John J. Miller on Stan Berenstain and the one Berenstain Bears book he might recommend to conservatives:
Want to use bedtime stories to teach conservative values? You could crack open a copy of The Conservative Mind, by Russell Kirk, and review the “six canons of conservative thought.” One of them states:
Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress. Society must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.Wise and well put — and guaranteed to put your children to sleep, if they don’t start squawking for a Berenstain Bears book instead.
Alternately, you could go straight to Old Hat New Hat. In it, Father visits a hat shop with the intention of replacing his old hat. He tries out a bunch of new hats, but each one has a problem: It’s too big, too small, too flat, too tall, too loose, too tight, too heavy, too light, too red, too dotty, too blue, too spotty, too fancy, too frilly, too shiny, too silly, too beady, too bumpy, too leafy, too lumpy, too twisty, too twirly, too wrinkly, too curly, too holey, too patchy, too feathery, too scratchy, too crooked, too straight, or too pointed.
If you made it through that last sentence, then you’ve practically read the whole book. In the end, of course, Father decides that his old hat is “Just right!” He sticks with the tried and true. As Kirk might say, he practices prudence.