A tale of rugged frontier individualism gone corporate, and how the Ingalls’ family farm led to the Koch brothers’ political machine.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
We all need a break from the constant cycle to
learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the Rise
of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
(00:25):
and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited
access to their entire library. Sign up now through our
special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus
dot Com slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses Plus dot
(00:46):
Com slash o z y the Great Courses Plus dot
Com Slash Aussie. It was the rant that launched a movement,
and it began on a cable television whose segment, how
many people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that
has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills? Raise
(01:07):
their hand at CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of
the Chicago Board of trade. In February two thousand nine,
he's upset about the Obama administration's plan to spend seventy
five billion dollars of taxpayer money to rescue homeowners underwater
on their mortgages as a result of the financial crisis.
President Obama, are you listening. You're not thinking of having
(01:30):
a Chicago tea party in July? Are you capitalists? I
want to show up the Lake Michigan. I'm gonna start organizing.
Two months later, on April Tax Day, more than seven
hundred and fifty so called tea parties were held across
the country. Some drew crowds in the thousands. This is real.
These people are here, and they're here to stay. It's
(01:50):
now been ten years since the Tea Party movement engineered
a surprising takeover of American politics. Santelli's rant and the
resulting protests, along within the serious political action group called
Americans for Prosperity, would shift the political landscape in Washington.
Santa is not ready to make a major projection of
the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives
(02:14):
during the mid term election. The Republican Party, fueled by
the energy of the new tea Party movement picked up
a net gain of sixty three seats in the House
of Representatives, the largest swing in more than sixty years.
But the Republican's triumph in the House really began more
than a century earlier with Another House, A Little House
on the Prairie. Thanks for joining me again on Flashback,
(02:46):
a podcast from Ozzie. I'm Sean Braswell. In today's episode,
we explore the intersection of art and politics with the
story of a remarkable mother and daughter duo who remade
children's literature in America and helped kick start a new
political era in the process. It's a tale of hidden authorship,
subversive ideology, and of course that indomitable American Frontier spirit.
(03:15):
Little House on the Prairie an unforgettable tale of pioneer
life on the American Frontier in all of its grit
and glory. About sixty million copies of the Little House
books by Laura Ingles Wilder have been sold since the
first one came out in and the stories have inspired
millions of children and adults around the world. The first
(03:35):
Little House book is set in Wisconsin. Laura was born
in Wisconsin. This is Christine Woodside, a journalist and the
author of Libertarians on the Prairie. The Little House Books
are based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's own childhood on the prairie.
The first book was called Little House in the Big Woods.
In Wisconsin, they owned property. They lived near a town
(03:57):
called Peppin, which is situated on a section of Mississippi
River that widens and is known as as Lake Peppin. Today,
there's a replicate cabin located on the side of the
highway in the rough spot where their actual cabin stood,
but it was a very wooded area. It was a
sparsely populated area. Farmers had to clear the trees in
(04:19):
order to farm, and the Ingles family had fields and
clearings where they where they did their farming. The actual
details of the Ingles family life are in many ways
harsher than the autobiographical Little House Books. The first book,
Little House in the Big Woods, really captures of feeling
of happy prosperity for the Ingles family, and I do
(04:41):
think that's fairly close to the way life actually was
for them, although obviously it's idealized. Farming is a hard life,
but it made for some compelling stories. I got interested
in the books as a child. Of course, I read
them obsessively again and again, and I began to study
them to try to understand what made them so good.
(05:01):
Woodside hope to write a biography of Laura Ingles Wilder.
I admired her. I was fascinated with her farm columns
for the Missouri Ruralist. I wanted to be like her.
She had a temper, she was strong, she loved nature.
She had a kind of instinctive connection to natural rhythms
(05:23):
around the farms where she lived. I wanted to be
like that. But the more she read about Laura Ingles Wilder,
her life and her writing process, the more she came
to realize that there was really a second woman behind
the little house books. As I began to study the papers,
began to really dig into what papers are left, I
(05:47):
realized that I needed to write a book about two women,
because the lad the Laura I admired so much, was
a constructed character as a result of a collaboration between
Laura and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. More on that
fateful collaboration in a minute. Laura Ingles and her husband
(06:07):
Almonzo Wilder moved to the Dakota Territory during the eighteen eighties.
They had Rose soon after. It was a hard life.
The droughts and the kind of natural high desert climate
took over pretty soon after the family had gotten there,
and they never really had a successful crop. They had
a lot of loss of fire and crop loss, and
(06:31):
a baby who died when Rose was seven. They moved
to Missouri and tried to establish a farm. Rose was
sort of ashamed that she came from a poor farm family.
She felt that her clothes were not as nice as
the clothes of the girls in town. She was sent
into school on a donkey. She didn't always have shoes.
(06:53):
But Rose was a smart kid with a gift for language,
and she would become the family's first published writer. She
made a name for herself writing these serial profiles of
famous people who would come through town. Most of Rosa's
biographical work centered on the same theme, a person of
humble origins whose strength and courage allowed them to overcome
(07:15):
poverty and adversity to achieve greatness. And Rosa done pretty
well herself to overcome her own hard childhood. She even
spent some years in Paris in Europe during the nineteen twenties,
Like so many other writers of her generation, from Ernest
Hemingway to Gertrude Stein. But by the late nineteen twenties
she had returned home to her parents farm in Missouri.
(07:35):
At that point, Rose was living back on the farm
and sort of running an informal writer's colony. She had
women writing friends come and stay for months at a time.
Her mother, Laura, was living in semi retirement at the time.
Then disaster struck in the stock market crashed and they
(07:57):
both lost all their investments, and they were basically desperate
to make some money for the family. So Rose said
to Laura, why don't you go back to that story
of your life thing, and let's see if we can
get this published. And so from economic hardship came a tale.
It was perfect for the great depression that followed. Laura
(08:19):
quickly set to work. She sat down with several notebook
tablets sort of dime store tablets, and wrote her life
story down from start to finish. Laura wrote about living
on the open prairie, traveling and covered wagons, encountering wild animals,
and more. She wrote constantly, almost two d pages. Rose
(08:42):
took her mother's notes and she edited and condensed and
fixed and rewrote and made it into a long magazine piece.
Rose always, as she put it, ran them through her typewriter.
