-By Warner Todd Huston
Did you know that the election of Barack Obama means that conservatism is dead forever more? The New Yorker thinks it is anyway. Its recent piece on the authors of the “Little House on the Prairie” series not only pronounces conservatism likely dead but also imagines the same fate for capitalism itself. This is just another example of how the self-congratulatory, isolated left constantly announces the death of capitalism and conservatism as it has been doing since FDR, our second most socialist president ever, came to power.
So how does one get from talking about the beloved children’s classic of rugged individualists eking out a living in the wild, wide-open wilderness to the announcement that capitalism and conservatism are dead? It’s the sort of trick that only a left leaning publication like the New Yorker can do and it does it well here.
As it happens, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder and co-author of the “Little House” series, Rose Lane Wilder, was in her later life a high profile conservative or libertarian who hobnobbed with the likes of Ayn Rand. In the middle of the 20th century with their history of self-reliance, Rose and mother Laura shied away from the Democrats when FDR was elected because of he advocated statism. Rose Lane called FDR a “dictator” and decried the generous welfare programs that the Democrats were sponsoring.
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Liberals Love to Write Conservatism’s Obituary”