Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for May 04, 2022

I once heard someone say how being a child now is tougher than it ever was and I immediately thought about 8 year old boys working in the coal mines and 6 year old girls shucking oysters.

Whenever there’s something bad, something good will happen as well

“The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.” —Billy Joel, “Keeping the Faith”

Democracy is a grand experiment littered with fault and failure in its formation and reformation! we cannot accept failure as fatal or flaw as final but must serve together the common good!

Just because that happened doesn’t mean we have to try to sink just as low.

Those who remember history are doomed to watch in horror as the ones who DON’T remember it bring it all back around again.

The appalling thing about the internment of Japanese-Americans (it happened in Canada too) is how many liberal heroes enabled it! Walter Lippmann took the “Something has to be done!” approach in his newspaper column; Dr. Seuss drew a cartoon stereotyping them as “fifth columnists” (which he later regretted); California Attorney-General Earl Warren pressed the issue to get elected Governor; and of course, FDR himself signed off on it…

And then there was that whole slavery thing…

So. Is the world worse or better now than it was before? Tell me why.

Fair point. But the goal is to be better, not return to the bad old days—at the goal for those of us who are forward-thinking.

How about removing the politics from the Supreme Court? Please tell me what’s wrong with this solution approach:

Make nonpartisan Justices more powerful. Nonpartisan defined as "confirmed by a majority of the Senators in BOTH parties, which used to be the norm. More powerful as defined by a special recusal power. I suggest that each nonpartisan Justice would have an option to compel two partisan Justices to be recused from any partisan political case brought before the Court.

The basic idea is that every president would be strongly motivated to take the politics out because each nonpartisan confirmation would be like three partisan Justices. (One vote + two recusals.)

One footnote: I think the current Justices should be grandfathered. That could be an exclusion from the recusal thing or a constraint on recusing downwards, only to less senior Justices. As regards the currently packed Court, maybe this story will lead to such a political defeat for the GOP that a strongly Democratic Congress can reconsider the matter next year…

Historical evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nominations_to_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

The government? The SCOTUS? “They’ve only just begun…”

History is such an annoying invention. Frickin backstabbing thing.

Look to the Ukraine these days and the horriblr news coming from there.

Let’s go to the comments and see what the experts say….

People remember the treatment of the Japanese during that time (1930-45), but not the Hispanics, I wonder why?“During the Great Depression, in the early 1930s, the United States deported between 500,000 and 2 million people of Mexican descent (including the illegal expulsion of up to 1.2 million U.S. citizens)9 to Mexico (see Mexican Repatriation)”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation

See also a lovely story line on this topic running on a different strip:https://www.gocomics.com/ben/2022/04/25?ct=v&cti=110457

Don’t know much about historyDon’t know much biologyDon’t know much about science bookDon’t know much about the French I took….but when we lost Sam Cooke, we lost the greatest of music books whose place can’t be replaced ever.

The Ministry of Truth has said that statement is false, nothing happened to the Americans of Japanese descent.

Yeah, but this stuff affects me.

Thanks for the history lesson, Goat.

Or remember when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade?

We have so much, and yet it is never enough.

And then the injustices done to Native Americans….

One thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history.

Very timely, given the Supreme Court’s intent to take away women’s sovereignty over their own bodies.

It’s certainly true that we don’t have it as bad as Japanese people in WWII internment camps, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t time to worry.

Now go study what the Japanese did to Americans and Europeans living in Japan at that time.

Or the 62 million plus babies that have been murdered. Maybe that’ll stop soon.

Thank you

Im glad that the whole of this comment section isn’t sad little children ranting about how “Big Nate is big bad”. Keep going guys.

Those who live in glass houses should not throw the first stone…History always repeats itself, surmising, man will never learn from past mistakes….

Hyperbole the language tool of weak-minded snowflakes like Beetle Bailey-Level Intelligence, Friedbird waterpistol, patrick murphy, loony squiggles, montana bill, rikitikirussianbot, klemubermoron, ammosexuallydysfunctional, opspecial ed, JAwholikesbluegrass, jane b thinkin’ VERY ignorantlee, 60 rottenbuzzardbrains adhered to a scorching sidewalk, sammy ugly avatar, leonarddonk.

