"Librarian is a service occupation. Gas station attendant of the mind." ~Richard Powers

Doppelganger at 50 books has some hard questions for information professionals.
Except, no question is impossible for the superheroes of the information universe. Or, um, something like that.
Anyway - here are my thoughts on the matter.

…are libraries as beleaguered as they seem?

They are certainly under funded. And librarians are certainly underpaid. But most of us knew that going into it. I don’t know what the actual stats are but I would be surprised if the majority of us were librarians as a first career. (It’s my third. And the one that makes me happiest, if the worst paid.)
Public librarianship makes me shiver, although there are librarians out there who LOVE it, which is a good thing because I would NOT. Public libraries seem to bear the brunt of stupid censorship attempts, funding cuts, and political and public ignorance regarding the worth of a good librarian. I am very happy cocooned in my little corner of higher education, and my personal trick is to work part-time so I can stay on the desk, actually doing research and serving patrons’ needs.

In the battle between good and stupid, is the library at the front lines of literacy?

See above. Every librarian has to deal with the occasional troglodyte (the bane of my existence is the senior student who proudly proclaims to me that he has never been in the library before), but I would guess that public libraries bear the brunt of abuse. I will say that I certainly know librarians who are stupid, too. Don’t kid yourself, the MLS degree is not a particularly rigorous one. Any decent program is still mostly what you make of it.

Should we give you guns, or at least some knuckle-rappingly hard rulers?

Rulers. One of those wooden ones with the metal edge. To go with my bun and spectacles.

What about your job makes you most nutty?

The aforementioned morons who proudly assert in the same breath that 1) our library SUCKS, and 2) they are seniors and have never set foot in the library before today. I do not think twice about tartly telling them that it’s not a good idea to ask for help from someone whose job you have just dismissed.
Also, the idiots who tell me that they found “everything I need” on Google, but why can’t they find the full-text article? Um, journal subscriptions COST MONEY. Which the library thoughtfully provides, using all kinds of funding, not necessarily “your tuition money.”
You can get most of what you need through the library, if you go about it the proper way. This might be one of those times when a competent librarian is useful.
Also? Graduate students and faculty members who can’t seem to provide a full citation for an ILL request if their life depended on it. Seriously, there are some of these folks that make me wonder how they made it through high school, let alone undergrad and a Masters/PhD program.
Minor annoyance: refilling the printer toner and paper, unjamming the printers every five minutes, fixing the microfilm readers, running the scanner, setting up personal laptops for wireless access – all things which I am perfectly capable of doing, but resent having to do. Perhaps because not every librarian feels so inclined to be so obliging. I try to make it be about the students, and that makes me feel better, that I am helping those whom I am here to help.

What makes it all worthwhile? It can't just be the fact that you're lusted after by a certain type of gentleman (and some ladies) with a penchant for cardigans and cool specs, can it?

It actually can be that. If such a strange person existed.
I love finding stuff out. I am dogged and creative in my search process, and often dig up results for questions on which other people have given up. I love dealing with hard-to-find ILL citations for that reason.
I love helping people who are trying to conduct thorough, well-thought-out research into a topic that fascinates and excites them. I love making them think differently than they had, to find information that they may not even have been aware was out there.
I love being able to request scholarly articles just to satisfy my curiosity, and popular novels for which other people have to wait weeks or months, through our library ILL system. I love that I don’t pay late fees. I love being surrounded by books, and more broadly, information. And I love knowing that I know how to ferret out information as necessary. It’s a strange little rush, but I believe that to be a superb reference librarian, you have to have that compulsion, and you have to love that feeling of utter satisfaction at having found the answer.

Well, that, and a cute little cardie.