lack of funding for libraries explains ignorance?

By "govt funding", he means at the federal level, he may be correct.

There is no mandate for the feds to pay for libraries. They are paid for by your local states, counties, boroughs, cities and towns. Maybe your FB friend doesn't call those "government", but most of the rest of us do.

There are many conflicting theories of why so many people remain ignorant, but I'd say the lack of availability is NOT on that list. Even when the library is closed, almost everyone in the nation has access to the Internet, so just about any factoid you can think of can be researched.

My favorite villain in this saga are the union-run public schools, which for many decades have been more interested in padding their pensions than doing any real teaching. But almost every union-member teacher will disagree with me, and today I don't feel like arguing about it.

If you would like an illustration of the kind of thing I'm talking about, Google "new york rubber room". It's where they put teachers who are SO BAD they dare not leave them in a classroom, or anywhere near a student, but they CAN'T FIRE THEM.

I think ignorance is a result of our acceptance of mediocrity. Also we expect that "others" will do everything for us. I see this as a result of our politicians that have us believing they can handle all problems. We get more dependent on the politicians and they get more powerful. Basically why should I bother if the govt. will fix it syndrome. Today there are so many mandated tests ( mandated by politicians who are not the wisest of people) that often teachers only have time to teach the test so the school gets an attaboy and more funding.

No wonder the USA is now 17th on the list of countries in academic excellence.

Many/most libraries are funded by gifts. A lot of them were originally built by Andrew Carnegie. There is no connection between libraries and ignorance. I grew up in a town where the library was well funded, and many of the people are remarkably ignorant anyway. Try to remember, ignorant means "ignoring available knowledge." If the knowledge is not available, people are not ignoring it.

Almost noone of America goes to libraries. Why fund it do much if it is not needed? Also books can now be seen or bought by the Internet. So I would prefer we not lose money over this subject.