The new book Banning Books in America: Not a How-To is shocking in one important way. It admits that books aren’t banned anymore, and that if anyone does want to ban them it’s usually liberals.

For the most part, Banned Books, a collection of essays edited by Samuel Cohen, a professor of English at the University of Missouri, takes the standard liberal line that banning books is a conservative pastime. In his introduction, Cohen laments “that some of those in power have benefitted and even encouraged division and demonization.” He claims that “the entire nation is now seeing the violence a society can do to its most vulnerable members—people whose sexuality, gender, race, and economic condition make them vulnerable in a society riddled with bigotry and selfishness—and to anyone who wants to live in a just society.”