Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for July 04, 2013

Did that machine involve a feather in his hat?

Arlo could not be more wrong. The entire point of the Decleration was Life and Liberty. And the Pursuit of happiness, not necessarily the obtainment of such. We were the first country that had the Gov’t serve the people, not the other way around. I suggest Arlo read it again. It is available for free on Kindle.

Bilawa, where is y0ur head at? Arlo says nothing about the attainability of happiness!…And you got another thing wrong. We are the first country where the people ARE the government. Got a problem with the government? NO! You have a problem with your fellow loyal Americans…

Actually, the pursuit of happiness was about property ownership, it had nothing to do with an emotional frame of mind. The colonists were declaring their right to own property, which had been denied to the average man under the aristocracy system in England.

Jefferson originally had "the pursuit of property ", but the congressional Congress changed it to “the pursuit of happiness” so to get the public behind the idea of the Declaration of Independence..p.s. James Monroe author of the Bill of Rights also died on July 4th (1831).

The traditional phrase was “life, liberty, and property”, and this was deliberately changed by Jefferson (some say on Franklin’s prodding), not as an attack on property rights as such, but to suggest that the right to property was not one “endowed by the Creator”, but a socially mediated right, created and regulated by social institutions, particularly government.Thus, property in slaves — Franklin’s concern — could be changed or ended.It’s a valuable point to remember these days, since we have all these silly “libertarians” around who seem to think that property rights and economic markets could exist without the protection of the coercive powers of the state. They can not.

It was John Locke who coined “Life, Liberty and Property.” I’m glad our founders changed it.

My point is still that the “government”, you may or may not have a beef with, is your fellow Americans….nothing more….

PastaFazzouli!

You really believe that the government is spying on ALL of us? Must have at least 100 million spies.And this gov. always spied on certain individuals and groups. J.Edgar had dossiers that were the original “who’s who” in America.

Let us have the freedom to celebrate our freedom as we see fit and proper.

Happy Fourth, everyone! I’ve been trying for awhile to get up early enough to reach most of the bright “Arlo and Janis” readers, many of whom are past masters at interpreting obscure comics. I have puzzled over the June 23 “Beetle Bailey,” and was not able to see why it was funny. Just read comments at http://www.seattlepi.com/comics-and-games/fun/Beetle_Bailey/2013-06-23/ They helped a little, but the comic still seems lame. Anyone else have ideas? Thanks.

Without getting into politics — there are a billion other places on the internet for that — I want to say, sadly, that Arlo just isn’t well-suited to this kind of role. Nice try, but I can’t call it a successful comics experiment. Happy July 4, all!

“And why is your government now spying on all of us?”

Said every government of another government since the invention of governments.

A history professor told the class that “pursuit of happiness” was a ‘code’ for, the right to own property that no nobleman, or privileged person can take from you.It was a disappointing thought, but it does make sense. It would have been nice for happiness to simply mean happy.Respectfully,C.

One can prefer “freedom” without regard to “democracy,” or one can magnify “democracy” without regard to “freedom.” Conservatives and Libertarians favor freedom, without regard to the wishes of the people. And Leftists use the tool of “democracy” to constrain the freedom inherent in “sinful” man.

Dr. Walter Williams often writes that “democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on supper.”

It is much to be feared that the last expression of democracy may be a social state with a degenerate populace having no other aim than to indulge in the ignoble appetites of the vulgar. – Ernest Renan

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day. – Benito Mussolini

Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat. – H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. – H. L. Mencken

Rather unfair of you to judge a man’s life two hundred years after he has died with modern values. I wonder what people will say of us in two hundred years. Best to evaluate a person in the context of THEIR times, not ours.

…i think the continuing punchline is that although Beetle could kick himself, once that fence hits Sarge, Beetle will indeed be kicked, only not by his own foot…

The problem with democracy is that there have been in history at least four definitions, which many people confuse and only one of which is valid and desirable:

1) Rule by the people. For the Ancient Greeks this was the original definition in contrast with monarchy, oligarchy, anarchy, etc. But without protection of rights it leads to evils such as the killing of Socrates or outright mob rule as in the French Revolution.2) Majority rule. Without the protection of rights this leads either to the crushing of minorities (of which the smallest is the individual) or to the fragmentation of the population into competing pressure groups, each trying to force its will upon the others. This is what the U.S. suffers from today.3) Elections. Keep in mind that Hitler was elected, and every dictator can produce an election with 110% of the population voting for him. (Just because Morsi was elected in Egypt didn’t make his government legitimate no matter what he says, and just because Iraq held elections didn’t make that war a success.)4) And finally: a system of government constitutionally limited to the protection of individual rights in which the people select the officials who will represent them. This is what many — perhaps even most — Americans mean by democracy, and this is what the Constitution tried to give us, at least at the beginning.

Only this last definition is valid, but mainly because of the “protection of individual rights” part. Without an explicit identification of what someone means by “democracy”, they are free to switch definitions at any point to try to slip over on us all the errors of the first three definitions. When someone invokes “democracy”, demand that they define the term. Remember, it is rights that matter, and elections are secondary.

