Dr. Jones and the St. Joseph’s County Library: Sorry, Doc, The Problem Ain’t One Board Member — It’s Much Worse

The internationally famous Catholic intellectual, Dr. E. Michael Jones, a couple of years ago released an interesting podcast, How The St. Joe County Public Library Enables Genocide In Gaza, in which he discusses — and complains about — the failure of the three-person St. Joseph’s County Board of Commissioners of St. Joseph’s County to appoint a new member of the St. Joseph County Library Board in place of a former eminent lawyer named Alan Feldman. Feldman, in private life a distinguished lawyer at a large law firm, apparently supports retaining a homosexual-promoting book in the children’s section of the library. He, together with the Library Board back in July, rejected requests by parents to move the book to another section of the library. (Apparently the parents were too polite to ask for the complete removal of the book from the library itself, let alone its burning in a public ritual).

This alarming attitude, in the view of Dr. Jones and most reasonable people, would be ample reason for the eminent lawyer’s immediate removal from the Library Board. As well as the removal of the other Library Board members who voted to keep the book in place. Mr. Feldman, however, unlike the other Members of the staggered-term Board, was alone up for re-appointment (or removal) in December of 2023.

Fortunately for the “good guys”, a while ago, the County Board flipped from 2-1 Democratic to 2-1 Republican. The new Republican member was (and is, as she is still serving on the Board) a pro-family Catholic named Amy Drake. Seeing Feldman’s term renewal coming up, Drake licked her chops, reasonably assuming that, now, the County Board was majority Republican, the County Board could replace Mr. Feldman with someone less “edgy” on the homo front. Wrong. According to Dr. Jones, the other Republican on the County Board “stabbed Amy in the back” and voted to continue the eminent Mr. Feldman Esq. for a third 4-year term. (Commissioners reappoint St. Joe County Library’s preferred board member.)

Dr. Jones seemed to imply in his podcast that this betrayal — if in fact it was (there are a number of well known Republican could care less about “pro-family” issues, and we have no way to know what promises were, or were not, made to the unfortunate Amy) was facilitated by the holding — by a Republican group? — of an event discussing the Hamas-Israel situation across town two hours after the start of the County Board meeting (and possibly not before the end of that meeting). Dr. Jones’ suggestion is that this Israel meeting — which apparently turned into a pro-Israel love-fest, to the discomfiture of Dr. Jones — drew all the voters who otherwise would have attended the County Board meeting. This — I guess — reduced the number of “witnesses” to the “backstabbing” of the good Amy. Or something. Whether the presence of those “witnesses’ might have intimidated Amy’s shameless Republican colleague into voting against Mr. Feldman cannot be known. In the event, the local newspapers reported that, aside from one speaker, all the attendees loudly supported Mr. Feldman.

Look, this is all very complicated. And since the Library Board has seven (7) members, what difference would the removal of one member make anyway, at least in the short term? Had the rest of the Board disagreed with Mr. Feldman, they could have outvoted him 6-1 at the July meeting in which they voted to keep the book where it was. In addition, as can be seen from our discussion below, it is not clear that their vote would have meant anything if the library administrators wanted to keep the book there.

Thus, Dr. Jones’ complaints are a bit confusing. However, his podcast does spark the viewer’s interest in whether and how the entire Library Board might be removed and how it was selected in the first place. Then you could ditch the entire damn Board and presumably scour the library for its objectionable books and nix any future “drag queen” hours, the local ADL be damned.

Of course, the doings of a library in St. Joe County may seem like small potatoes, given that the county is relatively small and with little national significance. However, what happened in St. Joe has been occurring around the country. Day after day we read of presumably “red” state small town libraries hosting drag shows and piling up stacks of homosexual books, all of which the locals seem unable to stop.(1) How could public libraries in small-town red areas end up with drag queen hours and homosexual texts that the locals cannot seem to prevent or remove? These are public libraries, after all. Can’t the “public” in those towns simply change the local library management and put a stop to this nonsense?

So maybe it is instructive to look at exactly how Indiana local libraries are set up. Perhaps Indiana is not too dissimilar from other states in this respect. In particular, because it is a “red” state. This may give us a clue to the problem we face nationally.

And indeed it does. Sadly, the problem is far worse that Dr. Jones suggests. It is not the problem of one small-town politician cutting a deal that is unattractive. No, it is an entire structure that has effectively removed local library control from the local community.

Under Indiana statutory law, enacted by the Indiana legislature, so-called “local” libraries may be established by vote of any Indiana county board. So far so good. However, the precise governance of these libraries are set forth in the statute in excruciating, debilitating detail. Not so good.

First, the county board establishes a local library by first establishing a “Library Board” consisting of seven members.

