New book released on Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls-Wilder
From Eric Dondero:
Ayn Rand has gained an enormous amount of attention these past few days for the release of the film Atlas Shrugged. But another contemporary libertarian associate of Rand may also get her due with the release of a new book "The Wilder Life." Wendy McClure, a self-described Wilder fanatic from Chicago is the author. She's currently on a book tour. Quoted in St. Louis Today:
"I think it's because the descriptions were so vivid and also something about the point of view … there's immediate identification."
Continuing from Stltoday.com:
McClure collected at least six bonnets herself while traveling to "Little House" sites in Missouri, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas and New York. During her trips, she waded in Plum Creek, watched pageants and Laura look-alike contests and beheld Pa Ingalls' real fiddle in Mansfield, Mo.
McClure read the nine-book series in the 1970s and early '80s and thought the "Little House" stories were "almost as self-contained and mystical as Narnia or Oz," she writes in "The Wilder Life."
A libetarian inspiration for Sarah Palin
And on the libertarian connection to the series:
She's also not the kind who dredges up quotes to promote libertarianism. Nor does she home-school or read New Pioneer magazine for survivalist tips.
"Little House on the Prairie," read throughout the world, is the book Sarah Palin's sister cited in 2008 when asked what the vice presidential candidate liked as a child. In 2009, Judith Thurman recounted that citation as part of a story about how Laura and Rose both became successful writers, crabby collaborators and critics of the New Deal.
As Thurman wrote for The New Yorker, Rose Wilder Lane is considered with Ayn Rand and Isabel Paterson "a founding mother" of libertarianism. She left her estate and the rights to the "Little House" books to her close friend, Roger Lea MacBride, a Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1976.
In addition to her own pioneer novels, Lane wrote a biography of Herbert Hoover (her papers are at his presidential library) and nonfiction such as "The Discovery of Freedom" and "Give Me Liberty."
MacBride added to the "Little House" oeuvre by writing fiction featuring Rose and publishing some Wilder material after Laura died.
Order the book from Barnes & Noble.
Background - Roger MacBride, Rose's adopted grandson, lent great inspiration to this very website. He was my friend, Clifford's friend and served as National Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus from 1992 - 1995. I was with Roger the last three weeks of his life. He and I (and Libertarian Party of Alaska Chair Scott Kohlhaas) walked the halls of congress lobbying for the abolishment of Selective Service during the 1995 GOP Revolution. We visited with 5 congressmen, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California. Note also, Roger was a Vermont state legislator in the mid-1960s, and was the very first person ever to run for public office as a "libertarian," when he ran for Governor of VT in 1966 in the GOP primaries. He is best known for having cast an electoral vote in 1972 as a Nixon delegate for the Libertarian ticket of John Hospers/Toni Nathan, making Nathan the very first woman in US history to receive an electoral vote (12 years before Geraldine Ferraro and 37 years before Palin.)
