"A personal library needs no justification"

From an essay by Allen Jones in the New West, on owning books:

At the end of the day, and despite my own self-recriminations (all this money, all this effort, and to what end?), perhaps a personal library needs no justification. What's the alternative, after all? Outside these book lined walls, there's nothing but confusion. The culture at large has set itself directly against the slow, contemplative rigors and pleasures of reading. The self-involved cynicism of a David Spade and the cocky self-righteousness of a Dick Cheney. We're still running out of oil and the ice caps are still melting, carbon in the atmosphere and a moron in the White House. I've got my Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky, and so, at least for the moment, can ignore the fact that there are those in the world so obtuse as to actually stop and think about Pat Robertson.