community and determine from the outside what the community’s standards should be.

False Equivalences Fallacy

The Legality Equals Morality

• Equating legal permissibility with moral rightness

• Treating court decisions as moral absolutes

• Assuming what's legal is automatically good for the community

• There is no obligation for someone to follow the law if it is morally reprehensible or if the law violates moral precepts. People must follow their conscience to do the higher good than the law allows. If one did not, one would never abolish slavery or fight against abortion. If we followed Dr. Dudash-Buskirk’s illogic, slavery would be forever institutionalized because the government was behind it. Women would never be allowed to vote under her logic. Nothing would change. It takes moral people to create change, and Dudash-Buskirk’s position is not ethical.

The Free Speech Absolutist Fallacy

• Equating any content restriction with censorship

• Ignoring community standards and local control

• Treating all speech as equally protected

• Free Speech, like all freedoms, has limits. It always has. There are limits to all of our rights when they begin to harm others—especially the innocent. Freedom of Religion has upper limits. I cannot sacrifice virgins to Apollo. I cannot use guns to murder. I cannot use speech to libel or slander. I cannot use my Free Speech rights to harm children with Sexually Explicit Material. All the research shows it harms children. There isn’t a single research article that shows something different.

False Dichotomies Fallacy

The Binary Choice

• "Either accept Miller Test standards or oppose free speech."

• "You're either for censorship or against it."

• Ignoring nuanced positions between extremes

• Only tyrants deal with absolutes. Only people who uphold systems of power want no compromises. Only when you refuse to see your position as fallible, do you think you can crush everyone else beneath you. Choosing Binary choices (ironic, ain’t it) shows a lack of really understanding the complexities of the situation and a desire to force your own beliefs on others.

The Expert

• "Either you're a legal expert, or you can't understand this."

• "Either accept professional librarians' decisions or be anti-library."

• The lack of humility in this position is frustrating—more than frustrating. It demonstrates a desire to control and intimidate through ego. This fallacy states, “I know more than you do—more than you can hope to learn. You’re hopelessly out of your league, and you’ll never discover what I know. I’m far more brilliant than you.”

Creating false choices between extremes

Moving the Goalposts Fallacy

The Shifting Standards

• Changing what constitutes "community standards" when challenged.

• Adjusting the definition of "artistic value" to fit the desired outcome.

• Redefining "prurient interest" based on convenience.

• Because UTurn in Education refuses to have a standard, they can constantly move the goalpost about what is acceptable and what isn’t. They should be forced to admit what is too offensive and too obscene for children, and if they cannot answer, then they should not be considered serious public commenters. If they cannot determine if there is something that would be offensive to every family, then they have no standard at all, which means they don’t have any artistic value either.

The Evolving Definitions

• Changing the meaning of "obscene" to protect certain content.

• Shifting what counts as "educational material."

• Altering interpretations of "age-appropriate"

• As mentioned above, it is hard to understand what they mean. UTurn and its surrogates constantly change their definitions. They don’t say what they mean. They mean what they don’t say. Their words have no value. They want to use vague words they refuse to define to give the guise of import while communicating almost nothing.

Red Herrings Fallacy

The Constitutional Distraction

• Shifting the discussion to broad free speech principles.

• Avoiding specific community concerns.

• Distracting from content issues with procedural arguments.

• In her three-minute speech, she discussed concerns about attacks on her and UTurn. Dudash-Buskirk has, in the past, addressed concerns about Free Speech. She has tried to tie the hands of the board with procedural arguments. She refuses to deal with the concerns of the community.

The Censorship Panic

• Raising specters of book burning

• Comparing content concerns to historical censorship

• Derailing discussion with extreme scenarios

• Instead of accepting a reasonable approach, UTurn, on its website and in public discourse, speaks about the specter of Book Banning. They see any restriction on sharing Sexually Explicit Material with children as censorship equivalent to book banning or book burning. If you hold a Library Board Trustee responsible, you’re harassing them. Essentially, you’re not allowed to have a dissenting opinion. If you do, you’re the villain, and you must be described in the worst possible terms. These are ad hominem attacks, another fallacy. Look at my above article. I never call her names, insult her, or make ad hominem attacks against her character or her organization. I methodically examine her arguments and try to dismantle them one by one. Yet, there is no grace on their part to do the same.