That was how she edited Laura. But writing the stories
down was only half the battle. Rose tried to sell
(09:04):
them to a number of magazine editors. No one would
buy it. Rose then went to a party with some
old publishing and writing friends of hers, at which she
met a children's editor who was interested in a portion
of the story. So Rose went to work. Rose, without
telling Laura what she was doing, took the section from
(09:28):
the Big Woods of Wisconsin, as the family called it.
She took the section from the Wisconsin years, and she
wrote a children's manuscript called When Grandma Was a Little Girl.
The editor loved how it turned out, and that was
how it started. The first book, Little House in the
Big Woods, came out in two It was a great success,
(09:51):
and readers and the publisher began to ask for more. Initially,
Rose and Laura had thought this would stop after one book,
but the demand such that they're asked to keep producing
new ones, eight in total. So Laura and Rose were
secretly collaborating on these books for thirteen years. But they
kept their collaboration as secret. A few knew the involved
(10:14):
role that Rose took in editing her mother's manuscripts. Why
I think that the two women thought that Rose's role
should not matter. Rose was in the background, She was
helping her mother do this project, and it was also
a problem of narration. If Laura and Rose had had
both their names on the cover, readers would have been
confused over which of the two of them was the
(10:36):
main character, and the power of that, the power of
it being the true story of Laura's life Laura as
the author, would have been lost. The American public, suffering
through a depression, was captivated by the tales of survival
and persistence. There was a raw authenticity to the stories
that could not be fabricated. The details of Laura Angels
Wilder's childhood in the Little House Books are fairly authentic,
(10:59):
and that's because Laura herself insisted during the collaboration with
her daughter on the books that they be as authentic
as possible. So the details of life farming, the way
they m the way they cured meat, the way they
harvested food, h the way they packed the wagon, the
(11:20):
way they built houses, all that stuff is authentic. But
Rose Wilder Lane didn't just edit and revise her mother's stories.
Gradually she took a role in shaping their viewpoint and
their ideals, even their politics. She started to infuse their
pages with her own burgeoning brand of libertarianism. The Little
House Books became settled, but very real pieces of political persuasion,
(11:44):
and they would help serve as a launching pad for
a broader social movement that would ultimately be helmed by
the two brothers from the Kansas Prairie, who are themselves
just children at the time of the book's original publication,
Charles and David Coke. That's next on flashback, m hm hm.
(12:13):
Do you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from
history or your own life. Please share it with us
by emailing flashback at Aussie dot com. That's flashback at
os y dot com. Mhm. As we've seen previously on Flashback,
(12:44):
the Great Depression changed a lot of things in America,
and so did the response to it by the administration
of President Franklin Roosevelt. This is Roosevelt addressing the nation
in March. I have no expectation. I'm picking up here
every time I could beat. What I seek is the
(13:05):
highest possible a batting average not only for myself but
for the team. But Roosevelt could not make everyone on
the team happy, and a lot of Americans resented his
New Deal, including Rose Wilder Lane Christine Woodside. Again, Rose
really hated Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal because
she felt that he was trying to make America a
(13:28):
socialist country. Rose didn't like the New Deal relief programs
for the poor, or the new price and supply controls
on farming and grain. So that was the root of it.
And this was all during the early thirties when her
anger began, and this was also when they were writing
the Little House Books. Woodside says that as a result,
self reliance became the Wilder family business. The Little House
(13:52):
Books were celebrating a simple, self sufficient, courageous life that
was based on Laura's real life. But some of the
scenes in several of the books were fleshed out to
really underscore the idea of freedom and independence of the individual.
And some of the later books Rose added details and
(14:13):
dialogue to scenes that helped promote this new pioneer spirit.
For example, there's a scene in one book, The Long Winter,
in which a storekeeper named Loftis wants to overcharge starving
townspeople for the last stock of wheat, so Laura's father,
paw Ingles, tries to reason with Loftus. Mr Loftis says
that wheat's mine, and I've got a right to charge
(14:35):
any price I want to for it. And I'm reading
right out of the long winter. That's so loft as
you have. Mr Ringals agreed with him. This is a
free country and every man's got a right to do
as he pleases with his own property. He said to
the crowd. You know that's the fact, boys, and he
went on, don't forget every one of us is free
and independent. Loftus, this winter won't last forever, and maybe
(14:58):
you want to go on doing business after it's over.
If you've got a right to do as you please,
we've got a right to do as we please. It
works both ways. So there you are a free market
lesson right in the middle of a starvation seen on
a in a prairie town. This is capitalism. You know.
(15:22):
Rose's views on personal freedom and limited government did not
just find expression in the Little House Books. Rose worked
for years on this book that was designed to be
her Magnum Opus called The Discovery of Freedom Man's Struggle
against Authority, and it was published in the same year
that the last of the Little House Book series came out.
(15:44):
The book is really a somewhat select reading of the
history of Western civilization, one that focuses on moments in
the past, like the American Revolution, when people attempted to
organize a state that would allow for a wider scope
of personal liberty. The book sold almost no copies when
it first came came out, but it was embraced by
a group of mainly um businesspeople who felt that it
(16:09):
illustrated the beauty of capitalism when you're not messing it up.
The work became something of a political cult classic, and
so the book kind of took on a life of
its own beyond the book itself. And today the libertarian
political movement will will refer to Rose Wilder Lane's book
(16:29):
The Discovery of Freedom as sort of an early bible
of the libertarian movement. And if The Discovery of Freedom
was the Bible, then a man named Roger Lee McBride
was Rose's main disciple. McBride met the much older writer
when he was a teenager in Connecticut, Roger learned free
market principles at Rose's knee, and he took her ideas
(16:52):
out into the world. Um, you know, like a flag
that he was carrying with him. He inherited everything of Roses.
McBride became a champion of the libertarian movement. He was
a genial, somewhat portly gentleman with well cooft gray hair
and large rimmed glasses. Here he expands on what that
movement means in an episode of the television talk show
(17:14):
firing Line in ninety six. Our fundamental belief is that
every individual ought to be free to conduct his or
her life the way that person sees fits, so long
as he or she is peaceful and doesn't impose on
others by force or fraud. Roger McBride ran for president
in nineteen seventy six as the Libertarian Party candidate. He
(17:35):
won zero point two percent of the popular vote. More
on that in a moment Well. McBride is perhaps better
known for is the television show he created two years
before he ran for president. Thanks to McBride, The Little
(17:56):
House Books would become an iconic nineteen seventies television show
starring Michael Landon s Paw Ingalls. But McBride was not
the only libertarian that rose wild or influenced. Another was
a man named Robert Lafayve LaFave, who had dropped out
of college himself, founded a very influential school, Christine Woodside.
