Carly Haeck: "The government has a right to know what people are reading so they may determine who might be a threat."

This statement implies that people agree with everything they read, which is entirely false. Think about how many republicans read democratic publications, or vice versa. It's not because they are thinking of switching sides, but because they want to be informed of recent news. It's always beneficial to know all angles of an issue so you can better form your opinions. At my middle school we read parts of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. Does that mean we were all planning on joining the communist party? Of course not. So if the government did keep tabs on everything we read, how could they determine who is actually a threat and who is just brushing up on history? In AP European History, we are learning about anarchists, a group of people who are against the state. Yes, anarchists are threatening to the government, but if we didn't learn about them we would be missing out on an interesting aspect of history. What if students were not allowed to read about the KKK? That was an important aspect of the obstacles facing the civil rights movement. Without that significant knowledge, opinions would not be as accurate.