The Silent Majority Has Spoken At Last

I am old enough to remember when, late last year, over a hundred frustrated, alarmed and bewildered citizens of Warren County spoke out passionately in defense of Samuels Public Library, pleading into the wee hours of the morning with The Board Four not to unnecessarily impose a redundant library oversight body, to stop accusing our beloved library of malfeasance, and to lay off with the thinly-disguised continuation of the persecutions of SPL which started in 2023.

If memory serves, one of the supervisors condescendingly explained to the anguished audience that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there was a Silent Majority of Warren Countians who actually supported these attacks on the library. I guess they just couldn’t be bothered to show up that night (or any night). Apparently these folks are very silent indeed, because we’ve heard little from them in the interim; a stark contrast to the consistent public support the library has received from the community.

Oh, occasionally one or two have mustered the courage to write a letter to the editor denouncing Samuels for the contents of its collection. Or a number you could count on one hand would show up to a BoS meeting to repeat (sometimes verbatim) the stilted talking points they’d agreed on, but it just never felt like there was a genuine groundswell of county residents rooting for The Board Four as it steamed ahead with plans to seize control, not only of the management of Samuels, but of their property too, and hand it all over to an out-of-state, for-profit library vendor.

So it was with great interest (and some skepticism) that I awaited the outcome of Tuesday’s election, watching for this Silent Majority to overwhelm the polls in support of their anti-library candidates. And WOW, were the Silent Majority ever there for it! But, surprise — turns out they don’t care for The Board Four’s plans any more than the “thirty or so loud minority” do. I guess the “smart people” of Warren County were a bit smarter than The Board Four figured, and they are as sick and tired of this vendetta against Samuels as the more outspoken residents are.

Read the writing on the wall, ya’ll. Trash this ill-advised contract with LS&S while you still can, before you cost us taxpaying voters any more money than you already have. Focus on what you were actually elected to do in the time you have left on the Board — make sure our county has the infrastructure, emergency response, and educational services it needs. Bow out of the culture wars. They serve no one, and you fight them poorly.

L.K. Henderson
Warren County VA

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