In the early nineteen sixties, he started a school in
(18:19):
Colorado called the Freedom School. It was housed in the
log Building and people, adults would go for two weeks
sessions and learn about really the extreme end of of
what it would mean to give people full liberty. We're
(18:41):
gonna have some fun here this week. This is Robert
LaFave addressing attendees at one of those Freedom School retreats.
He's got wavy silver hair with a bushy mustache and
is wearing big eyeglasses and a bolo necktie. Lafay was
quite a character. He had been an actor, a soldier,
a traveling salesman, a TV anchorman. In more, I should
(19:01):
explain a little bit about myself, as you can tell
by my name, uh le Fay. There is some French
in there somewhere, and we French are a very volatile people,
as you know, and we tend to become explosive and
dramatic and we wave our arms and shout, and I
(19:22):
do these things without sometimes knowing that I'm doing them.
I really am a very nice fellow, but you will
not know that. At times Lefa encouraged students to bring
sturdy shoes and pack western wear. In between sessions, they
could ride horses, play volleyball, and pitch horse shoes. But
that was not the purpose of the Freedom School. The
whole purpose of our session is to make use of
(19:44):
our minds and to get them into gear to take
an entirely different look at man and the situation that
he is in. He wasn't long before La Fave's Renegade
School appeared on the radar of another prominent libertarian was
caught wind of the Freedom School, and she was really
excited about it, but it was struggling financially, so she
(20:07):
gave them a big donation. Rose Wilder Lane became really
involved in libertarian politics. This is Stephanie Sharp, a political
consultant from Kansas and the founder of the firm Sharp Connections.
Because of this significant income that she had from the
Little House Royalties, was able to donate quite a bit
of money to the Freedom School. Rose Wilder Lane's donation
(20:30):
helped keep the Freedom School afloat, and she grew more
involved in its operation. Robert Lafaye was so grateful he
renamed the school's main log building Rose Wilder Lane Hall.
In nineteen sixty two, Rose herself attended the dedication ceremony
Christine Woodside. One of the only recordings of Rose Rose's
voice that exists is of her giving a speech at
(20:54):
the Freedom School. The speech was called the Scourge of Collectivism.
The recording quality is not great, but you can hear
Rose cover a number of topics, including communism, probably only
what he had to do it, which is the boxisty branchuries. Uh,
people have been predominably communists. The very early savages are
(21:19):
always contest. The libertarian principles articulated at the Freedom School
soon started to spread within another group, the Republican Party.
The notion was always underlying all this, that that people,
if left to their own devices, will act in a
way that furthers the common good. It's an idea that
(21:42):
Ronald Reagan talked about. And Ronald Reagan was enamored of
a lot of these ideas too, and he was very
good at spreading them, including via humor. I think you
all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying
words in the English language are I'm from the government
and I here to help. But it was not just
Ronald Reagan who took up the mantle of libertarianism that
(22:04):
was first hoisted by Rose Wilder Lane and the Freedom School.
Two men who arguably shaped modern American politics more than
any other figures were not only familiar with the Freedom School,
they were students there. One summer day in the early
(22:24):
nineteen sixties, a twentysomething young man from Wichita, Kansas, drove
up the dirt road that led into the foothills of
the Rampart Mountain Range between Colorado Springs and Denver. He
saw a compound with a three story lodge, log cabins,
horse stables, and walking trails. It looked like a summer camp,
but this was Robert Lafaye's Freedom School, the mecca for
(22:47):
the American libertarian movement, the place that Rose Wilder Lane
had influenced with her ideas and saved with her money.
The young man Charles, had heard about the school from
his younger brother David, who had just attended his own
two week session. Christine Woodside, two of the early students
at the Freedom School were Charles and David Coke. If
(23:10):
you can believe that, Yes, those Cooke brothers, Charles Coke,
the chairman and CEO of Coke Industries and his late
brother David Coke became libertarians in their twenties, and Christine
Woodside says you can trace those political origins back directly
to the Freedom School and Rose Wilder Lane. Remember Roger
Lee McBride, the presidential candidate, slash television producer who was
(23:32):
Rosa's political disciple. McBride ran for president as a libertarian
in nine six, and the Koch brothers did what they
could to campaign for him. And so this is one
of the crucial bits of evidence that helps you sort
of see the connection that the Koch brothers have back
to the Freedom School and the ideas. Deep in the
(23:55):
archives of the Hoover Library at Stanford, Christine Woodside discovered
a letter that Charles who Could sent out to powerful
oil industry executives endorsing McBride for president in nineteen seventy six.
It begins, Dear Rocky Mountain oil Man, I have been
a supporter of libertarian activities since the early nineteen sixties
(24:15):
and have found them to be the only effective way
to combat the rapidly increasing governmental control over all aspects
of our lives. Charles Coke's brand of libertarianism at a
very particular source, and so what he meant when he
said he had been a supporter of libertarian activities, he
meant that he had attended classes at the Freedom School
in Colorado, and that, of course, is the school that
(24:38):
Rose was so deeply involved with. Rose Wilder Lane died
in but her disciples at the Freedom School, including the
Koch Brothers, would continue to push her ideas to a
broader audience. The Koch Brothers stayed involved in the Libertarian
Party until the early eighties. In fact, David Cope was
the vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian to that night.
(25:01):
Neither Roger McBride nor David Coke had any success on
the ballot, but they did succeed at starting a revolution
in conservative thought. It is very strong um this branch
of thinking in the Republican Party, led led by these
these early thinkers who had who had solidified their ideas
of Freedom School. This guided the branch of the Republican
(25:25):
Party that brought Ronald Reagan to power. After David Coke
lost his election, the Koch brothers began to move toward
more mainstream political circles and to wield their influence on
the conservative, free market branch of the Republican Party. Stephanie Sharp,
when he was on the ballot as a Libertarian candidate,
you certainly realized that that the Libertarian Party wasn't going anywhere.
(25:46):
And so from then, you know, it's pretty easy to
look at the Republican Party and say, you know what,
if we've plug enough money into this thing, we could
almost make the party adapt to what we view as Republicanism.
