Rose Wilder Lane - Moxie Champion

More than 6 years I've been researching political movements and history. I've been reading books written in the late 1930's - to the 1970's in a sort of quest to understand history as it unfolded, through the eyes of people as they were experiencing it.

I'd had a quote about freedom from Rose Wilder Lane tucked in the quote book I created from quotes that struck me along the way as I read.

I knew Lane was the daughter of Laura Ingalls; however, I didn't know she was considered one of the "mothers" of the  Libertarian party.

I started to read her book, The Discover of Freedom, yesterday, June 2. I was amazed at how my thoughts and feelings and ideas imitate Lane's - and yet, I'd had no idea she was such a political (and fiction writer) phenom.

This is what makes me sad about the years I spent doing mind numbing, soul crushing, things; parties, bars, movies, days spent lost watching TV shows (Ok, Friends was not really a loss because we all need a few breaks now and then), reading fiction - and in the last few years: getting hopelessly lost on Facebook (do I really need to spend 45 minutes looking at the 'wall' of people that are friends of friends?).

I keep working on a few different projects and have one major project that I keep refining, re-tuning. It is full of big ideas - big ideas that are very simple. I just wasn't sure how to whittle them down and explain them in relate-able language.

And then I stumbled on Rose Wilder Lane (who's quote had been with me for years, I simply did not seek out information on her nor the book it came from until now) and there was my answer.

No one has ever mentioned her in any of my research. I have Libertarian friends and her name has never surfaced.

How sad!

There were actually 3 women who gave the Libertarian party some street cred: Ayn Rand, Lane, and Isabel Paterson.

I feel finding Lane is the last push I need to wrap up the big project.

I felt I might be insane as I have a ton of binders filled with notes, thoughts, highlights from books, etc. I have notebooks filled with personal essays, and, indeed, blog posts - lots and lots of blog posts. But most of them are scattered (the blog posts) - because I'm easily distractable. Most of us are; we have different people, different hobbies, pulling us in all sorts of direction. It's easy to lose sight of the few things that are truly important.

I was thrilled to learn that Lane had filled over 84 notebooks with her writing at the time of her death (she died in 1968 (the same year I was born) at the age of 81).

Maybe I'm not so crazy after all. Distracted - yes. Quirky - absolutely. Insane? I hope not.

Albert Hobbs - Conservative Professor Of Sociology University of Penn

Albert Hobbs, Conservative Professor of Sociology wrote 3 books dealing with the epidemic of  liberal influence in behavioral sciences. His first book came out in 1951! 

So, Jonathan Haidt The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion claims to have discovered that OHMYGOSH, Conservatives are under-represented in the field of Behavioral Sciences and that in the last 50 years, liberals have, not only 'taken over' behavioral sciences, they have created a hostile environment (liberals, being intolerable? What!! Absurd!!)for those who think logically and believe in self honor/value.
I can't even remember what led me to Hobbs book (Man is Moral Choice)...perhaps because I've been a student of the behavioral sciences and when I woke from my deep political slumber to realize all the crappy choices I made in life were based on Liberal Values, I started searching for Conservatives in behavioral sciences which was like trying to find Obama's college transcripts - luckily, I finally...finally discovered Man is Moral Choice...and then also The vision and the constant star and The claims of sociology: A critique of textbooks.
Talk. About. Taking. Off. Blinders.
Wow.
His book(s) expose the discrimination and devaluation of strong character values and how the rank strivers (liberals)in behavioral sciences are often really doing nothing but creating disease(s) for only which they have the cure.
Other than my family and my dogs, the only other thing I'd bother to save in a fire would be my 3 books by Hobbs. They are invaluable in insight and knowledge - and prove that Jonathan Haidt's claim is BS - conservatives have never been represented in the behavioral sciences, and his "shocking new theory" is actually 64 years old.
This book will help you get clued, not screwed - because happiness and success is up to you; not the government, not the pretentious elite professors who think they are better then everyone because they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper (jokes on them, no wonder they are so bitter!), not self help gurus like Deepak Chopra who shrills that people should not have attachment to money while, of course, he wears his diamond encrusted designer eyeglasses.
Wake up World.

Moxie Will Awards: Bill Cunningham -

 Bill Cunningham is the very essence of creative, optimistic, courage (Moxie) and self determination (Will) - he lives his life with Character and strives to be Significant, rather than superior.

You do not have to like Fashion, or NYC, or the NY Times in order to enjoy and be inspired by this man who is in his 80's - and still works (and enjoys it)!

Bill Cunningham, New York; The Documentary

Though not a book, this is a great documentary to watch and worth trying to find. It is uplifting.

This is from a reviewer on Amazon which sums Mr. Cunningham up beautifully. Also note, I was so moved after watching the documentary, I wrote him a letter, sent it to the NY TIMES, and a few months later, I received a handwritten letter back from him, with a picture he had taken of the some boys in Central Park building a snowman. That, my friends, is true character. He is a beautiful soul. And such an Independent Spirit!


Amazon Review from D.G:

I came across this doc film clicking around on Netflix streaming late one night. At first it seemed puzzling why anyone would make a documentary about an old guy who works for the New York Times riding a bicycle around and photographing street fashions. But I quickly got drawn into the film and understood how the filmmakers had chosen this unusual man.

Bill Cunningham, now in his 80's, has worked for many years as a street photographer, riding precariously around Manhattan on his bicycle and snapping (film) photos of what people are wearing. In an age when there is so much corruption in all walks of life, what comes out in the film is Cunningham's unique sense of personal integrity. In a city obsessed with status, he seems to care nothing for status or celebrity or personalities; he is only interested in the clothes, the ideas. When he attends society and fashion functions in the evening, which he does almost every evening, he declines to accept food or drink; it would compromise his ethics. Indeed here is a man who has no apparent vices and minimal personal life. He lives frugally. He strives to be honest. He strives to do no harm. He cares little for his comfort. He has simply made a life of observing how people in New York express themselves through fashion; it is enough for him. "I have tried to play a straight game" he says about his life.

One might not be surprised to hear that a medieval monk or pure mathematician or a scholar of ancient languages had such an ascetic and, one may say, spiritually refined existence, but in the New York fashion world! And so he is a beloved fixture in New York. An inspiring documentary, which affirms how one can live in the everyday world and yet hold to an "impeccable path."