The County Board selects these members. Thereafter, everything is in the hands of the Library Board. The County Board has no further say. In fact, since the library system, once created, is an independent taxing entity (like a local school district), it appears that the County Board cannot even exercise indirect control by reducing county appropriations to the library — since it makes no such appropriations. The sole power the County Board has thereafter is the naming of new Library Board members when the old members’ 4-year staggered terms expire. It can only remove existing Library Board members for some form of “cause,” so, in effect, it has no real “mid-term” removal power, since any removal on the grounds of “homo promotion” will undoubtedly be ruled a violation of free speech by a judge. To replace a majority of the board would, therefore, take many years!

In turn, the Library Board also appears to have very little direct operating power. Its only apparent role in governing the local library is the initial power to name an “administrator” and a number of sub-administrators. Thereafter, the Library Board apparently has no power, other than to open, finance, and/or close physical library facilities and, it seems, to establish an annual library budget and, upon the retirement of the “administrator” or one of the assistants, to hire a new person to replace the departing administrator. Crucially, unlike most businesses, the Library Board may not fire any of these administrators at will. The Board may fire an administrator only for, again, some form of “cause”.

So the crucial decision is the initial hiring of a library “administrator”. Thereafter, the local library in Indiana is essentially a self-guided missile, going wherever the “administrator” wants it to go, County Board and Library Board be damned. Now, presumably in the budget-setting process the Library Board has some trading “wampum” with which it can induce the “administrator” into desired courses of action. But is it a great system where the only oversight is the nuclear-bomb threat of defunding the entire system to punish one administrator?

And the Library Board is not even free to appoint anyone it thinks proper. It may only appoint persons that have a state “credential” as a library administrator from a separate, statewide board — the so-called “Credentials Board”. That board is nominally appointed by the Governor of Indiana. However the appointments must be of a certain number of eminent state officials. The likelihood that the Credentials Board will have any sympathy with “parochial lower-class” local mothers is probably low, given the elite subset of persons from which such officials are usually selected. In fact, the likelihood that they will defer to standards set by the odious American Library Association or other similar organizations is probably very high. This is a major problem.

In addition, to be a library administrator, you need a masters in library science, almost certainly from a masters program accredited by the ALA. Predictably a huge part of the ALA’s current mission statement is that the curriculum, faculty, and facilities (??) must emphasize “diversity equity and inclusion”, ALA Standards for Accreditation of Master’s Programs in Library and Information Studies Adopted by the Council of the American Library Association (the Council), November 30, 2023, by request of the Committee on Accreditation (“ALA Accreditation Standards”). Thus, a nationwide system has been established much like the schools of education, which only low-IQ persons who are — or are educated to become — heavily “woke” attend. It appears clear that the uniform product of this “educational” system will be exactly the kinds of people who, even before entering, would support drag queen story hours. And since “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has been defined to mean inclusion of homosexuals and those who commit every kind of sexual perversion, these future administrators will have been brainwashed into thinking that any attempt by “uninformed” parents to block homosexual or similar material from the libraries is a violation of fundamental civil rights — like another Inherit the Wind Scopes Trial, like the Hollywood blacklist!! Unthinkable!! After all, they are the experts. And they learned in school that inclusivity towards homosexuals and transsexuals is a mandatory part, and perhaps the MOST IMPORTANT PART of a library’s mission.

Clearly, with this system in place, each local town is now set up for a major cultural conquest of the unsuspecting inhabitants and the brainwashed janissaries produced by ALA — accredited institutions.

It should be noted that this system is a perfect way to weed the “common people” off the habit of reading books. Instead of hiring a 60-year-old 145 IQ blue stocking Radcliffe graduate bookworm (whom you can’t hire since she would drop dead rather than go through a duller-than-dull MLS program), you will have to hire a 110 IQ MLS graduate who — at that IQ level — probably does not even like books. In fact, books probably bore her to death.

If you were wondering why so many libraries are now stacking CD’s and movies, why all libraries feel it is necessary to host noisy “events” in their main reading rooms all the time, now you know the answer. These drones cannot imagine why anyone would want to sit silently in a completely quiet library reading room and study one book after another. In fact, many library administrators no longer enforce what used to be the longstanding “no talking in the library” rule. Many libraries seek to introduce computers, entertainment equipment and the like while de-accessioning as many of their books as they can. This caters to that part of the community that likewise has no interest in books and, of course, drives away people interested in using the library to study or read books. Gradually, local communities will lose the idea that reading books is even desirable.

For the powers that be, that is a good thing. A populace that is well-read is an enemy to centralized, bureaucratized control mechanisms such as Davos, the UN commission on Climate Change, EEOC, the Bush family….

To add insult to injury, the “only” basis on which the Library Board may select an administrator is the comparative superiority of his credentials! Since the “quality” of those credentials will undoubtedly have been pre-determined by the presumably woke Credentials Board, the Library Board in fact has very little room to name a non-woke library administrator. It might try to do so, but, if push came to shove and a court case were brought by the unsuccessful MLS aspirant where a non-MLS Ph.D. in English Literature, e.g., Dr. E. Michael Jones himself — were selected instead, it is likely that the Library Board would lose. So, if it wished to hire a non-woke administrator, it would undoubtedly have to hide its tracks and create an artificial record supporting the “superior” credentials of the non-woke appointee, as well as the fact that the views of the appointee on pro-homosexual books and drag queens were given no weight. Of course, if such a subterfuge were uncovered later, that could mean big trouble for the Library Board members, since such gaming would probably violate the public meetings and public records laws of Indiana, as it would in most states. See the following story from Tennessee — another ruby red state: “Tennessee librarian fired for not moving kids LGBTQ books to adult section”. My prediction? The town will lose.