They put a lot of money into it, but the
Koch brothers decided to work behind the scenes and not
in front of the cameras. This time. With the Republican
(26:08):
Party as an established brand, it was a good training
ground and they could come in and make a significant
financial impact, and so they started these Club for Growth
and Americans for Prosperity. Thanks to nonprofit political action groups
like these and the hundreds of millions of dollars they raised,
the Koke brothers went from political fringe role players to
(26:30):
Republican Party royalty. But they didn't just raise money. The
Koch brothers pumped millions of dollars into a vast network
of conservative think tanks, endowed professorships, lecture series, college programs,
and more that espouse their same libertarian, free market economics beliefs.
It was like the Freedom School times of billion. And
(26:51):
then of course came the peace to resistance of the
libertarian movement that rose Wilder Lane helped create the Tea Party.
More on that when we come back, m we all
(27:30):
need a break from the constant cycle to learn something new,
to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus streaming service
is an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a
variety of subjects or pick up a new hobby. I've
been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this season
of flashback lectures like Playball, the Rise of Baseball is
(27:50):
America's Pastime, History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe
have helped me connect the dots on several stories from history.
Right now, they're giving our listeners special limited time offer
a free month of unlimited access to their entire library.
Sign up now through our special U r L go
to the Great Courses Plus dot com slash Aussie That's
(28:12):
the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash o z y
the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash AUSSI. I am
the Arizona director of Americans for Prosperity. We are a
group that has got twenty five chapters around the around
the country. We're getting more chapters every year, and we
(28:33):
are building up a grass roots army in this country.
This is Tom Jenny speaking to the Arizona branch of
the Tea Party in two thousand nine, a grassroots army
to take on big government and a trend toward bigger
and bigger government in this country. In the wake of
(28:53):
the collapse of the American economy in two thousand eight
and the subsequent government bailouts, it felt to many Americans
like the US was on the verge of undergoing a
repeat of what happened during the Great Depression that Rose
Wilder Lane had experienced, and leaders like Jenny were quick
to point that out. So this happened in the nineteen twenties.
This government created bank creates a bubble, the bubble burst.
(29:16):
We have the famous crash of ninety nine. So we
have a problem that's been created by government. People. What
does government been offer us as a solution? To that
problem more government, so you get guys like you get guys.
Crowds like this were forming all across the country. It
was the perfect moment to grow an army of new
libertarians in America and ushering a new era of limited government.
(29:40):
And thanks to the existing network of well funded organizations
that the Koch Brothers had spent years cultivating, the Tea
Party seemed to expand like magic across the country. It
felt as if the Koch Brothers had brood of movement
out of thin air, and the Tea Party is back.
Close to forty protests bring up across the country today.
Americans sick of government ballance and wasteful spending taking their
(30:02):
message to the streets, and it's spreading fast. In two
thousand ten, things in no small part to the Tea
Party and the work of groups like Americans for Prosperity.
The Republican Party want a landslide victory and the House
of Representatives Santa is not ready to make a major projection.
The Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives,
(30:24):
And so the seeds of a movement that had first
taken root within the pages of a children's book series
and been cultivated in small groups seminars in the Colorado
Mountains had finally borne political fruit almost eighty years later.
Christine Woodside, these ideas get deep into your skin, under
your skin and need them as as a young person,
and many of us who love the Little House Books,
(30:48):
I find myself I consider myself a progressive, you know,
and I'm I'm not rigistering any party, as on the journalists,
But the idea of of having free, of being free
and independent, I like it. The Freedom School seminars and
the Little House Books spoke to an ideal of courage, perseverance,
(31:09):
and liberty that still resonates today. But how would Rose
Wilder Lane herself feel about the big government regulations that
the Koch Brothers and Tea Party have waged war on.
I mean, I think she would be really irritated with it.
I think she would think that, um, you know, regulations
are are unnecessary and you really just need to assume
(31:30):
that everyone's going to do the right thing. Woodside herself
is not convinced. I don't see a lot of proof
in American history that people naturally do the right thing
for either the environment or necessarily the economy. And she
recognizes that might put her at odds with both Rose
and Laura Ingles Wilder. I'm uncomfortable with the thought that
both of these women would probably not like me very much,
(31:51):
which makes me a little sad because I like them.
But um, there you have it. Flashback is written and
hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and executive producer
(32:12):
at Azzy. He was produced by Robert Coulos, Tracy Moran,
Orio Diezua, and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff engineered our show
special thanks to the crew at I Heart Radio podcast Networks,
especially Sophie Lectman and Jack O'Brien. Make sure to subscribe
to Flashback on the I Heart Radio app or listen
wherever you get your podcasts. Flashback is the latest podcast
(32:34):
from Azzi, a modern media company producing original TV series, festivals,
news and podcasts for curious people. Ozzy's unique storytelling focuses
on the new and the next, whether that's forward looking
news and features bold new perspectives on TV or brand
new ways of looking at history. For today's lecture, though,
(32:57):
we look at another big fan of Little House on
the Rary, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, as a young
man McVeigh was a huge fan of the Frontier television
drama that was based on the books. Mcveigh's favorite episode
(33:19):
the one where Michael Landon is paul Ingles tries to
stop the other farmers from rioting when a government tax
hike threatens their farms. As the farmers complain about the
tax assessor, one of them makes a startling prediction. You
just mark my words. Someday they will tax a man
for what they earns. Did income tax? Ye never happened
in a thousand years. To die deeper, head to Ausie
(33:46):
dot com slash flashback. That's oz Y dot com slash flashback.
There you can find my other lecture notes from today's episode,
featuring extended interviews, links to further reading and more information
on Unintended consequences and the theology of the Little House Books,
and as well as links to other hidden stories from
history uncovered by me and other reporters at Assie. We
(34:26):
all need a break from the constant cycle to learn
something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus
streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our knowledge
on a variety of subjects or pick up a new hobby.