Conclusion

Knowingly or unknowingly, when Dudash-Buskirk and UTurn in Education employ these fallacies, it does several harmful things to public discourse:

1. Shut down legitimate community discussion.

2. Prevent meaningful debate about content standards.

3. Protect institutional decisions from community oversight.

4. Maintain the status quo without proper scrutiny.

5. Replace community self-governance with institutional control.

6. Create systems resistant to democratic change.

7. Establish unaccountable "expert" authority.

8. Turn libraries from community institutions into ideological enforcers.

9. Reinforce tyrannical systems of oppression.

10. Attempts to scare people who don’t know how to argue against their fallacies from participating.

Understanding these fallacies helps communities:

1. Recognize invalid arguments

2. Respond effectively to dismissive tactics

3. Maintain focus on legitimate concerns

4. Engage in meaningful dialogue about community standards

The key is recognizing that community standards reflect actual community values, not institutional interpretations of decades-old legal tests. The Miller Test is invalid, immoral, and illogical.

UTurn’s insistence on staying married to it demonstrates that they have no arguments to make against these books because of logical fallacies. All they can say is, Government is good. Government approves Child Porn. Therefore Child Porn must be Good. If that argument works for you, then God help you.

If you prefer to hear logic, it would be best to ignore UTurn’s Public Comments until they learn to speak in the Public Interest.

Thank you, Dr. Dudash-Buskirk, for continuing to speak out and demonstrate your Free Speech rights. However, it is time to refine your public comments to actually add to the public discourse rather than to distract.

You can find Hick Christian HERE.

Critical Race Theory in the Christian County Library

 

By Gretchen Garrity

 U-turn in Education believes that "viewpoint discrimination" is at play on the Christian County Library Board of Trustees. It's not surprising that U-turn in Education would assert such a thing about a member of the Board of Trustees.

From: U-turn in Education

What is viewpoint discrimination? It is government suppression of a certain perspective or viewpoint on a topic or issue, and is rightly looked down upon as a First Amendment violation by the courts. The Supreme Court, in Rosenberger vs. University of Virginia, has said:

"When the government targets not subject matter but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, [it is] an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction."

You see, those who are invested in providing all-age access to age-inappropriate books in the children's and teen sections of the library twist such arguments to frame their narrative. At the bottom of their agenda seems to be the political desire to dispense with parents' rights over their own children. This is a common tactic in Marxist and communist takeovers.

We are seeing this with the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights, with the gender ideology push to allow minor children as young as two to assert a transgender identification, and even the attempt to lower the age of consent for sexual relations. 

But let's take a look at CRT (Critical Race Theory), which apparently has U-turn's attention. CRT is a largely discredited way of looking at racism, its history, and how to handle it. 

In short, CRT posits that capitalism is racist and must be torn down, that America was founded upon racist principles, and that the only solution is for white people to forever admit we are inherently racist and must do penance for eternity by destroying everything about America that is good and beautiful and true in order to pay for our sins.

"It's pedophilia cloaked in the ideology of being progressive."

Rep. @NancyMace is right.

The terrifying end-goal of gender ideology is blurring sexual boundaries between fetishistic adults and young children. This is exactly what we are fighting.
pic.twitter.com/iYhuc1t9BY

— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) December 18, 2024

Interesting that U-turn in Education would assume the Board wants to suppress free speech, and not simply uphold the rights of parents to protect their children.

Imagine if this referred to African Americans or Jews...

Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk, the foundress of U-turn in Education,  proudly describes herself as woke (in the first 15 seconds of the video). She is one of the most ardent supporters of the ALA's position of all-access for all materials in the library for all ages--which of course includes minor children.

