Our STORY
The mission of the Library of American History at LaGrange is to preserve the record of America’s founding principles as written and spoken by the men who secured the blessings of liberty for our nation; provide an archive and a fortress for truth within which educators, students, leaders and citizens may read, study and learn how to reinforce the foundation of liberty for generations to come; protect this treasure from censorship, removal or alteration of any kind and by these means; to project a beacon of confidence into the future.
Mission Statement, the Library of American History at LaGrange
At his death in July 2020, Colonel Ronald D. Ray left an extensive library of over 8000 books. This special collection of history and government books covers the time from the foundation of America through the twentieth century. The Nation’s original documents, organic utterances, eyewitness accounts, and the facts of America’s history are preserved in the Colonel’s collection and form the foundation for the Library of American History at LaGrange, Kentucky. The proposed library can house a potential 20,000 books and more which could be digitally accessible.
Why a Library Now? America is at a pivotal time as the very legitimacy of the nation is questioned in all of America’s institutions. Books are being censored and removed from library circulation as free speech is stifled by a growing “cancel culture.” This trend is concerning as dependence upon Big Tech grows. Once a wide breadth of information could be accessed, but today online searches yield little but a narrow narrative.
Educating our Nation’s Future Leaders. Subjects vital to citizenship are history, geography and civics which were eliminated in 1967 by the NEA (National Educational Association). Two generations later, “we the people,” have abandoned absolutes and traditional American ideals.
Institutions lean toward the collective and recent generations cling to their subjective “truth” largely unprepared to guide the Republic through the country’s elected officials. The shift in educational emphasis can also be seen in investment in Education: For every $54 the US government spends per school child on STEM, (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), $.05 cents is spent on civics. Are these generations so easily parted from the lessons of the past because so little effort was made to teach it?
“No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.”
– ACCLAIMED HISTORIANS ARIEL AND WILL DURRANT, THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
