Defending the Indefensible

Once upon a time I was a bookseller. I've worked at a few bookstores. I've worked with a lot of other booksellers. Most of them had something in common, other than a love of books; a sense of dedication to the principle of free speech. We believed that if people wanted to buy a book it was our duty to stock that book, and those who urged censorship upon us be damned. Certainly there were times that we didn't like the book. Sometimes we even despised the book. We hated The Turner Diaries. We chose not to give it a place on our front table or do anything to promote it. But to take it off our shelves? To put a barrier between book and reader? Never. Free speech isn't about defending speech you agree with -- it is about defending speech you dislike or even abhor. If all speech isn't free then no speech can be free.

That's why I was disappointed when I read that Barnes & Noble had announced that they would refuse to stock the new book by O.J. Simpson. They said it was because they didn't expect the book to sell well, but now that pre-release orders have shown a serious (and entirely predictable) demand, even that fig leaf is gone. They are choosing boycott this awful little book because they don't like it or they don't want the bad publicity that might come from selling it. With that they have surrendered their traditional bookseller's role as defenders of free speech.

Don't get me wrong. They have a right to refuse to sell anything they don't want. But as booksellers they have a duty to defend the free expression of ideas. They know that. That's why they pretended that they weren't boycotting the book over content, merely over a supposed lack of reader interest.

Booksellers, I believe, have a moral duty to defend free speech, even at the cost of losing the business of those who want to restrict expression to that which they agree with. It is a duty that elevates the bookseller beyond the standard shopkeeper and makes the bookstore a citadel of peace and freedom. It is by shirking this duty Barnes & Noble surrenders the citadel and reduces itself to mere shopkeeper -- not a bad thing to be, but not all they once were.

UPDATE: B&N has reversed itself.