Opinion.

I googled a simple question yesterday. A question a child might have. One a child might be more comfortable asking Siri than, say, someone with a body. A question they might type into a phone, or computer at school, or the library.

“Is God real?”

A.I. was quick to respond. In a fraction of a second it answered the question that has flummoxed philosophers since the stone age.

“According to Wikipedia, there is no scientific evidence that God exists,” it said.

So…

Ban the internet! Burn it! Shame it! Or simply call it names.

I asked Google other questions a child might ponder.

“What is sex?” I asked (on my work computer no less, so please understand, H.R.)

I would tell you what A.I. said about sex, but I genuinely don’t think we know each other well enough.

We live in an amazing age. Unfiltered, unverified information flies fast and free and almost everyone has access to all the world’s real or imagined knowledge – pictures and all. And yet somehow, access to library books has become the political flash point.

As my colleague Williesha Morris so eloquently points out, Alabamians want to ban or move everything from Black history and LGBTQ existence to Amish romances and Rush Limbaugh’s time-traveling takes on history.

Because everybody disagrees with somebody.

So I’m here, Alabama, to speak up for Rush Limbaugh. While I can’t imagine buying my kid a copy of “Rush Revere” – Limbaugh atop a talking horse named Liberty galloping through space and time to teach middle school kids about his America – I’d never try to keep others from such a pastime.

I’ll stand up for Shelley Shepard Gray’s “A Perfect Amish Romance,” too. I wouldn’t read it for pleasure, but the excerpts I’ve seen do explain why some Alabama parents want it banned:

“Honestly, she was a little bit embarrassed by her love for the books,” such an excerpt reads. “The moving stories, all filled with happily ever afters made her so happy. They were her secret addiction, her catnip, the way she was able to sleep at night. They were how she’d gotten through the last three years.”

It sounds like sex. But with books. Hmm.

The truth is it doesn’t matter if I like a book. It doesn’t matter if you like a book. Because if a crowd of angry people can determine what you, or your loved ones can access or read, another angry crowd can determine what they can’t.

Bill O’Reilly found that out the hard way. He was all in favor of banning books to keep kids from leftist views. But when Florida book banning laws made his own words subject to censor, well, that was a different story.

“It’s absurd,” O’Reilly told Newsweek.

Because banning is just common sense when it comes to somebody else’s words. When it’s your words being blocked, well, that’s censorship or cancel culture or communism.

It is just too easy, always but certainly these days, to want to silence ideas you don’t like.

Don’t like books about gay people? Move ‘em. Shred ‘em. Shame the reader and blame the library.

Don’t like books about slavery? Move ‘em and call it patriotism. Check ‘em out and never return ‘em.

Don’t like books about Billy’s two mommies? Call the governor. Pass a bill. Remove ‘em, in the name of your god.

Don’t like books about somebody else’s god? Move ‘em. Scorch ‘em. Send them to your idea of hell.

Don’t like books about Barack Obama?. Ban ‘em. Don’t like books about Rush Limbaugh? Can ‘em. Don’t like stories about book banning. Damn ‘em, and the author they rode in on.

Shame ‘em and blame ‘em and flame ‘em in the name of God, or good, or the way you think things ought to be.

And you’ll make a profound point. If not about the books, then about yourself.

In the end that’s all it’s about. Because your kids already know how to google.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner for AL.com.