I think this is a great idea, one of the best I have heard in a long time. It is one of the increasingly rare pleasures of dealing with America that Americans still do come up with these assaults on pomposity. With any luck it will destroy the ridiculous concept of presidential libraries, as an anti-proton destroys a proton. There is absolutely no point in these libraries -- if there are any worthwhile papers they are appropriately donateable to government archives, and the rest should be burned. The idea that everything these presidents had to say or scribble is of historic value is part of the compensatory anality that has spread through an increasingly ahistoric society. That Richard Nixon, that master of erasure, has a library is absurd. It is part of the grand inflation of these mediocrities (one is reminded of the sequence of Roman emperor busts that reverse evolution, their heads become more Neanderthal and grotesque as the Empire slides towards oblivion) into statesmen. The Romans built temples to their emperors when they were deified, but at least they didn't disguise these temples by degrading such a wonderful term as "library". A library is a place of learning, not of self-serving propaganda.

yours,

Peter T.