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Port: What do Netflix, the Taliban, and the North Dakota Legislature have in common?

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Port: What do Netflix, the Taliban, and the North Dakota Legislature have in common?


MINOT, N.D. — What do Netflix, the Taliban, and the North Dakota Legislature have in frequent?

Let’s discover it, we could?

Being “woke,” in as far as that time period refers back to the impulse to infantilize the lots, treating them as hapless victims who cannot bear as much as the hardships and humiliations of being human, just isn’t some new improvement.

“Woke” is only a trendy appellation for a well-established aspect of human nature. Particularly, the need to cease folks from having fun with issues. For their very own good, supposedly.

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The current spat

over the expurgation of famed creator Roald Dahl’s works

, which noticed the house owners of Dahl’s literary property collaborating with a guide group with the Orwellian identify

“Inclusive Minds”

to take away nasty epithets like “fats” and “bald,” just isn’t some new Rubicon our society has crossed.

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By the best way, as somebody who’s each fats and bald, and thus certified underneath the strictures of id politics to talk to this matter, I am underwhelmed. I did not ask for this. I did not need this. I hate this, and I am not utilizing that phrase frivolously.

However I digress.

Enable me to introduce you to a verb you won’t have heard earlier than: bowdlerize.

It is a fantastic phrase, colourful and enjoyable to say, meaning eradicating “materials that’s thought of improper or offensive” from a murals.

It is primarily based on the identify of actual folks.

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Thomas Bowdler was an 18th-century English doctor who, with assist from his sister Henrietta Maria Bowdler, took a hatchet to Shakespeare’s canon, eradicating a lot of the violence, raciness and human frailties that, frankly, are why we nonetheless learn the Bard of Avon greater than 400 years after his demise.

These efforts, which resulted in a dry assortment of tales known as ”

The Household Shakespeare

,” had been such a infamous act of literary censorship that their final identify turned a verb.

However the Bowdlers weren’t innovators.

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Within the seventeenth century, a poet rewrote “King Lear” to provide probably the most tragic works ever produced within the English language

a contented ending

.

And here is one other phrase: iconoclast. Right now that may imply somebody who challenges conference, with optimistic connotations, however the origins of the time period are historical.

In historical past,

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it meant somebody who would destroy statues and work deemed inappropriate or blasphemous.

Puritans destroying church ornaments in the course of the English Civil Struggle is a historic instance of iconoclasm. The Taliban

destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan

is a contemporary one.

Which simply goes to point out that this impulse has at all times been with us. Whether or not it is the Puritans or the Taliban, or Netflix (the current house owners of Dahl’s literary property) making an attempt to sanitize their mental property, or Gov. Ron DeSantis

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wanting homosexual and trans folks exiled from the content material out there in public colleges and libraries

, or North Dakota’s lawmakers, who’ve superior payments that may make saucy content material unavailable in public libraries

even for adults

.

The justification is at all times that we should defend the harmless from offense. Subjective phrases like “pornography” and “smut” are thrown round, and people standing up free of charge expression are solid as offenders towards society’s pieties, or predators, at worse.

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All of it provides as much as the identical factor.

It is censorship.

It is different folks deciding which concepts, which titillating passages, which ribald scenes, which fiendish plots, you and your kids are allowed to be uncovered to.

Should not you be answerable for that form of factor? Sexuality exists. So does violence and corruption, and racism. Our youngsters are going to know this stuff whether or not we censor their books or not.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the nice of its victims often is the most oppressive,” C. S. Lewis, one other kids’s creator,

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as soon as wrote

. “It will be higher to stay underneath robber barons than underneath all-powerful ethical busybodies…. They could be extra more likely to go to Heaven but on the identical time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”

Hear, hear.

Rob Port is a information reporter, columnist, and podcast host for the Discussion board Information Service. He has an intensive background in investigations and public information. He has coated political occasions in North Dakota and the higher Midwest for twenty years. Attain him at rport@forumcomm.com. Click on right here to subscribe to his Plain Discuss podcast.
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Early morning crash in north Fargo kills one person, injures two others

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Early morning crash in north Fargo kills one person, injures two others


FARGO — One person was killed and two people were injured in an early morning crash in north Fargo.

