Let’s not beat around the bush. Libraries and the humanities are a threat to our country. Our country is not made of money and neither are our 401Ks. My portfolio manager thankfully diversified into potable water and broken glasses from which to start a fire. Thank you, Piggy. The proposed 2025 budget for the NEH was a whopping $200M and for the IMLS it was an eye-popping $280M! For that much money our country could buy four F-15EXs. Of course, that was before the glorious tariffs went into effect.

So, how have these two agencies funded my career since library school? Let me tell you.

First, as both a graduate assistant and then as a professional librarian, the IMLS funded The Tennessee Libraries for $241,775 to “create a fully searchable online archive of letters, diaries, photographs, and short printed items on the history of the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School. In addition to standard two-dimensional scanning of approximately 2,000 items, the project team will produce 360-degree interactive scans of 50 to 75 artifacts such as ceramics and baskets and will create curriculum packages for students.” The funds dared to preserve the history of education and arts literacy in the Smokies, an artifact of Progressive Era of education.

As a librarian at Washington University in St. Louis, I had the audacity to co-write a National Leadership Grant for the unsavory goal to “digitize, transcribe, and encode the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project and supplementary materials.” Why would we do this? Simply to create a “full-text searchable collection of these documents” and to “provide new means of understanding the roles of slaves, lawyers, abolitionists, the state of Missouri, and others involved in these cases.” What were we thinking of publicizing the work of woke lawyers like Montgomery Blair and George Ticknor Curtis?

Finally, let’s talk about the leftist propaganda machine that is public media. I know, I feel your outrage. Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, NOVA, Frontline, Antiques Roadshow! The idea that “the public” could benefit from “educational” television is obscene. The only thing we should be learning from television is which pills will take care of our IBS and while making us suicidal. Would you believe that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting receives a staggering $500M a year from the Federal government? Again, that is basically four fighter jets! We all want fighter jets, right? But not all of us want news or television for children that contains woke ideology like “treat others as you wish to be treated.”

While working for the WGBH Archives, we were funded by the IMLS for $615,575 and a by the NEH for $750,000. The purpose of these grants were to train the next generation in preservation, create open educational resources for students and teachers, and to improve tools for speech-to-text transcripts. Unfortunately, DOGGIE, isn’t able to claw money back from the Mellon Foundation, otherwise their $16M grant to support the American Archive of Public Broadcasting would be right back in government coffers where it could be used for…one fifth of a military-themed birthday parade, which sounds on par with the inflationary price quotes I’ve gotten from Party City.

Of course, some people will say, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” but let’s not pretend that’s a bad thing. By not remembering the past, we can live a life full of hijinks and humor like Bradley Cooper in The Hangover. In terms of education and preservation, we don’t need experts, libraries, or archives. All we need are the good intentions of local residents, like you, willing to make a difference in their communities.