Eh, I get what he means. When I hear 'book ban' I have mental imagery of trying to smuggle books across the Iron Curtain, risking fines or prison time for buyi

Eh, I get what he means. When I hear 'book ban' I have mental imagery of trying to smuggle books across the Iron Curtain, risking fines or prison time for buying, possessing or distributing the book. But these book bans don't make any of that illegal, they're fights over the way public libraries are managed. Anything that receives public funding will be subject to such politicking, this seems like the fundamental nature of democracy. But books are special; they're ostensibly entitled to public funding but are simultaneously beyond the purview of the same governments which are funding them. To be clear, I think libraries should carry whichever books are in demand by even a fringe few, regardless of how many other people those books offend. If even just one person in town is interested in a book, the local library should try to get that book (if practical, of course.) But I worry that we're devaluing the term "book ban"; what will we call it when they actually do pass laws making the possession or sale of some books illegal?