Dr. Helen just thinks she invented going Galt.
In 1938, at fifty-one, [Rose Wilder Lane] bought three suburban acres near Danbury, Connecticut, and a clapboard farmhouse—her first real home. (Remodelling, she told a friend, was “my vice.”) As she aged, her inner and outer worlds both contracted. She abandoned her journal and, with it, Holtz concludes, her introspection. Old friends were alienated by her increasingly kooky and embattled militance. (One of them described her as “floating between sanity and a bedlam of hates.”) The F.B.I. took notice of her “subversive” actions to protest Social Security, and she made headlines by denouncing the agency’s “Gestapo” tactics. She talked about reducing her income to a bare minimum, so that she wouldn’t have to file taxes.
The whack descended on Laura Ingalls' daughter when Roosevelt was elected. Apparently having poor people get a Social Safety Network, back in the 30's, was as evil for Rose Wilder Lane, as having a President of Color give health care to poor folk is to the Wingwits now.
1 comment:
I have to admit, that I'm really amused by the people who talk about wanting to "go Galt." They always assume that all creativity and ability is somehow limited to upper middle class white folks just like them, and that somehow they're one of the elect.
I have to find my amusement where I can...
That's interesting about Rose Wilder, isn't it?
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