On the ballot in Steve County, Washington, is a referendum to cut off tax-funded (public) libraries in rural areas. We are supposed to find this a horrible and vicious thing to have on the ballot, a clear sign that antigovernment sentiment in the West (might it spread?) is getting so out of hand that it is even attacking literacy itself. The public libraries being the earliest and perhaps ultimate symbol of the turn-of-century social uplift movement, the attempt to get rid of themu2014the first that has ever been documentedu2014is being denounced as flagrantly reactionary and dangerous. Indeed, we can look … Continue reading Sell the Public Libraries