The single-vehicle crash happened around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 26, in the 1200 block of 10th Street North, the North Dakota Highway Patrol said in a news release.

A 2012 Dodge Journey was going north on 10th Street North at a high rate of speed and as the vehicle crossed 12th Avenue North, the driver lost control and the SUV left the roadway, the patrol said.

The vehicle, with three males inside, hit the rear bumper of an unoccupied parked vehicle in a driveway before colliding with a large tree on the boulevard.

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The driver sustained serious injuries and was transported for medical treatment. He is under investigation for possible charges, the patrol said.

A passenger died as a result of injuries from the crash, the patrol said. A second passenger suffered life-threatening injuries and was transported for medical treatment.

The North Dakota Highway Patrol is investigating the crash.

Our newsroom occasionally reports stories under a byline of “staff.” Often, the “staff” byline is used when rewriting basic news briefs that originate from official sources, such as a city press release about a road closure, and which require little or no reporting. At times, this byline is used when a news story includes numerous authors or when the story is formed by aggregating previously reported news from various sources. If outside sources are used, it is noted within the story.

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Obituary for Clinton Perry Stowman at Lerud-Schuldt-Mathias Funeral Home

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Obituary for Clinton Perry Stowman at Lerud-Schuldt-Mathias Funeral Home


Clinton Stowman, age 97, of Valley City, ND, died Thursday, October 23rd at Sanford Health in Fargo, ND. A memorial service will be held at 1100 AM on Tuesday, October 28th at Epworth United Methodist Church in Valley City. Visitation will be held one hour before the service at the



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Trump approves disaster declaration for Aug. 7-8 storm damage in North Dakota

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Trump approves disaster declaration for Aug. 7-8 storm damage in North Dakota


BISMARCK — President Donald Trump approved a presidential disaster declaration for severe storms on Aug. 7-8 that caused significant damage to mostly electrical infrastructure in the state.

The presidential declaration makes public assistance available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which notified the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services that the request had been granted.

Gov. Kelly Armstrong submitted the declaration

request

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on Sept. 4.

“We appreciate President Trump and FEMA again granting our request and aiding our recovery from this summer’s extraordinary storms, which tested the capacity of our first responders, emergency managers, utility providers and citizens,” Armstrong said. “This assistance will especially help our utility providers by defraying their recovery costs and helping them hold down rates for the North Dakota residents they serve, who showed incredible grit and resiliency in quickly recovering from these severe storms.”

The Aug. 7-8 storms brought damaging straight-line winds, large hail and numerous tornadoes.

The declaration, approved Wednesday, Oct. 22, covers Barnes, Grand Forks, Griggs, Kidder, Nelson, Steele and Stutsman counties.

Straight-line winds up to 100 mph caused damage in Jamestown and to a farm north of Courtenay. The storm also caused power outages to some Jamestown residents after straight-line winds downed power lines in the area.

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In Jamestown, the storm took a roof off the west side of an apartment building at 713 14th St. SE, displacing residents. The roof landed on vehicles outside the apartment building.

At the farmstead surveyed north of Courtenay, the National Weather Service in Bismarck said significant damage occurred to buildings and grain handling equipment.

The weather service also said significant damage, primarily to trees, occurred over the southern part of Jamestown.

Winds up to 90 mph caused severe damage to a grain elevator in Thompson, power outages for some Grand Forks residents and downed trees.

It was the second time this year that Trump granted Armstrong’s request for a presidential disaster declaration. In September, Trump declared a disaster for the June 20 storms.

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In September, Trump

approved

Armstrong’s request for a 19-county presidential major disaster declaration covering damage from June 20-21 storms that spawned more than 20 tornadoes, resulting in four storm-related deaths and causing more than $11 million in damage to public infrastructure as well as significant damage to utilities, grain bins, homes and other private property.

For more information about storm recovery, including the Grain Storage & Facility Rebuilder Program created in response to the June storms, visit

www.ndresponse.gov

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.

Masaki Ova joined The Jamestown Sun in August 2021 as a reporter. He grew up on a farm near Pingree, N.D. He majored in communications at the University of Jamestown, N.D.





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