What an American original was Rose Wilder Lane! What a treasure! She lived from 1886 until 1968, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and widely considered a silent collaborator on the Little House series. Regardless, she was a great intellectual, writer, and editor in her own right, and was even one of the highest paid writers in the US during her days as a war correspondent and novelist.
The Discovery of Freedom (1943) was her non-fiction book, one that had a huge impact on American libertarian thought in the 20th century. In fact, Robert LeFevre called it “one of the most influential books of the 20th century.”
When Arno Press asked Murray Rothbard to pick out a library for reprinting, he included The Discovery of Freedom in it.
It’s no wonder: here we have an eloquent hymn to human energy and its creative power. She sought to highlight the difference it made in America that the individual was permitted freedom from government authority. This one idea, she wrote, created the most glorious civilization in world history. Her passion was to help others see the cause: not authority but individual initiative and action.
She traced out this idea to provide sketches of history from the ancient world to the mid-20th century, believing that she had discovered the answer to what transformed the world from a dark, miserable, sickly, and dangerous place to one where humans thrive and create. She further condemned all political trends of her time from Fascism, to Communism, to the New Deal, and blasted war as the most destructive action of all.
Her prose is stark and strong, the product of decades of experience in attempting to get readers to listen, and succeeding. So she wrote such sentences as:
“I am a contributing creator of American civilization; it does not create me. I control the stem of this civilization that is within my reach; it does not control me. It cannot even make me read Spengler, if I’d rather read a pulp magazine. Yet on such reasoning as Spengler’s men have tried to act from the beginning of recorded time. On such reasoning, most of the inhabitants of this earth are trying to act now.”
This is a thrilling and even dangerous book–dangerous to anyone who aspires to rule over others. They had and have a fierce opponent in this marvelous journalist of liberty. The book is featured on Mises.org as a literary application of the Misesian idea–not a piece of theory but a book animated by high ideals and packed with high energy.
This hardback book is 261 pages of some of the most thrilling history and rhetoric you will ever come across.
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Excellent!
I always liked the “Little House” series of books. One of my first memories of anything is my mom reading them to my brother and me before bedtime. Today, I really enjoy Rose Wilder Lane’s wonderful writing and clear thinking.
I’ll have to see if I can scrape some cash together.
Thanks for this!
Thomas J. Van Wyk
The store also has a T-shirt of Rose Wilder Lane (just heard Doug French plug it in this lecture.
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