Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 28, 2012

Hedley earns his paycheck from Mr. Murdoch.

At least Paul responded coherently.

What is BD drinking? Beer? Fruit juice? How long does a can last him?

Not that Hedley’s biased or anything.

Poor BD — forever watching Faux News and Roland Hedley preaching — he must be a glutton for punishment.

Christian Conservative Voters Boo Ron Paul’s ‘Golden Rule

Oh Sam! (Who’s developing into a beauty like her mom!) Where are you now that Dad needs you? (Just look at his face in panels 1 and 3.)

Roland is probably more likable than anyone else on Fax News.

The stuff I disagree with Ron Paul with is the stuff he’s least likely to be able to enact, so it tends to even out for me.

“No modern society could function under a libertarian government.”

Is that what the Tea Party meant to prove when they elected to Congress representatives who are committed to dismantling government by starving it of revenues?

Roland’s sophomoric paradox is just a corollary of Reagan’s buzzword, “Government is the problem, not the solution.”

Faux political thought can be corrected by reading the opening of The Republic, where Socrates proves to Thrasymachus (a Roland Headley from 2400 years ago) that just governance is needed even to organize a band of pirates.

It is nice to hear from another,like me.

Roland is overlooking Somalia, whose “government” fits Ron Paul’s prescriptions. With no taxes, no army, and nothing besides local judges and police to regulate free enterprise, Somalia is a libertarian success story. And any voter with a gun can call for free elections.

Wisdom from the mouth of Roland Hedley? Now we’re really in trouble.

So saith the socialist.

Trudeau’s strip’s point, I think, is to expose the hypocritical use of sophistry, on the part of Roland Headly (quite possibly at the behest of Fox owner Murdoch). Hedley sets up a straw man falsely representing Ron Paul’s position, then whacks it down with a witch’s broom. Thus does Paul’s true position get misrepresented to the extent that Roland can “cut him off at the knees” by saying there’s no point in Ron Paul being able to state and defend his own position! Subtle snow job, yes. Fact-based critical thinking, no. It was a tough assignment, but Hedley pulled it off. Still, even a conservative Republican like BD comes across as unconvinced.

Richard, my guess is you have voted AGAINST a candidate because you disagreed with him 1%.

The most cogent summary of libertarianism I’ve seen so far.

People are being too harsh in regard to Paul. There are Libertarian extremists who come close to being anarchists, but Paul isn’t one of them, and they are few. He, and most libertarians, simply want a government that is a lot more like the one that existed in when Thomas Jefferson was President. In those days there were no police, a tiny army and navy, and relatively powerful local and state governments. Most Americans were farmers or otherwise self-employed. Each community bore the responsibility of caring for its own poor and unfortunate. And, apart from the regions where slavery throve, America was regarded as “the best poor man’s country in the world”! Most libertarian rhetoric is derived from that era. Our Constitution was drafted and adopted in that world. I think the libertarians are utopian in thinking that we have had no good reason to evolve as we have, or that we would today be better off trying to live with that sort of government. Ours is now a diverse, urban, and technological society. Horse-and-buggy government is no longer adequate. That is not to say that there are not libertarian (or -ish) solutions to some of our problems, or that there are not sacred cows in our system that we could survive without. A simplified income tax code intended only to raise a revenue; a more modest military and less interventionist foreign policy. There are liberal libertarians and conservative libertarians. There could be and perhaps are Democratic libertarians. Paul is definitely a Conservative Libertarian, and often (not always) surrenders his libertarian credentials when they conflict with Conservative orthodoxy.

Under the Wiktionary definition of libertarianism, then if I wanna shoot you with my Glock and you wanna shoot me with your Lugar, then we shall be allowed to have a duel nomatter who says what. Therefore, libertarianism would repeal all laws/rulings against duels, federal, state, county, and city.

