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You know the one. The Rev. Shaw Moore shows up at the library where members of his flock are burning books, tossing them one by one into the mesh-wire trash can, as the flames of censorship dance around them.

Moore, whose sermons about purity might have helped spur the misguided Christians, puts an end to the madness:

“When did all of you decide to sit in judgment?� Moore asks, as he grabs books out of the hands of the men and women who are blindly and gleefully burning them. “Who elected all of you to be the saviors of everybody’s souls?�

That last line in particular is relevant today. “F´Ç´Ç³Ù±ô´Ç´Ç²õ±ðâ€� came out in 1984, my junior year of high school, before the even began keeping its yearly top 10 list of banned books. More than three decades later, America is banning books at a dangerous spike, including right here in the St. Louis region, where the Wentzville School Board recently banned Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eyeâ€� from its high school libraries. Elsewhere, elected school boards are banning “To Kill a Mockingbird,â€� and the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel “Maus,â€� by Art Spiegelman, which explains the evils of the Holocaust in a way children can understand it.

Other elected officials are preparing legislation in statehouses that would ban racial equity curriculum, and libraries are being pressured in Texas and elsewhere to take hundreds of books off their shelves.

As this rise in new American fascism — fueled by dishonest Republican attacks on critical race theory and anything else they have decided they don’t agree with, from LGBTQ policies, to pandemic mitigation procedures put in place by school boards — spreads across the country like a wildfire, I keep asking myself a simple question.

Where’s today’s Shaw Moore?

Yes, it’s only a movie (and a good one at that), but the Moore character works because we have so many examples in American history of decent and caring men and women who stood up amid crowds of people where they could have an influence and demanded an end to the madness.

In the modern Republican Party, that spirit seems to have died with former Sen. John McCain, who to a Republican crowd when he was running for president against Barack Obama, and defended the future two-term president’s citizenship and patriotism against vicious and racist attacks.

Here in Missouri, there are countless examples of Republican officials who say they are against censorship, but have said and done nothing to stop the madness in Wentzville and elsewhere. What about Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is too busy suing school districts over mask policies to defend children and their parents as the book banners take over.

Or what about Sen. Josh Hawley. Two years ago, he famously — and inaccurately — chided Facebook and Twitter for its alleged censorship when it limited the false pronouncements of former President Donald Trump. Then, when publisher Simon & Schuster declined to publish Hawley’s book about Big Tech after he became the face of sedition by encouraging the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, Hawley made more noise about censorship and cancel culture.

“Only approved speech can now be published,� Hawley wrote at the time. “This is the left looking to cancel everyone they don’t approve of. I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have.�

Apparently, Hawley didn’t have much left in the tank. Where has he been as a school board in his state bans books? Imagine the powerful statement Hawley, or others of his ilk, could make, if they walked into school boards and libraries in Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and elsewhere and channeled their inner Shaw Moore, taking the books out of the hands of the very people they have riled up with misinformation, and telling them to stand down.

“When you’ve burned all of these, what are you going to do then?� Moore asked in the movie, before offering a bit of advice that would serve today’s generation of book banners, and those who are fanning the flames, quite well: “Go on home all of you. Go and sit in judgment on yourselves.