And Now We're Banning Books

A man who published a book on Amazon about the history of the Confederate battle flag just saw that book get banned from the website. Because racism, I guess.

Recently Dreese got an email from Amazon regarding his book “This Flag Never Goes Down.” The book is about the Confederate battle flag. Amazon asked Dreese to take down the listing.

“It was kind of surprising at first. Being a nonfiction historical writer, I never thought any of my books would be on the banned book list,” Dreese said.

Dreese says he decided not to take action right away, but two days later, Amazon made the decision for him.

“I knew my book really didn’t promote the Confederate flag. I’m not really for it or against it, I was just telling the story of the Confederate battle flag,” Dreese said.

Mark Troup of Middleburg says he read the book and thinks it’s unfortunate it was banned from Amazon.

To be clear, the book didn’t take a position for or against the flag. Per Dreese, his book merely illuminated the history of the symbol, which is something you’d think we’d want given how prevalent the symbol is in our society. By the way, he’s written a half dozen books about the civil war including one about the Union battle flag.

“If we start removing things and not thinking about them, we kind of take that history away for future generations to learn from,” Dreese said.

Well, yeah. But these days what’s more important is that nobody see or hear anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, this article from The Onion is relevant.