Relentless probably is the best word to describe Bruce Friedman, Eye on Jacksonville’s Citizen of the Month.

Since moving to Clay County last year from New York state, Friedman has been on a mission to get adult books out of government schools.

He is now reading a book a day. With an estimated 196,000 books in the 43 Clay schools – about half of them individual titles – he has a long way to go but he is not anywhere near giving up the quest.

He is making progress. He has filed objections to more than 650 books and more than 300 of them have been removed from the schools because they did not conform with state law. He has more than 400 appeals pending on books that were not removed.

Compare that to the much larger Duval County school district, where barely a dozen “potentially” illegal books have been removed in the past two years.

Friedman’s work is admired and respected by most responsible parents, but hated by pornographers, groomers and others bent on destroying the lives of children to serve their own selfish political goals.

How does garbage get in school libraries? Friedman gave an example. Recently a new elementary school opened. The bureaucrat in charge called a vendor and ordered $450,000 worth of books. He didn’t specify which books and he didn’t read any in advance. He just took what was shipped.

Friedman actually looked at some of the books and quickly found some he thought were not suitable for children.

He found one book titled “Princess Kevin” and correctly deduced that it was another attempt at persuading impressionable young children to imagine they are another gender and possibly undergo mutilation by greedy doctors with no ethics.

He said the government schools have no standards and little accountability. In response to the outcry from parents, the district just continues making the process of removing a book more difficult, instead of easier.

This assault on childhood is going on nationwide but people concerned about parental rights are pushing back.

Friedman belongs to several such groups, including No Left Turn in Education, but operates as a one-man defense force.

He began years ago, opposing the Common Core education fad and efforts to push Critical Race Theory in schools. He sees a lot in common with those Far-Left agendas and the current assault on school children.

Friedman’s procedure is to check an online database of schoolbook titles and compile a list of titles he suspects or titles others have declared objectionable. He screens the books on the list by using key words. When he gets hits he reads the book and for those deemed unsuitable files objections, using a form the school district provides. Bureaucrats then put each one through a review process.

When necessary, Friedman will appear at a School Board meeting and read excerpts from objectionable books aloud, as parents have done in other parts of the nation.

On one such occasion, his microphone was cut off and he was told he could not read from the book, which was in school libraries, because it was “pornography.”

This startling admission that Friedman and other parents were justified in their objections made national news.

Since then, the politicians have realized how foolish they appear and most now allow reading from the filthy books, although subjecting speakers to very short time periods. Some of the passages, as one parent said, “would make a sailor blush.”

Friedman works at night, as a maintenance man, and does his due diligence during the day, at his own expense.

“It has required untold man-hours and about 100,000 pieces of copy paper, insane quantities of ink for printers, many bad dreams and sleepless nights,” he told Eye.

He is fighting powerful left-wing organizations such as the American Library Association, ACLU and teacher unions, but doesn’t care. He believes one person can make a difference and seems to be making his point.

He wants the school district to establish guidelines for books children are able to read and screen the books before putting them in libraries to ensure they are appropriate. He cites a Texas school district where community standards have been formulated and adopted and says that could be done in Florida as well.

“My goal is to create ONE clean safe library that meets defined community standards and let this serve our nation as a template,” he said. “To do this we must first create a rubric and guideline that reflects this community’s standards.”

Liberals make the absurd claim that ensuring books are suitable for children is “book banning” but in fact it is merely acting responsibly.

There is nothing to prevent a liberal parent from buying pornography and giving it to his own 8-year-old child to read.

It would be entertaining and educational to hear some learned liberals explain how making the complete works of the Marquis de Sade available to fourth-grade children would further their education and enhance their lives.