I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this
season of flashback lectures like Playball, The Rise of Baseball
(34:47):
is America's Pastime, History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield
Europe have helped me connect the dots on several stories
from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners a special,
limited time offer a free month of un limited access
to their entire library. Sign up now through our special
U r L. Go to the Great Courses plus dot
(35:07):
Com Slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses Plus dot Com
slash o z y the Great Courses Plus dot Com
Slash Aussie m
We all need a break from the constant cycle to
learn something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses
Plus streaming service is an excellent resource to expand our
knowledge on a variety of subjects or pick up a
new hobby. I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while
researching this season of flashback lectures like Playball, the Rise
of Baseball is America's pastime, History of the Supreme Court,
(00:25):
and Battlefield Europe have helped me connect the dots on
several stories from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners
a special limited time offer a free month of unlimited
access to their entire library. Sign up now through our
special U r L go to the Great Courses Plus
dot Com slash Aussie. That's the Great Courses Plus dot
(00:46):
Com slash o z y the Great Courses Plus dot
Com Slash Aussie. It was the rant that launched a movement,
and it began on a cable television whose segment, how
many people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that
has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills? Raise
(01:07):
their hand at CNBC's Rick Santelli on the floor of
the Chicago Board of trade. In February two thousand nine,
he's upset about the Obama administration's plan to spend seventy
five billion dollars of taxpayer money to rescue homeowners underwater
on their mortgages as a result of the financial crisis.
President Obama, are you listening. You're not thinking of having
(01:30):
a Chicago tea party in July? Are you capitalists? I
want to show up the Lake Michigan. I'm gonna start organizing.
Two months later, on April Tax Day, more than seven
hundred and fifty so called tea parties were held across
the country. Some drew crowds in the thousands. This is real.
These people are here, and they're here to stay. It's
(01:50):
now been ten years since the Tea Party movement engineered
a surprising takeover of American politics. Santelli's rant and the
resulting protests, along within the serious political action group called
Americans for Prosperity, would shift the political landscape in Washington.
Santa is not ready to make a major projection of
the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives
(02:14):
during the mid term election. The Republican Party, fueled by
the energy of the new tea Party movement picked up
a net gain of sixty three seats in the House
of Representatives, the largest swing in more than sixty years.
But the Republican's triumph in the House really began more
than a century earlier with Another House, A Little House
on the Prairie. Thanks for joining me again on Flashback,
(02:46):
a podcast from Ozzie. I'm Sean Braswell. In today's episode,
we explore the intersection of art and politics with the
story of a remarkable mother and daughter duo who remade
children's literature in America and helped kick start a new
political era in the process. It's a tale of hidden authorship,
subversive ideology, and of course that indomitable American Frontier spirit.
(03:15):
Little House on the Prairie an unforgettable tale of pioneer
life on the American Frontier in all of its grit
and glory. About sixty million copies of the Little House
books by Laura Ingles Wilder have been sold since the
first one came out in and the stories have inspired
millions of children and adults around the world. The first
(03:35):
Little House book is set in Wisconsin. Laura was born
in Wisconsin. This is Christine Woodside, a journalist and the
author of Libertarians on the Prairie. The Little House Books
are based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's own childhood on the prairie.
The first book was called Little House in the Big Woods.
In Wisconsin, they owned property. They lived near a town
(03:57):
called Peppin, which is situated on a section of Mississippi
River that widens and is known as as Lake Peppin. Today,
there's a replicate cabin located on the side of the
highway in the rough spot where their actual cabin stood,
but it was a very wooded area. It was a
sparsely populated area. Farmers had to clear the trees in
(04:19):
order to farm, and the Ingles family had fields and
clearings where they where they did their farming. The actual
details of the Ingles family life are in many ways
harsher than the autobiographical Little House Books. The first book,
Little House in the Big Woods, really captures of feeling
of happy prosperity for the Ingles family, and I do
(04:41):
think that's fairly close to the way life actually was
for them, although obviously it's idealized. Farming is a hard life,
but it made for some compelling stories. I got interested
in the books as a child. Of course, I read
them obsessively again and again, and I began to study
them to try to understand what made them so good.
(05:01):
Woodside hope to write a biography of Laura Ingles Wilder.
I admired her. I was fascinated with her farm columns
for the Missouri Ruralist. I wanted to be like her.
She had a temper, she was strong, she loved nature.
She had a kind of instinctive connection to natural rhythms
(05:23):
around the farms where she lived. I wanted to be
like that. But the more she read about Laura Ingles Wilder,
her life and her writing process, the more she came
to realize that there was really a second woman behind
the little house books. As I began to study the papers,
began to really dig into what papers are left, I
(05:47):
realized that I needed to write a book about two women,
because the lad the Laura I admired so much, was
a constructed character as a result of a collaboration between
Laura and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. More on that
fateful collaboration in a minute. Laura Ingles and her husband
(06:07):
Almonzo Wilder moved to the Dakota Territory during the eighteen eighties.
They had Rose soon after. It was a hard life.
The droughts and the kind of natural high desert climate
took over pretty soon after the family had gotten there,
and they never really had a successful crop. They had
a lot of loss of fire and crop loss, and
(06:31):
a baby who died when Rose was seven. They moved
to Missouri and tried to establish a farm. Rose was
sort of ashamed that she came from a poor farm family.
She felt that her clothes were not as nice as
the clothes of the girls in town. She was sent
into school on a donkey. She didn't always have shoes.
(06:53):
But Rose was a smart kid with a gift for language,
and she would become the family's first published writer. She
made a name for herself writing these serial profiles of
famous people who would come through town. Most of Rosa's
biographical work centered on the same theme, a person of
humble origins whose strength and courage allowed them to overcome
(07:15):
poverty and adversity to achieve greatness. And Rosa done pretty
well herself to overcome her own hard childhood. She even
spent some years in Paris in Europe during the nineteen twenties,
Like so many other writers of her generation, from Ernest
Hemingway to Gertrude Stein. But by the late nineteen twenties
she had returned home to her parents farm in Missouri.
(07:35):
At that point, Rose was living back on the farm
and sort of running an informal writer's colony. She had
women writing friends come and stay for months at a time.
Her mother, Laura, was living in semi retirement at the time.
Then disaster struck in the stock market crashed and they
(07:57):
both lost all their investments, and they were basically desperate
to make some money for the family. So Rose said
to Laura, why don't you go back to that story
of your life thing, and let's see if we can
get this published. And so from economic hardship came a tale.
It was perfect for the great depression that followed. Laura
(08:19):
quickly set to work. She sat down with several notebook
tablets sort of dime store tablets, and wrote her life
story down from start to finish. Laura wrote about living
on the open prairie, traveling and covered wagons, encountering wild animals,
and more. She wrote constantly, almost two d pages. Rose
(08:42):
took her mother's notes and she edited and condensed and
fixed and rewrote and made it into a long magazine piece.
