There are 520 employees of Penguin Random House who think it should take a partisan position in what books it publishes. Hopefully the publisher will tell them it doesn’t take their orders. They want the publisher to drop Amy Coney Barrett’s upcoming book, which as far as I can tell doesn’t have an announced title yet.

Update: Good news! The publisher has effectively told that bunch to go to Hell.

It reminds me of some Amazon employees lying on the ground a few months ago and demanding that it not carry some books. Do some people get jobs in publishing and distribution because they dream of controlling what people can read?

The Penguin employees’ letter is dishonest and absurd. It says “We are not calling for censorship” as it calls for exactly that. It claims Penguin has “privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits.” In their authoritarian mindset, publishing books that they don’t like violates their rights. Their claim implies they don’t merely want their employer to drop it. An action which violates human rights should be illegal, and they’re claiming the book does just that. Getting one publisher to drop the book doesn’t safeguard these ayatollahs’ “rights,” since another publisher will promptly grab the book up. They’re implying it should be illegal to publish it. Yet in the next sentence, they gibber that “Coney Barrett is free to say as she wishes.” Note that they merely say she “is” free to say as she wishes, not that she should be; they have to get rid of that pesky First Amendment before they can prosecute authors of “rights-violating” books.

These tinpot Torquemadas dream of a world where books that they dislike are outlawed and their authors are locked away. Like their counterparts who want to ban Gender Queer or Johnny the Walrus, they want to be the arbiters of what we read. Penguin Random House shouldn’t just ignore them; it should issue a stern rebuke. Barrett will do OK whatever happens; the attempt to ban an author always produces a sales boost.