In case you haven't already had enough parts of your childhood ruined in recent months, now there's another favorite that critics are taking down — Little House on the Prairie.
Turns out that Laura from Little House on the Prairie was a xenophobic, racist, land-grabber. To be clear, I'm not talking about Melissa Gilbert, the actress who played Laura on the TV show. I'm talking about the real-life Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the beloved series of Little House books that inspired the TV show.
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Last weekend the American Library Association voted to strip Wilder's name from a children's book award that had been named the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for over 60 years. The Association cited, "anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments in her work," as their reason and that Wilder's work, "includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with our core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect."
Yes, Wilder's work contains a few lines that express the "stereotypical attitudes" that she's accused of. But should a few lines discount her entire body of work? And out of all literature, this is where you decide to focus your progressive fury?
The larger concern here is that progressives are working overtime on a cultural purge. Wilder is just the latest target in the drive to tear down or change symbols, flags, and statues across the country that don't measure up to progressive morality. It's really arrogant to judge all people of the past based on the pristine standards of 2018 progressivism.
Since they can't time-travel and ruin Wilder's career, or stop slave-owner Thomas Jefferson from writing the Declaration of Independence, progressives must be content to use their moral scissors to re-edit history based on their values, and through the lens of victimhood.
Progressives don't trust you to encounter difficult, controversial, or offensive things and deal with them on your own.
In the end, one of the saddest things about progressivism is that it doesn't trust you at all. Progressives don't trust you to encounter difficult, controversial, or offensive things and deal with them on your own.
Worst of all, there is no grace in the progressive mindset, not even for authors who have been dead for over half a century and who lived in a completely different context than our own. And that is tragic, because grace is exactly what we could all use right now.
