Stephan A. Schwartz,  Columnist  -  Explore Stephan: All my life, beginning when I was five, I have valued and cherished public libraries. I understood even as a young boy how important they were. Libraries were the place you could go to learn about anything that interested you or that could entertain you when you were alone, or before you went to bed. I walked away from my career in government because after Watergate, having known most of the people involved, I realized I couldn't tell the good guys from the bad guys, but I stayed in Washington another year because I didn't want to lose access to the Library of Congress. Now the MAGAts, who realize libraries educate people to different points of view, are attacking public and school libraries to stop that. MAGAts want indoctrination not education; they want a semi-literate population easily manipulated by their misinformation. Andrew Carnegie, a childhood immigrant, realized the importance of public libraries like this one in Pittsburgh and left most of his money to be used to build such libraries across the United States. Credit: Wikipedia On the first of July 1731 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin and members of the Junto Club, an organization of civic minded Philadelphians that Franklin had founded and organized, carried out what they considered one of their most important actions to foster civic wellbeing. They founded a library. To quote the Benjamin Franklin Historical Society, “The idea to create a lending library startedduring Junto Club gatherings where each member would bring books toshare with others and consult during debates, but bringing books back and forth became cumbersome. It was agreed by the members to keep the books in the meeting room so that all members would benefit from them. It was also of great benefit to borrow a book and bring it home to read, therefore the idea of starting a public [...]

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