Little House on the Prairie and Freedom

I could not get up to the cabin at all until 1997 because of the problems arising from the rebuilding of the house in Northridge, Anne's death,  and health problems of my own.

Additionally, I had agreed to put on a conference for the Republican Liberty Caucus in Santa Barbara in October of 1995.

Roger MacBride, and old friend of mine, had asked me to do this when we attended the conference the previous year in Tennessee.

I had met Roger when he was running for President of the United States as a Libertarian in 1975.

Roger was then producing the Little House on the Prairie, television series. Roger owned the rights to the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, which he had inherited from his adopted grandmother, Rose Wilder Lane, Wilder's mother. We had kept in touch, talking about events within the Libertarian Party which worried both of us. These centered around the sudden appearance of the Koch Brothers of Koch Industries and the introduction of a candidate who was the head of Arco's (Atlantic Richfield Company) division of law Ed Clark.

Everyone liked Ed and I knew both Ed and his wife, Alicia, personally. But he could only commit to three months of a full time campaign and the candidate proposed by Roger, Bill Hunscher, was willing and able to run full time for a year and a half, assisting with the need to obtain full ballot status and assist local organizations. This was how Roger, himself had run in 1975 – 1976.  His campaign plane, which he piloted himself, as the No-Force One. 

The Koch brothers had hired Edward H. Crane, III to run the campaign for Ed Clark. By 1978 many of us in the Libertarian Party had come to realize Crane was not to be trusted. The Kochs dealt with these objections by naming Crane Director for Public Relations instead of Campaign Manger. But this shuffling of titles did nothing to change the lineup for the campaign and the outcome of the election.

Crane stole the nomination using the same techniques used today routinely by the Kochs. Koch delegates were packed into the convention, their expenses paid for by the Kochs. Most of these had newly joined the LP, and filled in vacancies in delegations which lacked enough delegates to make up their allotments. 

I met both David Koch, who was running for the vice presidential nomination so they could spend more on the campaign, and his older brother, Charles.

Roger had arrived in Los Angeles sometime before and as Southern Vice Chairman of the Libertarian Party and also Chairman of the San Fernando Valley region for the LPC, I had put on a Birthday Party for Roger, a barbecue at a VFW Park there. Attendance was great with lots of local delegates to the convention soon to be held, attending.

But the delegate count, which I was helping carry out for Roger, was not good. By the time the convention was beginning I had to tell Roger we had lost.

Eventually, Roger left the LP, disgusted by what he saw taking place. I also left for the same kind of reasons. I joined the Republican Party in 1988 and became active in the National Federation of Republican Women, over a million members strong.

The kind of long-term, cooperative effort Roger and I shared builds bonds that last and this is one of the reasons we stayed in touch over the years.

Roger died in February of 1995. I was determined to do the conference and begin it with a memorial service for him. This ate up 1995 into 1996 because of the irregularity of our income, which had actually smoothed out after 1992.

Both the Memorial Service and the Conference, with twenty speakers from across the country,  were memorable and brought insights.