Benjamin Franklin said that if there were land enough, we would all live like Indians, without laws or government, taking what we need directly from the hand of nature, coming together when we please and living by such rules as our consciences dictated, and personally defending ourselves and our families from other when we could not avoid them. With growing numbers however, we could less readily avoid one another; agriculture meant staying put, it meant investing labor now for benefit later; it meant that laws were necessary. The more numerous and crowded people become, said Franklin, the more numerous and complex their laws must become. The town more than the country, the city more than the town. And so on. Benjamin Franklin got it right. NYC today has more people than the US did when George Washington was president. We have more people behind bars today than the US had free citizens in 1776. With the speed of modern transport, and electronic connectivity, we ALL now live in the city. How many adults can now say that they go a day without seeing the face of someone they don’t know? How many can even say that they go a day in which the majority of faces they see are the faces of people whom they can name? But even if we could “return” to an America of small towns and localized authority, would we really like it? Local society can be pretty narrow and parochial. And in the old days, when “government” was seldom to be seen, sometimes the Henry Potters dominated and controlled the whole community because they were the “job creators” who could make or break the citizens. Those who tout local government over the Federal Government as the real protector of the people’s interests forget Tammany Hall, Daly’s Chicago, and the long-standing reputation of New Orleans. And even small towns can be the same.

It would seem that the cartoonist does not think very well of himself or us. No one could function in a society without war, without hunger and with abundance?

What I find intriguing about the idea of a Ron Paul presidency is not his storybook-libertarian idea of dismantling government (I happen to think government does some useful things that contribute to maximizing my persona freedom, such as building free highways so I’m free to move about the country, providing a portable retirement plan so I’m free to change jobs as I wish, and so forth). It’s more the matter of what he could actually do if by some accident he were elected. You have to assume he’d face opposition from both the Democrats and most of the Republicans, just as Jimmy Carter (and, to a lesser extent, Barack Obama) were undermined by their own party. He’d probably accomplish little beyond what could be done through executive orders and his authority as commander-in-chief of the military. And that could be a lot—ordering the troops home from a number of ill-advised imperial adventures, prosecuting members of the last two administrations for war crimes, closing Gitmo, etc. Of course, he’d have to do these things in his first 90 days in office, as he’d no doubt be impeached and removed from office before the cherry trees were blooming.

He pegged ron Paul. Can’t believe GT got something right!

Wouldn’t a concrete jungle Libertarian have a different frame of reference than a Western prairie Libertarian? Where are the boundaries of person and property? We’re a big country; we need big government – run by Democrats! BD still thinks in small, Walden, football team terms. His only big picture is the flat screen.

Several of the comments here—-especially those by Doughfoot, Sharuniboy, and puddlegum—-show the kind of serious political thinking that Doonesbury is uniquely able to inspire.

I would only point our that when we talk about rights, we should always remember that an individual’s right is in every case a claim over against the claim of society at large. That’s why a tension exists between the interest of the individual and the interest of the community as a whole. (The one exception is self-preservation; it’s in our common interest to defend ourselves when we’re attacked by external enemies).

When I assert my “right” to property, I’m asking society to recognize that this plot of land is mine (Latin “proprium”) and not theirs. That’s why the right to property is so closely bound up with my identity as a citizen: weaken the authority of the state or its laws and you jeopardize my citizenship and my right to property.

In the same way, my “right” to free speech depends upon society’s allowing me to criticize it. My “right” is limited by society’s interest in protecting the rights of others to civil peace (e.g., I have no “right” to shout “fire!” in a theater).

The “right” of a woman to choose is especially contentious, and it has understandably vexed our constitutional experts ever since birth control won protection as an inalienable “right to privacy.” In this case, the woman’s “right”—-to safeguard her health and the well-being of her family—-is a right-over-against society’s interest in protecting its citizens.

Despite the assertions of those zealous for “life” above all, our wiser LAWS do not confer on the fetus the right to life that a citizen enjoys. Mississippi recently tried to redefine abortion as “murder” by giving the fetus citizenship (or “personhood”). That futile attempt shows a failure to grasp our basic Constitutional principle: the principle that a “right” has to be conferred by the state.

Take away the state—-or weaken its laws, as the libertarians want to do—-and you take away your rights.

What do you mean by “Modern Society”?. Our country was founded on Libertarian principles. Is it that old? You have to remember that Libertarians are socially liberal (which really frosts the people that want to tell us how to live.

The Government’s job is to get the people together with the fewest laws. Religion’s role is telling them how to live. That is true separation between church and state.

Paul makes more sense than anyone, folks. If he brings one thing to the table, it’s policies which will prevent bankrupt. US now = Rome before the fall.

Ron Paul – Sounds like a type of guitar to me :)

Regardless of what many contend, there is a deep chasm between Republicans (me me me) and Democrats (us us us.) IMO, Libertarians fall in the GOP arena. BTW, Dylan, gated communities for poor people are called ghettos and the “euthanasia” is insidious. For the USA to survive, the wealth must be redistributed. That’s not going to happen under a Republican, or a “Republican-like,” regime.

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