Rose always, as she put it, ran them through her typewriter.
That was how she edited Laura. But writing the stories
down was only half the battle. Rose tried to sell
(09:04):
them to a number of magazine editors. No one would
buy it. Rose then went to a party with some
old publishing and writing friends of hers, at which she
met a children's editor who was interested in a portion
of the story. So Rose went to work. Rose, without
telling Laura what she was doing, took the section from
(09:28):
the Big Woods of Wisconsin, as the family called it.
She took the section from the Wisconsin years, and she
wrote a children's manuscript called When Grandma Was a Little Girl.
The editor loved how it turned out, and that was
how it started. The first book, Little House in the
Big Woods, came out in two It was a great success,
(09:51):
and readers and the publisher began to ask for more. Initially,
Rose and Laura had thought this would stop after one book,
but the demand such that they're asked to keep producing
new ones, eight in total. So Laura and Rose were
secretly collaborating on these books for thirteen years. But they
kept their collaboration as secret. A few knew the involved
(10:14):
role that Rose took in editing her mother's manuscripts. Why
I think that the two women thought that Rose's role
should not matter. Rose was in the background, She was
helping her mother do this project, and it was also
a problem of narration. If Laura and Rose had had
both their names on the cover, readers would have been
confused over which of the two of them was the
(10:36):
main character, and the power of that, the power of
it being the true story of Laura's life Laura as
the author, would have been lost. The American public, suffering
through a depression, was captivated by the tales of survival
and persistence. There was a raw authenticity to the stories
that could not be fabricated. The details of Laura Angels
Wilder's childhood in the Little House Books are fairly authentic,
(10:59):
and that's because Laura herself insisted during the collaboration with
her daughter on the books that they be as authentic
as possible. So the details of life farming, the way
they m the way they cured meat, the way they
harvested food, h the way they packed the wagon, the
(11:20):
way they built houses, all that stuff is authentic. But
Rose Wilder Lane didn't just edit and revise her mother's stories.
Gradually she took a role in shaping their viewpoint and
their ideals, even their politics. She started to infuse their
pages with her own burgeoning brand of libertarianism. The Little
House Books became settled, but very real pieces of political persuasion,
(11:44):
and they would help serve as a launching pad for
a broader social movement that would ultimately be helmed by
the two brothers from the Kansas Prairie, who are themselves
just children at the time of the book's original publication,
Charles and David Coke. That's next on flashback, m hm hm.
(12:13):
Do you have an interesting tale about unintended consequences from
history or your own life. Please share it with us
by emailing flashback at Aussie dot com. That's flashback at
os y dot com. Mhm. As we've seen previously on Flashback,
(12:44):
the Great Depression changed a lot of things in America,
and so did the response to it by the administration
of President Franklin Roosevelt. This is Roosevelt addressing the nation
in March. I have no expectation. I'm picking up here
every time I could beat. What I seek is the
(13:05):
highest possible a batting average not only for myself but
for the team. But Roosevelt could not make everyone on
the team happy, and a lot of Americans resented his
New Deal, including Rose Wilder Lane Christine Woodside. Again, Rose
really hated Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal because
she felt that he was trying to make America a
(13:28):
socialist country. Rose didn't like the New Deal relief programs
for the poor, or the new price and supply controls
on farming and grain. So that was the root of it.
And this was all during the early thirties when her
anger began, and this was also when they were writing
the Little House Books. Woodside says that as a result,
self reliance became the Wilder family business. The Little House
(13:52):
Books were celebrating a simple, self sufficient, courageous life that
was based on Laura's real life. But some of the
scenes in several of the books were fleshed out to
really underscore the idea of freedom and independence of the individual.
And some of the later books Rose added details and
(14:13):
dialogue to scenes that helped promote this new pioneer spirit.
For example, there's a scene in one book, The Long Winter,
in which a storekeeper named Loftis wants to overcharge starving
townspeople for the last stock of wheat, so Laura's father,
paw Ingles, tries to reason with Loftus. Mr Loftis says
that wheat's mine, and I've got a right to charge
(14:35):
any price I want to for it. And I'm reading
right out of the long winter. That's so loft as
you have. Mr Ringals agreed with him. This is a
free country and every man's got a right to do
as he pleases with his own property. He said to
the crowd. You know that's the fact, boys, and he
went on, don't forget every one of us is free
and independent. Loftus, this winter won't last forever, and maybe
(14:58):
you want to go on doing business after it's over.
If you've got a right to do as you please,
we've got a right to do as we please. It
works both ways. So there you are a free market
lesson right in the middle of a starvation seen on
a in a prairie town. This is capitalism. You know.
(15:22):
Rose's views on personal freedom and limited government did not
just find expression in the Little House Books. Rose worked
for years on this book that was designed to be
her Magnum Opus called The Discovery of Freedom Man's Struggle
against Authority, and it was published in the same year
that the last of the Little House Book series came out.
(15:44):
The book is really a somewhat select reading of the
history of Western civilization, one that focuses on moments in
the past, like the American Revolution, when people attempted to
organize a state that would allow for a wider scope
of personal liberty. The book sold almost no copies when
it first came came out, but it was embraced by
a group of mainly um businesspeople who felt that it
(16:09):
illustrated the beauty of capitalism when you're not messing it up.
The work became something of a political cult classic, and
so the book kind of took on a life of
its own beyond the book itself. And today the libertarian
political movement will will refer to Rose Wilder Lane's book
(16:29):
The Discovery of Freedom as sort of an early bible
of the libertarian movement. And if The Discovery of Freedom
was the Bible, then a man named Roger Lee McBride
was Rose's main disciple. McBride met the much older writer
when he was a teenager in Connecticut, Roger learned free
market principles at Rose's knee, and he took her ideas
(16:52):
out into the world. Um, you know, like a flag
that he was carrying with him. He inherited everything of Roses.
McBride became a champion of the libertarian movement. He was
a genial, somewhat portly gentleman with well cooft gray hair
and large rimmed glasses. Here he expands on what that
movement means in an episode of the television talk show
(17:14):
firing Line in ninety six. Our fundamental belief is that
every individual ought to be free to conduct his or
her life the way that person sees fits, so long
as he or she is peaceful and doesn't impose on
others by force or fraud. Roger McBride ran for president
in nineteen seventy six as the Libertarian Party candidate. He
(17:35):
won zero point two percent of the popular vote. More
on that in a moment Well. McBride is perhaps better
known for is the television show he created two years
before he ran for president. Thanks to McBride, The Little
(17:56):
House Books would become an iconic nineteen seventies television show
starring Michael Landon s Paw Ingalls. But McBride was not
the only libertarian that rose wild or influenced. Another was
a man named Robert Lafayve LaFave, who had dropped out
of college himself, founded a very influential school, Christine Woodside.