Thus, even in the initial selection over which the Library Board has nominal power, that power is close to illusory.

So when you work through all this mess, the Indiana library system works like this:

1. Local counties can decide to establish or not to establish a local library.
2. Once the county establishes it, the library is run solely by persons selected by ALA-selected candidates

Translation: You set up the library. You pay for it forever. Then, the American Library Association names the guys that run your library and, thereafter, those guys run the library any way they damned well please. Since the Library Association of America now backs every woke agenda on earth, including transgenderism and homosexuality, liberalized race relations, and anything pro-Jewish, so will their hand-picked administrators, and that is why you have the shit you do at your library and why you can’t do anything about it.(2)

You don’t like it? Go fuck yourself.

That is the problem. Not the eminent Mr. Feldman.(3)

Can this be changed at the State level? The Democrats will never change it. How about the Republicans? Well, the big Republicans in most of these states — think the Bushes — are so disconnected from real life they think people complaining about these issues are just lower-class crazies. They probably laugh about such complaints at their country clubs, since the only reason for Republican control of government is tax cuts and increase business subsidies. Didn’t you know that?

Furthermore, these people don’t go to yer grungy public library. They simply buy books they want on Amazon and build de-facto private libraries or use the capacious private libraries at their members-only luncheon clubs (e.g., the University Club in New York City — 100,000 books).

These people don’t use yer grungy public parks — who would do that? When they want fresh air and exercise they go to their country clubs or go yachting on the “Sound” or, perhaps, lake Michigan.

These people don’t go to yer grungy public school. Their kids have private schools and go to private universities.

The super elite don’t even stay in hotels when they travel. They stay in correspondent private clubs, with travel details arranged by subservient ultra-helpful employees of their local clubs.

To make it worse, their businesses — not to mention their political campaigns — probably depend on Jewish financing; they probably know the elites running the Library Association of America and don’t want to piss them off. They may in fact be buddies with the board members. So when someone wants to dismantle the whole set of institutions inhabited by people like them and their financiers, they think that “someone” is out of his friggin’ mind.

So, you want pornography out of your public library? Good luck bro.

As a betting man, my money is still on pornographer “I do it because I hate Christ” Al Goldstein, Al Goldstein — Wikipedia. Certainly not on the mothers of St. Joe’s County. What do you think I am? A sucker?

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1/ St. Joseph’s County appears to be balanced between two “reddish” rural districts and one urban (read the city of South Bend) “blue” district, consisting of a lot of welfare recipients, homosexuals like “Sec Trans” Buttigieg, and a formerly Catholic college popularly known as “Notre Dame” (of “gipper” fame), i.e., deep blue as the deep blue sea except for the one spot of fiery red periodically erupting out of the house inhabited by Dr. E. Michael Jones.

2/ Why was such a crazy system set up in the first place? Well, Indiana, like most states in the 1920’s, was not a big friend of the Catholic Church. One of the Protestant (statewide) majority’s big beefs with the Catholics was the expansive Index Librorum Prohibitorum put out by the Pope and his Curia,. The Index Librorum might have been a nifty idea had it only prohibited porn and faggotry. Undoubtedly the Protestants would have warmly supported it in those days (not so much these days). Unfortunately, the Index also prohibited works such as “works of David Hume — all”, Les Miserables, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Gallileo’s Diologues— you get the idea. Obviously, the idea of allowing a local Catholic-majority community to induce its local library to throw out half of what the University of Chicago would call the “great books” just to satisfy the Pope was anathema to the ruling Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Seventh-Day Adventists. One can only guess that they devised this centralized system to preserve what, in their view, was the essence of Western Christian Civilization and the American experiment from the foreign Papist dictators and their barbarian adherents in the U.S. Sadly, however, though the Index Librorum terminated in 1962 around the time that the Catholic Church itself committed suicide, the super-centralized library system did not. This gave an opportunity for enormous power to whomever grabbed those centralized levers of “library power”. Inevitably, as always, the centralized system has now been taken out of the hands of 60-year old blue stocking Protestant women and put in the hands of pink-haired lesbians and Jews, for whom the sexual revolution is just beginning. Hence, drag shows at your local library. What a disaster.

3/ The only solution is to get the state legislature to repeal all laws regulating the local libraries and replace them with a simple statute empowering local county boards to establish and run local libraries any way they please, with no credentialing required and at-will hire and fire power over all administrators (and library board members if the county board chooses to create one). That done, the election of a new slate of county board members, mirable dictu, will actually have significance. Until then nothing can, or will, change.