A few years ago, I heard a professor condemn book-banning. This was in a public lecture. She condemned Christian groups in the hinterlands, because they wanted to ban books from school libraries. Books on same-sex relationships, for example.

An audience member asked if the professor and her ilk would ever do the same. Would they ever ban any books? “Yes,” she shot back, “We would ban the Bible and other books on religion.”

Since she was against the Christian sects banning books, how could she justify doing the same? “Because I know we are right,” the prof boasted.

The temperature in the auditorium plunged 20 degrees. I pitied her students.

Over the years, this type of thinking has grown fashionable in America. If you follow the news, you will see evidence of it almost every day.

More than 1,000 Google employees recently signed a petition to ban Breitbart, the news and commentary platform. They wanted to banish Breitbart from Google searches and label its articles as “prohibited content.” This would starve Breitbart of Google-generated ad revenue.

Facebook employs thought-police today — to ban content it deems unworthy. YouTube does the same. And, they love to ban stuff from conservatives.

San Francisco’s Board of Education voted to destroy murals in the George Washington High School. Murals that depict our first president — because he owned slaves.

You remember how critics destroyed statues to Civil War figures. And how anti-religious zealots have destroyed crosses and plaques of the Ten Commandments, and other religious symbols in public places.

Books like “Huckleberry Finn,” “Catcher in the Rye,” and “Little House on the Prairie” — they have to go. So say other zealots.

Banish Christ the infant at Christmas. Banish Columbus and Columbus Day — so says Columbus, Ohio. Meanwhile, Charlottesville, Virginia. banished Thomas Jefferson Day.

A CNN analyst just called for a new cadre of young liberal journalists — to be trained to do away with the likes of Tucker Carlson’s commentary on Fox News. To do away with conservative media.

Climate-change warriors do all they can to ban papers from scientists who question any of the climate dogma. They vote down tenure for them at universities. They ban their papers from science journals. They squelch thoughts of public debates on climate issues. They work to banish dissent from what they falsely claim 97 percent of scientists agree upon.

Ban the Pledge of Allegiance from city council meetings. Ban the singing of the National Anthem. Ban the displays of the American flag. Ban that flag’s appearance on pairs of sneakers. All of these have been done in our nation recently.

Banish conservative speakers from campuses. Ban them from commencement podiums. This is what is happening across America.

Ban words that offend someone’s ears. Especially on campuses where wimpy student ears are more tender. Ban calling her a her or him a him. Create safe zones, where kids are protected from such horrible words.

Banish any thoughts that came from dead white men — like the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence. Banish Kate Smith’s rendition of God Bless America. 

Somali-born Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota, dislikes conservative Tucker Carlson’s commentary on Fox News. She calls for advertisers to abandon him and kill his show.

Many readers of this column have begged newspapers to banish my writing from their pages. Sack that Morgan, they’ve said.

We used to be a people who disagreed but discussed. We used to deploy opinions as points of view, not as hatchets. When did this urge to banish and destroy leak into our blood? And how did it get there?

Do you suppose we can ever return to civil discussion? Oh no, banish the thought.

From Tom…as in Morgan.       

Tom Morgan writes about political, financial, and other subjects from his home in upstate New York. Contact him at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com, read more of his writing at tomasinmorgan.com, or find him on Facebook.

A few years ago, I was at a polling place here in Indiana where a long line of people stood waiting to vote. A woman recognized me and called me over. “Why is it,” she asked, “that you politicians make it so hard and inconvenient to vote?”

We have an archaic registration process, restrictive voting practices, voting systems bedeviled by outdated technology, inadequate budgets for the voting infrastructure, and an entire nation’s worth of overloaded local elections staff. There are robust efforts afoot, by many people and groups, to suppress — not encourage — votes; much effort in this country goes into keeping some groups of people from having a say in the conduct of their government. 

It’s also distressingly common to find officials who are uninterested in promoting a fair and convenient vote, but instead are looking for ways to manipulate the system so that their preferences emerge from the voting. Too few of them believe in Abraham Lincoln’s formulation at Gettysburg: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” They define “people” so as to exclude voters they don’t like.

So let’s remember: the ballot is the foundation of our democracy. It’s our best way to gauge the public’s will. If we fail to get the ballot box right, then our democracy fails. 

Elections are not the sum total of “democracy.” An independent judiciary, an informed public, institutions such as schools, labor unions, business groups, and the news media — all are necessary as well. Democracy is a hugely complex phenomenon. But at its heart is one thing: the vote.

We’ve come a long way on this front. The Founders thought that rule by the people was tantamount to anarchy. So they restricted the vote early on to white males who owned property. In a sense, our history as a nation has been written in terms of extending the franchise to more and more people.

But that’s not the only requirement. Over time, I’ve come to look at a good election not so much in terms of who wins or loses — liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat — but in terms of the process, and whether it was fair and democratic. Sure, I’m disappointed sometimes in the results of voters’ decisions at the ballot box. But I’m always reminded that our system is designed with the capacity to correct errors. In a lot of ways, we’ll be strongest as a country not by means of a strong military or a strong economy, but when our battle cry is, “Let the people vote!”

If you look across the state and local landscape, you’ll find efforts to make voting more accessible and more verifiable that offer hope in the midst of voter suppression and election meddling. But these need to be a national aspiration that’s pursued at every level: to protect voting infrastructure, provide a paper trail for every vote, ensure adequate resources for the conduct of elections, and vow to ensure that state and local elections systems are run fairly, on behalf of everyone who is entitled to vote. Our governments have to work constantly at what that woman in line wanted to see — making voting accessible and convenient. Yes, we need to protect the integrity of the vote. But we also need to make it a positive civic experience, not a burden.

Elections have consequences. The winners get political power that enables them to change the course of history. Our chief way to have a say in this is to vote in every election, every time, for every office. Let’s make sure we can, and that when we do, our vote matters.                         

Lee Hamilton is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years, representing a district in south central Indiana.