In the early nineteen sixties, he started a school in
(18:19):
Colorado called the Freedom School. It was housed in the
log Building and people, adults would go for two weeks
sessions and learn about really the extreme end of of
what it would mean to give people full liberty. We're
(18:41):
gonna have some fun here this week. This is Robert
LaFave addressing attendees at one of those Freedom School retreats.
He's got wavy silver hair with a bushy mustache and
is wearing big eyeglasses and a bolo necktie. Lafay was
quite a character. He had been an actor, a soldier,
a traveling salesman, a TV anchorman. In more, I should
(19:01):
explain a little bit about myself, as you can tell
by my name, uh le Fay. There is some French
in there somewhere, and we French are a very volatile people,
as you know, and we tend to become explosive and
dramatic and we wave our arms and shout, and I
(19:22):
do these things without sometimes knowing that I'm doing them.
I really am a very nice fellow, but you will
not know that. At times Lefa encouraged students to bring
sturdy shoes and pack western wear. In between sessions, they
could ride horses, play volleyball, and pitch horse shoes. But
that was not the purpose of the Freedom School. The
whole purpose of our session is to make use of
(19:44):
our minds and to get them into gear to take
an entirely different look at man and the situation that
he is in. He wasn't long before La Fave's Renegade
School appeared on the radar of another prominent libertarian was
caught wind of the Freedom School, and she was really
excited about it, but it was struggling financially, so she
(20:07):
gave them a big donation. Rose Wilder Lane became really
involved in libertarian politics. This is Stephanie Sharp, a political
consultant from Kansas and the founder of the firm Sharp Connections.
Because of this significant income that she had from the
Little House Royalties, was able to donate quite a bit
of money to the Freedom School. Rose Wilder Lane's donation
(20:30):
helped keep the Freedom School afloat, and she grew more
involved in its operation. Robert Lafaye was so grateful he
renamed the school's main log building Rose Wilder Lane Hall.
In nineteen sixty two, Rose herself attended the dedication ceremony
Christine Woodside. One of the only recordings of Rose Rose's
voice that exists is of her giving a speech at
(20:54):
the Freedom School. The speech was called the Scourge of Collectivism.
The recording quality is not great, but you can hear
Rose cover a number of topics, including communism, probably only
what he had to do it, which is the boxisty branchuries. Uh,
people have been predominably communists. The very early savages are
(21:19):
always contest. The libertarian principles articulated at the Freedom School
soon started to spread within another group, the Republican Party.
The notion was always underlying all this, that that people,
if left to their own devices, will act in a
way that furthers the common good. It's an idea that
(21:42):
Ronald Reagan talked about. And Ronald Reagan was enamored of
a lot of these ideas too, and he was very
good at spreading them, including via humor. I think you
all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying
words in the English language are I'm from the government
and I here to help. But it was not just
Ronald Reagan who took up the mantle of libertarianism that
(22:04):
was first hoisted by Rose Wilder Lane and the Freedom School.
Two men who arguably shaped modern American politics more than
any other figures were not only familiar with the Freedom School,
they were students there. One summer day in the early
(22:24):
nineteen sixties, a twentysomething young man from Wichita, Kansas, drove
up the dirt road that led into the foothills of
the Rampart Mountain Range between Colorado Springs and Denver. He
saw a compound with a three story lodge, log cabins,
horse stables, and walking trails. It looked like a summer camp,
but this was Robert Lafaye's Freedom School, the mecca for
(22:47):
the American libertarian movement, the place that Rose Wilder Lane
had influenced with her ideas and saved with her money.
The young man Charles, had heard about the school from
his younger brother David, who had just attended his own
two week session. Christine Woodside, two of the early students
at the Freedom School were Charles and David Coke. If
(23:10):
you can believe that, Yes, those Cooke brothers, Charles Coke,
the chairman and CEO of Coke Industries and his late
brother David Coke became libertarians in their twenties, and Christine
Woodside says you can trace those political origins back directly
to the Freedom School and Rose Wilder Lane. Remember Roger
Lee McBride, the presidential candidate, slash television producer who was
(23:32):
Rosa's political disciple. McBride ran for president as a libertarian
in nine six, and the Koch brothers did what they
could to campaign for him. And so this is one
of the crucial bits of evidence that helps you sort
of see the connection that the Koch brothers have back
to the Freedom School and the ideas. Deep in the
(23:55):
archives of the Hoover Library at Stanford, Christine Woodside discovered
a letter that Charles who Could sent out to powerful
oil industry executives endorsing McBride for president in nineteen seventy six.
It begins, Dear Rocky Mountain oil Man, I have been
a supporter of libertarian activities since the early nineteen sixties
(24:15):
and have found them to be the only effective way
to combat the rapidly increasing governmental control over all aspects
of our lives. Charles Coke's brand of libertarianism at a
very particular source, and so what he meant when he
said he had been a supporter of libertarian activities, he
meant that he had attended classes at the Freedom School
in Colorado, and that, of course, is the school that
(24:38):
Rose was so deeply involved with. Rose Wilder Lane died
in but her disciples at the Freedom School, including the
Koch Brothers, would continue to push her ideas to a
broader audience. The Koch Brothers stayed involved in the Libertarian
Party until the early eighties. In fact, David Cope was
the vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian to that night.
(25:01):
Neither Roger McBride nor David Coke had any success on
the ballot, but they did succeed at starting a revolution
in conservative thought. It is very strong um this branch
of thinking in the Republican Party, led led by these
these early thinkers who had who had solidified their ideas
of Freedom School. This guided the branch of the Republican
(25:25):
Party that brought Ronald Reagan to power. After David Coke
lost his election, the Koch brothers began to move toward
more mainstream political circles and to wield their influence on
the conservative, free market branch of the Republican Party. Stephanie Sharp,
when he was on the ballot as a Libertarian candidate,
you certainly realized that that the Libertarian Party wasn't going anywhere.
