In an earlier post on this blog I posed the question -- "do any readers out there know of children's books that do NOT use a monarchy form of government as the premise for their storyline?" You know -- Cinderella marries Prince Charming while the peasants look on with big smiles.
Yes I know, elected democracies (like the US Congress) are not as romantic as a Walt Disney castle, but it is far better in my thinking to rid our children of the elitist propaganda that having a royal/noble class is a good thing for the unwashed masses.
So the next time parents plan to read another royal fairytale to their children perhaps they can read this poem by Carl Sandburg to themselves first:
A Million Young Workmen, 1915
A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads.
And the million are now under soil and their rotting flesh will be in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.
The kings are grinning, the kaiser and the czar - they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war.
I dreamed of a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson...and yelled:
God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.
Well said Mr. Sandburg,
Todd
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