Peez go back to Zeeba Zeeba humor.

What the US Government officially and intentionally did to the NativeAmerican population was just horrific.

It’s nice to know someone knows our history. No one seems to be teaching it any more.

I’d rather celebrate how far we’ve come than complain about the past. Learn from it rather than dwell on its inequities.

Reading Ben this week, Canada had Japanese internment also.

Good reminder, but they are still at it today, just in not so obvious ways……

Italians too. My Father in law and his family were in a camp for two weeks in Northern California. Just saying…

The goal of most politicians is to get you longing for the good old days, that never really existed, and try to convince you that they can make them happen again.

Now this strategy has been taken over by organizations that claim to inform you about news, and by the internet.

Please remember the words of the Dred Pirate Roberts – “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

That’s next

fear not… concentration camps for non-evangelicals is on the to-do list

Democracy is the worst form of government. except for all the others. Winston Churchill.

Remember when we killed 50,000 American conscripted soldiers in Vietnam for no apparent reason?

Not to mention millions of Vietnamese deaths.

How about firebombing Tokyo and killing 95000 civilians in one night? Pretty heinous shit right there.

But a mask takes away my right to decide about my body, myself So…?abortion??? That different!

Those internment camps will be returning, thanks to the Republican National Supreme Court. But they won’t go after just Asians this time.

BTW, I love Steven’s cartoons.

After a long vacation,Pastis is back to throwing hardballs.Thecomments should be quite lengthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” — Yoda

“The whole country would be better off going back to the ideals of 1949!” …said a white guy.

Truman was President then.So far,so good.

Or when it helped return fugitive slaves?

Being from Sacratomato I was surrounded by that dark horrible act. All the little Truck Farms in my area were taken away overnight so many friends had parents & grandparents in camps. Those exceptional Citizens accepted the insult much better than I would have. Most are gone now but I won’t forget their Dignity.

Um, remind me of the historical context where impinging on personal freedom is seen as correct in hindsight. Seems to me that Goat is arguing with Rat.

taking away the right to abortion is pretty up there, too, so not a good time for this one, stephan.

and now we have to even think of having to defend democracy. Our species needs to leave so the planet can start over and heal.

May the fourth be with you!

Perspective is fine, but one thing does not negate the other, and such dismissiveness does not a good friend make.

All your uterus are belong to us.

Here’s something to explode a few heads. Many don’t realize it, but there is a relationship between slavery and abortion, at least in the USA. Minority populations were and are the targets. Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics tend to be located in the inner cities, by design. Founder of PP, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist, someone who believes in “purifying” the human race. Her motto was “More from the fit, less from the unfit.” She was admired by Hitler, by the way—no surprise. She began PP with what she called The Negro Project. She went to Black churches to convince the pastors to support birth control for their parishioners. Even Sanger wasn’t selling abortion at that point, but it didn’t take long.

Is the targeted destruction in the womb of minority babies not racist? Genocide? Could it not be said that abortion is the civil rights issue of our time?

Somebody needs to, so many states forbidding the teaching of actual history, so wrong

Yes, that too was terrible. Should we keep repeating history?

Yeah, the Roosevelt Internment Camps were pretty bad. But Rat still makes a point about how bad things are now, since they’ve been deteriorating for a long time.

Viva the Constitution!

Strange! They didn’t run this one in my local newspaper today — I don’t see anything controversial about it.

Hmmm, is a great deal of restriction on a minority greater impinging on personal freedoms than much lesser restrictions imposed on the entire populace? Seems almost an apples to oranges thing.

There are no more Japanese internment camps or legal slavery and Vietnam is now a most-favored trading partner. How long will I have to wait for the Roman Catholic Inquisition on the Supreme Court to return my control of my own body? Will Coke Can Clarence or Beer Boy make the first move?Afence

Abolished. Did you miss that part? Pastis is stunningly dismissive of women’s right to make decisions about their own reproductive organs. I’m out.

NEWSDAY censored this one and ran an oldie.