Pardon the hysteria, but your/our local library is under attack. As you may know, the nine branches of the Kitsap Regional Library offer both filtered and unfiltered Internet access. They are not now, nor have they ever been, in the position of telling people what to read, or what to look for on the World Wide Web. Do you want them, or anyone, going through the library with you deciding what is appropriate? Think about it.

At issue, of course, is the Constitution. And, of course, who is going to decide what we read and look at.

In one way, that is what parents are for: to guide (and supervise children who are too young to make appropriate decisions. Yes, an occasional crazo can turn on a pornographic Internet site in the library and expose children to it. That same thing can happen in your neighborhood convenience store at the magazine rack.

My view is that the library exists to provide access to information; it’s up to the users, and parents of users, to properly supervise their children in this, as in every, public place.

But the attack has now broadened. A group of local residents have exercised their Constitutional rights to protest not just the unfiltered Internet terminals in the library, but they have made the giant step to now decide that someone like native American writer Sherman Alexie is not appropriate fare for a library program, which people could attend by choice. No one was forced to sit and listen to Mr. Alexie speak.

If people don’t like Sherman Alexie’s books and challenge his right to speak by invitation at a public venue, can the Koran, Bible be far behind. Do you really want someone to decide what is “appropriate” reading material for you or your family and what lectures are good and bad?

The New Testament is just another book in the library and we cannot permit others to make it the only book.

These seeds of censorship, and others’ deciding what is good literature and an appropriate Web site, are, to me, just as worrisome as people crashing airplanes into our buildings.

Demagoguery wears many hats. Monotheism is antithetical to our way of life. As we have seen in the past month, our national strength — the glue of democracy — lies in our cultural and religious diversity. Beware of those who insist they have the collective truth.

The library — yours and mine library — have been using valuable time to fight off these incessant attacks on our personal freedoms. We need to make it clear to those who want to change the rules to take their efforts to the courts and to leave our librarians and staff alone.

Finally, this group of concerned citizens has decided that the North Kitsap School Board is unresponsive and failing to educate our children.

I have three well educated children, graduates of our local school system and I never found the school administration unresponsive to reasonable requests. And with two children with disabilities needing accommodations, we probably had ten times more contact with schools and the administration than most families. They were always willing to listen and help. They were, understandably, not always willing to make sweeping changes to accommodate one point of view.

Everyone is busy, but this is an important issue. We need you to attend a library board meeting and we need you to sit down and take just a minute or two to express your views to Ellen Newberg, Director of the Library. Her e-mail address is enewberg@linknet.kitsap.lib.wa.us.

I think this is one of the life moments when we need to get involved in our community.