Jay Ashcroft used to believe in freedom.
That’s what he said, anyway, before he was trying to position himself to win a Republican primary for governor in 2024.
Ashcroft, Missouri’s secretary of state, is a classic example of failing upward in politics. In 2014, in his first foray into politics, the son of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft ran for the Missouri Senate against Democrat Jill Schupp. In that suburban ºüÀêÊÓƵ swing district, Ashcroft tried to come off as a moderate. It didn’t work. He lost.
I mention that race because of how he described his philosophy of government back then.
“The whole reason I’m running is, I think that government should be there to protect people’s ability to live life the way they want to,†Ashcroft said.
That sounds like a guy who doesn’t want the tyranny of Big Brother telling people how to live — or, say, who they should marry or what they should read. It’s not a bad philosophy.
People are also reading…
But it’s not apparently one Ashcroft holds anymore. Twice in the past two months, Ashcroft has positioned himself as the arbiter of freedom — the government bully who tells Missourians how to live.
In October, Ashcroft proposed a new rule in the state that would force public libraries to develop procedures that could make censorship easier. If the libraries don’t adopt the new policies, which would include applying “age-appropriate†warnings for materials and events (such as, say, a drag queen reading hour), then Ashcroft could pull their state funding.
Ashcroft has positioned the rule as his attempt to protect minors, but let’s be clear about what he’s really doing here. He’s engaging in the current culture war being waged by the far-right fringe of the Republican Party against the LGBTQ community. Ashcroft wants the same thing to happen at public libraries that happened at dozens of schools across Missouri this year, after the legislature passed a law creating criminal liability for school libraries with “sexually explicit material.â€
What happened after that bill passed was simple: censorship. The state government changed the standards of what could be in school libraries and threatened librarians with jail, so many school boards moved against their best intentions and pulled books from the shelves.
There’s nothing in that series of events that screams “freedom.â€
Indeed, that’s why library associations, authors and elected library boards across the country are up in arms about what Ashcroft is trying to do. “Libraries support access to information and ideas,†wrote the Missouri Library Association to Ashcroft’s proposed rule. “The placement of books and materials in libraries is something that should be left up to people with training and experience in the profession of librarianship.â€
The ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Library Board , because that’s what it is.
About that word. For more than a year, some Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, have been improperly applying that word to the actions of private, non-government actors, such as social media companies. They’ve sought to change the word’s definition as they decry Twitter for violating the “free speech†of racists and anti-Semites and insurrectionists.
But real censorship — the specific act of a government telling people what they can and cannot read — is an actual violation of the First Amendment. And that’s what those same Republicans are pushing with laws and rules intended to impose conservative Christian religious beliefs on the rest of us.
If you have any doubt about Ashcroft’s motivation, take a look at the letter he sent U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt last month. He encouraged the senator to vote against the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act, which passed Congress last week.
“This legislation is clearly an attack on traditional marriage and undermines the family,†Ashcroft wrote in the letter. Blunt didn’t listen. He was one of 12 Senate Republicans to vote for the act, which creates federal protection for same-sex and interracial marriages, guarding against a possible Supreme Court ruling.
Ashcroft doesn’t believe gay people should have the freedom to marry the people they love. He made that clear in his letter to Blunt.
That doesn’t sound like somebody who believes that government’s role is to “protect people’s ability to live life the way they want to.” Nor does his attempt to limit what sorts of books are available at the local library. The comment period on that proposed rule ends Dec. 15. There is still time to send an email to: comments@sos.mo.gov. Include “15 CSR 30-200.015” in the subject line. You can also mail a letter to: Office of the Missouri Secretary of State, P.O. Box 1767, Jefferson City, MO 65102.
It’s your chance to weigh in on the side of freedom.