You may recall that Arkansas has already passed a law threatening school and public librarians with $10,000 fines and jail terms of up to six years for “distributing” material deemed obscene or “harmful” to minors. That law takes effect August 1, 2023.

But that’s not enough censorship for Arkansas Sen. Dan Sullivan. He would like nothing better than to eliminate the freedom to read altogether. Right Wing Watch caught Sullivan at the annual conference of National Association of Christian Lawmakers this month.

“The libraries are an institution—often like higher ed—that are far left, and they have been a bastion of the left wing,” Sullivan told his fellow NACL members. “They’re the ones holding the drag queen shows. They’re the ones promoting Pride Month. Our county library last year had huge Pride signs and flags and books; this year, they backed that off and had very little because we took their money away.”

Sullivan praised his state’s imprison-the-librarians but complained it didn’t go far enough. After calling libraries “fantastic institutions” that he claimed to “love,” Sullivan called for destroying any that don’t conform to his way of thinking:

“When we come back to session in two years, we’re going to eliminate all the funding for public libraries that have the American Library Association in their policy,” Sullivan vowed. “We’re going to take a shot at them because that’s where it’s coming from.”

It's not surprising that Sullivan was applauded for this plan. Missouri Republicans have already voted to defund all public libraries. Ironically, this confab was held at Liberty University, headed for years by a guy who engaged in just the kind of behavior Sullivan and his buddies accuse libraries of promoting, merely because it may be somewhere in a book.

The American Library Association is hardly a far-left organization. Unless you hate the First Amendment.