Google Celebrates Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House Today. So Should You, Esp. If You're Libertarian.
Today's Google.com squiggle (or whatever) celebrates Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House books.
The series has a really interesting provenance and runs directly through Wilder's daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, who was responsible for editing the material and bringing it to the attention of publishers in its final form.
Rose Wilder Lane was a best-selling author of her own back in the day and is one of the founding mothers of the modern libertarian movement. Read Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism, the essential history of the movement. And read this blog post by him from a few years back. It's a recent example of what happens when admirers of the Little House books try to explain Rose's role. How could someone who believes in free minds and free markets help create something so great? That sort of epistemic closure must be a tough world to live in.
Back in 2003, Reason named Rose Wilder Lane as one of our "35 Heroes of Freedom," in part because of her work on "that great alternative history of American settlement, the Little House books, which place the family, community, and commerce—rather than male adventure, escape, and violence—at the heart of our national experience."
More Reason on Laura Ingalls Widler and Rose Wilder Lane here.