There’s a sign in front of Graffam Brothers Seafood. It reads: “Live So That If Your Life Was a Book Florida Would Ban It.”

Maybe it’s just human nature. Maybe it’s a tendency in all of us that when someone says “no,” we want to say “yes.” Maybe just putting something out of reach makes us want to try and extend our reach. I’m thinking about the child crawling for the first time on all fours, trying to catch the pull toy you keep just out of their grasp. Maybe we give a special shine to the forbidden in the act of forbidding it — that makes it all the more challenging and attractive.

Maybe if my parents were more open to my smoking cigarettes when I was in seventh grade, I never would have been a smoker and picked up the habit. Maybe if they had been with me the first time I smoked, watching and laughing as I half choked to death, I might have decided right then and there, for myself, that this was a crazy habit for anyone to have. Why would anyone want to go around choking and coughing all the time?

Or even a little booklet about the physical issues with smoking might have done the trick. You know the kind of booklet I’m talking about; like the one my father gave me about sex (old school; I know). At least the booklet lets the reader assess whether the material in it speaks to them. It doesn’t come with a parental scowl or command.

Half the fun of smoking for me was sneaking it. Smoking became a ritual. Choosing the scene of the crime. Preparing for the after-effects, especially the smell; lots of stinky chewing gum. Wash your hands and face. Make sure you dispose of the butt in a safe place. Then, when trying a pipe, hiding the instruments of my deception in the garage.

The point is, banning books doesn’t work. It simply makes the ones banned more attractive to all those humans who aren’t sheep. Of course, we all know there are some people who see themselves as shepherds, rather than as guides, teachers or leaders; wanting their followers to act like sheep; turning on a dime behind them and bleating “baah” together. Maybe that’s part of being human too; wanting to be sheepish; tired of thinking and acting independently.

But besides not working, banning books is contrary to the constitutional contract in this country of free speech. It’s been litigated once, in 1982. A community group in Levittown, New York, complained to the school district about Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Langston Hughes’s Best Short Stories by Negro Writers. The complaining parents wanted them removed from the school library shelves because they were “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy.” The court ruled the books could stay on the shelves.

But that is the only case on record where the Supreme Count made a ruling on such a critical concern. The scope of the case was narrow and without a majority opinion. One worries how a packed conservative court might rule today on a similar question, especially should their shepherd assume a position of leadership once more and force the issue.

“The Librarian of Banned Books” by Brianna Labuskes is a good read these days as the book burners and banners are coming out of the woodwork in this country. You hear a similar cry in the USA that Germans heard under the Nazis. “Burn all those books that are critical of Germany. We only want children to learn good things about our country.”

So the Board of Education in Florida wants children to know slavery was helpful to Negroes as it gave them work skills. And the governor of South Dakota doesn’t want children to know Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills have a shady history, stolen from Indian nations.

We need to say it loud and clear. We don’t need book police in government, in our schools and libraries. We don’t need book bans and burns. They are certain signs of movement toward authoritarian governance and autocratic leadership. What we need are thoughtful and available parents; wise and stimulating educators; sensitive and helpful librarians.

“Few people have to watch their country die. I have had that dubious privilege, and I can tell you that it comes not as a rebel shout but as a whisper. … It can start with rumblings about an unreliable press and rumors about political enemies that will threaten your family, your children. … It comes cloaked in patriotism and love of country, and uses that as armor against any criticism.”

Thus speaks the librarian of burned books; the heroine of the Labuskes novel, set in Hitler’s Germany. I read those words, and the theme of the book, as a warning to us. It can all start, or stop, with a book.