 In her article "How Libraries Are Indoctrinating Kids To Think All White People Are Racists," writer Maureen Mallarkey quotes the ALA during a moment of self-accusation, "Even the American Library Association has genuflected to the unspoken substructure of the anti-racist meme. Amid protests following the death of George Floyd, the ALA issued a press release heaving with self-accusation. It confessed:

The American Library Association (ALA) accepts and acknowledges its role in upholding unjust systems of racism and discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) within the association and the profession.

We recognize that the founding of our Association was not built on inclusion and equity, but instead was built on systemic racism and discrimination in many forms. We also recognize the hurt and harm done to BIPOC library workers and communities due to these racist structures."

 Their self-flagellation isn't really meant in the usual way. It's simply a necessary step in the revolution of overturning the system. They all know it. Mallarkey continues with her explanation of CRT:

 "According to Ibram X. Kendi, a rising scholar of the white disorder called racism, there is no such thing as being non-racist. You are either a purposeful anti-racist or a racist. No neutral ground exists. To be “color-blind” is a ruse. Since racism is the original sin of Euro-Americans, to be anti-racist is to be … well, you finish the sentence."

Further on she mentions Kendi's book "Antiracist Baby": "Dedicated to all young people 'unbound by the imaginations of state violence and white supremacy,' the book is meant to be read by white parents to their potentially racist fledglings. “Antiracist Baby is bred, not born.” Put plainly, white tots must be trained — “bred” — to recognize and denounce their latent racism. As it is never too soon to create a woke child, a newly published board book edition, intended for teething infants to age three, is now on Amazon."

A cursory look at books (including some by Kendi) aimed at minors in the Christian County Library finds plenty of examples of books that advocate for massive social change via the implementation of CRT, among other systems. Here are some--the links are to their location in our library system:

Skin Again

The hate you give 

We rise, we resist, we raise our voices

Art of Protest

Black Brother, Black Brother 

One person, no vote : how not all voters are treated equally

Woke: a young poet's call to justice 

Hands Up!

Antiracist Baby

Four Hundred Souls: a community history of African America, 1619-2019

How to be an Antiracist

How to Raise an Antiracist

Stamped for Kids

Stamped : racism, antiracism, and you 

Stamped: racism, antiracism, and you

Ibram X. Kendi: “Whiteness prevents white people from connecting to humanity.”

*Gets a standing ovation*

Anti-white bigotry is the most pervasive form of discrimination across The West. pic.twitter.com/Eh4LFBHgaW

— iamyesyouareno (@iamyesyouareno) December 6, 2024

 If you can manage it, do listen to more of Dr. Kendi as he opines on racism:

 

 For more information on Critical Race theory:

Critical Race Theory Is A Classic Communist Divide-And-Conquer Tactic

Just Like Freud’s Psychoanalysis, Critical Race Theory Will Ultimately Collapse

Ibram X. Kendi Equates Parents Fighting Critical Race Theory To The KKK, Segregationists

The Rise of Wokeness in the Military 

Courage is a Habit

From: Courage is a Habit

My sincere thanks to Ms. Dudash-Buskirk and/or her associates for mentioning CRT. It needs to be explored as a Marxist function of overturning our nation. Parents and other citizens need to know that revolutionary mechanisms are being peddled to our children. They need to know the library has a significant amount of books that TEACH white, black and brown children that all white people are inherently racist.

Is concern about racism via CRT indoctrination of our children really an instance of viewpoint discrimination? Should library collections policies reflect the community and its standards in general? Should parents have the right to protect their children from racist and Marxist indoctrination? Should the library be adding such books to their collection for minors when our community values are inherently opposed to the political religion of Mao and Stalin? Do taxpayers know what books are being purchased on their behalf?

Is it possible to provide parents who want such books (!) for their children free library access while protecting the rights of parents who do not want their minor children inadvertently exposed to such materials? Why do groups like U-turn in Education pit the rights of parents (on both sides of the issue) against one another? I'll tell you why. They sow division and distrust in order to further their political agendas.

Lots of questions. 

 

Again, thank you Ms. Dudash-Buskirk--these are questions with which our community needs to grapple. I hope you will continue to bring these issues to light. It helps everyone to hear and read about them, to ponder them and to become firm on where the community wants to be regarding such things.