(25:46):
And so from then, you know, it's pretty easy to
look at the Republican Party and say, you know what,
if we've plug enough money into this thing, we could
almost make the party adapt to what we view as Republicanism.
They put a lot of money into it, but the
Koch brothers decided to work behind the scenes and not
in front of the cameras. This time. With the Republican
(26:08):
Party as an established brand, it was a good training
ground and they could come in and make a significant
financial impact, and so they started these Club for Growth
and Americans for Prosperity. Thanks to nonprofit political action groups
like these and the hundreds of millions of dollars they raised,
the Koke brothers went from political fringe role players to
(26:30):
Republican Party royalty. But they didn't just raise money. The
Koch brothers pumped millions of dollars into a vast network
of conservative think tanks, endowed professorships, lecture series, college programs,
and more that espouse their same libertarian, free market economics beliefs.
It was like the Freedom School times of billion. And
(26:51):
then of course came the peace to resistance of the
libertarian movement that rose Wilder Lane helped create the Tea Party.
More on that when we come back, m we all
(27:30):
need a break from the constant cycle to learn something new,
to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus streaming service
is an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a
variety of subjects or pick up a new hobby. I've
been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this season
of flashback lectures like Playball, the Rise of Baseball is
(27:50):
America's Pastime, History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield Europe
have helped me connect the dots on several stories from history.
Right now, they're giving our listeners special limited time offer
a free month of unlimited access to their entire library.
Sign up now through our special U r L go
to the Great Courses Plus dot com slash Aussie That's
(28:12):
the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash o z y
the Great Courses Plus dot Com slash AUSSI. I am
the Arizona director of Americans for Prosperity. We are a
group that has got twenty five chapters around the around
the country. We're getting more chapters every year, and we
(28:33):
are building up a grass roots army in this country.
This is Tom Jenny speaking to the Arizona branch of
the Tea Party in two thousand nine, a grassroots army
to take on big government and a trend toward bigger
and bigger government in this country. In the wake of
(28:53):
the collapse of the American economy in two thousand eight
and the subsequent government bailouts, it felt to many Americans
like the US was on the verge of undergoing a
repeat of what happened during the Great Depression that Rose
Wilder Lane had experienced, and leaders like Jenny were quick
to point that out. So this happened in the nineteen twenties.
This government created bank creates a bubble, the bubble burst.
(29:16):
We have the famous crash of ninety nine. So we
have a problem that's been created by government. People. What
does government been offer us as a solution? To that
problem more government, so you get guys like you get guys.
Crowds like this were forming all across the country. It
was the perfect moment to grow an army of new
libertarians in America and ushering a new era of limited government.
(29:40):
And thanks to the existing network of well funded organizations
that the Koch Brothers had spent years cultivating, the Tea
Party seemed to expand like magic across the country. It
felt as if the Koch Brothers had brood of movement
out of thin air, and the Tea Party is back.
Close to forty protests bring up across the country today.
Americans sick of government ballance and wasteful spending taking their
(30:02):
message to the streets, and it's spreading fast. In two
thousand ten, things in no small part to the Tea
Party and the work of groups like Americans for Prosperity.
The Republican Party want a landslide victory and the House
of Representatives Santa is not ready to make a major projection.
The Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives,
(30:24):
And so the seeds of a movement that had first
taken root within the pages of a children's book series
and been cultivated in small groups seminars in the Colorado
Mountains had finally borne political fruit almost eighty years later.
Christine Woodside, these ideas get deep into your skin, under
your skin and need them as as a young person,
and many of us who love the Little House Books,
(30:48):
I find myself I consider myself a progressive, you know,
and I'm I'm not rigistering any party, as on the journalists,
But the idea of of having free, of being free
and independent, I like it. The Freedom School seminars and
the Little House Books spoke to an ideal of courage, perseverance,
(31:09):
and liberty that still resonates today. But how would Rose
Wilder Lane herself feel about the big government regulations that
the Koch Brothers and Tea Party have waged war on.
I mean, I think she would be really irritated with it.
I think she would think that, um, you know, regulations
are are unnecessary and you really just need to assume
(31:30):
that everyone's going to do the right thing. Woodside herself
is not convinced. I don't see a lot of proof
in American history that people naturally do the right thing
for either the environment or necessarily the economy. And she
recognizes that might put her at odds with both Rose
and Laura Ingles Wilder. I'm uncomfortable with the thought that
both of these women would probably not like me very much,
(31:51):
which makes me a little sad because I like them.
But um, there you have it. Flashback is written and
hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and executive producer
(32:12):
at Azzy. He was produced by Robert Coulos, Tracy Moran,
Orio Diezua, and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff engineered our show
special thanks to the crew at I Heart Radio podcast Networks,
especially Sophie Lectman and Jack O'Brien. Make sure to subscribe
to Flashback on the I Heart Radio app or listen
wherever you get your podcasts. Flashback is the latest podcast
(32:34):
from Azzi, a modern media company producing original TV series, festivals,
news and podcasts for curious people. Ozzy's unique storytelling focuses
on the new and the next, whether that's forward looking
news and features bold new perspectives on TV or brand
new ways of looking at history. For today's lecture, though,
(32:57):
we look at another big fan of Little House on
the Rary, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, as a young
man McVeigh was a huge fan of the Frontier television
drama that was based on the books. Mcveigh's favorite episode
(33:19):
the one where Michael Landon is paul Ingles tries to
stop the other farmers from rioting when a government tax
hike threatens their farms. As the farmers complain about the
tax assessor, one of them makes a startling prediction. You
just mark my words. Someday they will tax a man
for what they earns. Did income tax? Ye never happened
in a thousand years. To die deeper, head to Ausie
(33:46):
dot com slash flashback. That's oz Y dot com slash flashback.
There you can find my other lecture notes from today's episode,
featuring extended interviews, links to further reading and more information
on Unintended consequences and the theology of the Little House Books,
and as well as links to other hidden stories from
history uncovered by me and other reporters at Assie. We
(34:26):
all need a break from the constant cycle to learn
something new, to gain new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus
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on a variety of subjects or pick up a new hobby.
I've been enjoying the Great Courses Plus while researching this
season of flashback lectures like Playball, The Rise of Baseball
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is America's Pastime, History of the Supreme Court, and Battlefield
Europe have helped me connect the dots on several stories
from history. Right now, they're giving our listeners a special,
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