In which I'm happy to invoke Godwin's law

This is a repost of something that I posted to flickr earlier today.

This is Bebelplatz. On the 10th of May 1933, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, with the aid of brownshirts and Nazi Youth, held the first of the Nazi book burnings here. Twenty-thousand volumes were destroyed that evening. The plaque nearby reads: "where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end."

I wasn't going to post this image -- there are technical flaws. But doing the rounds on the immoral, godless, liberal nightmare that is the reality based blogging community is the wonderful "Family Bookstore" at Abunga.com. Abunga allows you to Empower Decency! by "blocking" books. If enough people "block", they won't stock the book. This marvelous feature is here to prevent our families from being corrupted by violence and pornography. And to prove it, the first book to be banned is The Golden Compass. They have produced a press release in celebration of this triumph of family values over filth. It's good to know that those voting to ban the book have not themselves been corrupted by actually reading the book: the other two books in the series remain on sale.

You can sign up and do your bit for Empowering Decency! I myself have banned Fahrenheit 451 and Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. Banning Fundamentalism and Evangelicals was also rather satisfying. Let us pray for their success!

This is not a small business moulding supply to demand or a specialist merchant picking only the relevant stock. This is a demonstration of the tyranny of the majority that is never more than a vote away.