The new threat to this country, if you believe the Moral Majority and the television preachers, is not coming from Communists or fellow travelers, but “secular humanists.”

The “secular humanists” are the ones who are brainwashing our children with books about evolution, sex, race relations, ERA, and naughty words. This means we have to get the books out of the schools and libraries. The book censors are starting to organize, the moral crusade has begun and the hunt for secular humanists is on.

I am always intimidated by book-burners, so I want to get on the bandwagon as soon as possible. My problem is, unlike the Red-baiting witch hunts of the McCarthy days, I find it impossible to know who a secular humanist is.

It was easy to tell a Commie or fellow traveler in the ’50s because he always carried a Daily Worker under his arm, and didn’t bother to shine his shoes. He never had a nice thing to say about Senator Joe McCarthy or Roy Cohn, and he kept taking the Fifth Amendment when he was called in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Also, you could check up on him by finding out if he once belonged to one of the hundreds of subversive organizations listed by the government as being for the violent overthrow of the democratic system. But a secular humanist is a different breed of cat. From what I can gather, he is much harder to identify unless he openly admits he thinks Darwin’s theory of creation makes sense.

Secular humanists are not joiners. They don’t have cells where they plot anti-American and anti-God propaganda. Most of them work alone, doing historical research, writing textbooks and novels, and explaining how babies are born. They pollute children’s minds with how the world is, rather than how the antihumanists would like it to be.

What makes them so dangerous is that secular humanists look just like you and me. Some of them could be your best friends without you knowing they are humanists. They could come into your house, play with your children, eat your food and even watch football with you on television, and you’d never know that they have read Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, and Huckleberry Finn.

Of course there are some who flaunt their humanism, and will brag they’re for abortion, and against prayers in public schools. You can throw them out of the house. But for every secular humanist who will tell you where he or she stands on a fundamentalist issue, there are ten who keep their thoughts to themselves and are working to destroy the American family. No one is safe until Congress sets up an Anti-Secular Humanism Committee to get at the rot. Witnesses have to be called, and they have to name names of other secular humanists they know.

Librarians and teachers must be made to answer for the books they have on their shelves. Publishers have to be held accountable for what they print. Writers must be punished for what they write.

The secular humanists should be put on notice that they can no longer hide behind the First Amendment. If we’re going to go back to the old moral values that made this country great, we’re going to have to do it with search-and-destroy methods. First, we must burn the books—and, if that isn’t enough, then we must burn the people.

Art Buchwald
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