You know, I used to think exactly like you about kids fairy tales. Until I realized that if all kids stories were void of any trace of violence and "unethical" subliminal messages like the ones you mentioned above, they would all have to be similar and this is called ...censorship.

I personally read many stories as a kid with what I later realized were terrible messages to pass on to a kid. Cinderella was a poor girl who pretended to be someone else in order to become a trophy wife. Hansel and Gretel burned someone alive in the oven for revenge. My favorite book was "The Blondie" (it was from my native country) and displayed what I now understand as pure racism. The whole story revolved around how pure and kind was the blond fair-skinned girl and how evil her dark sisters (the darkest, the meanest).

As a kid I was also exposed to a lot of violence while being taught nationalistic stories about physical tortures of national heroes. Let alone some traditional songs that came up with some very creative ways to die.

Yet I'm here now and I believe that all this exposure was something that aided me in becoming a freethinker. A protective bubble isn't the answer. If you are not exposed to something, you cannot know what it is about and therefore you cannot fight it. Initially, one has to be exposed to a diverse range of ideas. This is what will eventually create contradicting concepts in one's mind, which will force the individual to examine them more closely. The key word here is diverse. If you only read a genre, or articles from a specific school of thought... you will never know what the other side has to say.