Terrific liberal response RE: Laura Ingalls Wilder

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

I can't find who this is in response to, but it's great.

I agree. We all ought to be self sufficient like Laura and her family.

There they were, living out there on their homestead. Err, homestead. Yeah, that's where the government gave land away to people to settle the prairies because the government thought we ought to have people in far away places like Nebraska.

And they got there, of course, on the railroad, which by that point was heavily subsidized by the government because the Lincoln administration (which also invented the homestead) somehow thought our country would be better with a railroad running through it. Okay.

And when Laura's sister whose name escapes me went blind, they sent her to a state supported school for the blind because, well, the government thought it might be nice if blind people got an education, too. And later the government paid her to teach other blind kids, cause, well, they were just meddlesome that way.

And, though it's been years and years since I read these books, I do remember a relief train coming through (on that government supported railroad, through all those government giveaway homesteads) during that bad winter and giving them coal and food, I guess, cause the big bad government didn't want them to starve to death or freeze solid in a lump when their braids of hay were all gone.

Oh, and years later, when were Laura Ingalls Wilder's books published? During the depression, where virtually all of their sales were to government supported libraries and schools, cause most of the country was broke, until my hero FDR bailed us all out with things like the WPA and an actual honest to god minimum wage law that, adjusted for inflation, was more than the minimum wage today, and kept thousands of people from suffering more.

My own introduction to the "Little House" books was through a school librarian at the public school in the middle of Appalachia that I attended (bad ole government again) who suggested that I check them out of our school library, which had copies of them cause they were bought with "Title I" money from one of LBJ(my other hero)'s education bill. Bad ole government, go away and leave us alone.

So, yeah, like you, I think we should all be as self sufficient as the Ingalls family.

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