To the editor:

It is disheartening to see how pervasively the politics of ìMEî have reached into Chisago County.

The politics of ìMEî being that any expenditure of public money that directly benefits ìMEî is a necessary ìneedî and that any expenditure that benefits ìYOUî is a selfish ìwant.î There is very little room for ìWEî in such thinking.

This year, after more than a decade of work by some groups and individuals, involving numerous posted public meetings, newspaper stories and editorials, letters and local cable television coverage, Chisago county finally addressed its woefully inadequate library space. Several courageous officials, led by county commissioners Lora Walker, Rick Olseen and Ben Montzka and supported by local task forces and community representatives, voted to bond for three new libraries in Chisago County.

This county was deemed among the worst, if not the worst, in the state for library space per capita. As has been cited before, the prisoners in the Rush City Prison were accorded significantly more library space than the average Chisago County resident. The three new libraries will merely bring us up to something approaching the state average.

Those of us who worked on this were going on the premise that the more we could do to help promote literacy in our community, the better the chance would be to have the informed citizenry needed to confront the challenges of an increasingly complex world.
Many of us think that a well-educated public has always been a cornerstone of this democracy. There were public schools and public libraries in America even before we became a nation. Our founding fathers were well-read men who espoused equal educational opportunities for all. The immigrants, from whom many of us descend, counted equal educational opportunities as being paramount in their hopes for their children. Throughout history, many of our leaders were nurtured and raised on these principles of a well-educated and well-read populace. Some of our greatest citizens have written eloquently on the importance of reading and their access to such reading through public libraries.

Now, we are being told that providing free access to all kinds of information, print as well as electronic, is a frivolous ìwant,î taken capriciously in a vacuum.

Why donít these people want to spend on something which is totally available to all, for no fee and which can only promote our freedom to learn, to read and to question in a non-threatening environment?

For those complaining, perhaps a well-educated and literate public is not necessary. Maybe others would designate new roads or a new jail or expanded recreational programs as more important than a viable, visible and free life-long educational resource center. I would argue that without the literate minds of our founding fathers, such arguments would be moot.

They burned the books in Nazi Germany and expanded the roads, the jails and the athletic programs.

One of the things so great about this country is that we can disagree about such things. What is hard to understand are the increasingly rancorous arguments that if it does not benefit ìMEî directly, it should not be done.

For those who feel that they were underinformed on an issue with more than 10 years of work and debate accompanied by a deluge of information, perhaps this only underscores the need for a place where they can receive such information. Being an informed citizen is as much a responsibility as a right.

Joan Alliegro Carlson
Lindstrom

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