The U.S. Naval Academy has had a library since the day it was founded in Annapolis, Md. in 1845. Its history had been one of steady expansion and wide inclusion until last month, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the removal of suspect books.

Hegseth was not the first Republican figure to demand a library purge. That was the disgraced Roy Cohn, Sen. Joe McCarthy’s henchman and President Trump’s early mentor.

Hegseth was, however, the first to insist that future military officers could be harmed by exposure to the wrong books. In fact, the most famous five-star general in U.S. history once took a decidedly contrary view.

The Naval Academy’s initial curriculum included mathematics, navigation, gunnery, chemistry and interestingly, natural philosophy, for which the original 50 midshipmen could study from the 400 books housed in the superintendent’s office.

The library expanded over the ensuing 180 years, moving from location to location until 1973, when the collection was consolidated in the new building of the Nimitz Library. It now holds over 500,000 print books, as well as ebooks, periodicals, databases and videos, both scholarly and popular.

The Annapolis administration at first believed that........

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