Does Arlo have his fingers crossed in the first panel?

@jadoo823Thanks, guys! I guess all that does make it a comic, if one has the smarts to supply the mental gyrations. “Arlo and Janis” readers always come through!

No…the modern American world was made, if by any one man, by Alexander Hamilton. While Jefferson may have written some of the poetry of our incipient democracy, Hamilton created the statesmanship and the model.

Jefferson also supported the Articles of Confederation which would have sustained a squabbling and disjointed system with state to state competition that was ripe for being sucked dry by the Great Britain, France and other European powers rather than the federal Constitution which created the exceptional and independent United States.

Our Constitution, federal model and remarkable strength was driven, supported and designed by Hamilton, Madison and Washington and others. Jefferson, for all his poetic license, was actually rather petty and astoundingly narrow minded in his vision of an American future.

Democracy is literally “the rule of the people” with certain rights to both the majority and minority. Majority rule is polyarchy, from the same Greek that gave us the names of most of the other systems. The US was founded to be a democratic [rights to all] republic [laws made by delegated representatives]. As Franklin said, “… if you can keep it.”

Ha, your all gonna solve the worlds problems or convert people to your church in a comic strip comment thread. Ha what a bunch of funny people you all are.

“just a bunch of Cray supercomputers owned and operated by the NSA.”-Which is to say, owned by us.Like a small town on a large scale.Not bothering you if you mind your own business.Ready to stop you if you start to kill your neighbors.

Happy 4th everyone!

“I wonder what kind of life, how happy and how much liberty Jeffersons slaves had?”-On a relative scale, probably happier than most. They had an owner who understood that owning them was immoral and he wished to legally end slavery.-On an absolute scale, probably not very. They saw people having things they did not have and knew their efforts made that possible.-On a relative scale, probably not so bad. Most of them were slaves to other Africans in Africa or their ancesters had been. From what I’ve read, their treatment was better even though unacceptable since it robbed them of the basic human right of freedom.-One way of judging was to see what they did when freed. Did they leave or remain in the area?

“And all this effort, all these billions – every year – just to catch a hand full of islamistic crazies?I wonder what the real reason for this supersized paranoia is.”-Not to catch them but to stop them from killing more civilians. Hence President Obama’s drone strikes, no catching involved there, simply making sure they fail to hurt us.

“and there was an attempt early on to define / limit voting rights in terms of land ownership.”-freeholdersThey that pay, Have the say-and the practice of having property taxes set by property owners persisted A long time. The courts threw it out because they maintained people who rented were also paying for that property and should have a say in taxation.

" A hiker in the wilderness may get hurt or trapped he may even spen 127 hours all alone, but his happiness came when he did the unthinkable to not be alone."-Not physically alone but freed from unwaranted hindrances by neighbors who would tell him what he could and could not do “for his own good”.

" It is the social evolutionary level of the people that make up the society. "-Religious dogma unsupported by any evidence. It assumes evolution has a direction and that the direction is toward zero government. it makes this assumption without one shred or sliver of support in practice. -It makes the assumption despite the evidence of children that they are not born sharers and society is composed of former children.-It is the depth of self-delusion.

“Things change…We need a philosopher of the 21 st century..”-They do but some things don’t change.-We have lots of philosophers nowadays but they aren’t coming up with some completely new understandings in part because the old understandings haven’t been disproved.-Some philosophical musings are pure gibberish, just religious dogma of one type or another unsupported by any evidence, just by persuasive nonsense.

“Wait – so you mean that there is no such thing as property without government? What is that even supposed to mean?”-Things exist.If they are under your control, they are your property.In a world without government, you own them as long as you can keep them.Government defines who owns what and protects those it has deemed to own those things. It punishes thieves under the assumption the thief did not own what he took.-Back when we heard the expression “possession is 90% of the law” it did not mean just having something in your hand gave you a high right to it, it meant most laws dealt with the questions related to property.-It was interesting when European folks came to the Americas, they tried to buy from natives who were glad to sell what they did not think anyone could own in the first place. They way they saw it, they were tricking the foolish Europeans. Many were surprised when the Europeans were willing to kill to keep them from taking it back from them.

“I always heard a dozen which is why juries are limited to that number.”-Juries aren’t limited to twelve, they can be any size. In Scotland, 15, in the George Zimmerman trial they are just 6.-There is no magic number for a jury, just tradition.

the_kraut “I forget a third way in which the terrorists were successful: By spending about 50 billion greenbacks a year for spying on friend and enemy alike America is increasing it’s already impossible budget deficit”-It was all part of our Keynesian economic theory that simply dumping money into the economy would prime the pump and get it moving again.-And we get something for our money. Our NSA types are keeping record of all the good things others around the world are working on and will be able to beat them to the starting gate because of our spying. It isn’t moral but neither are they. -We also know all the bad things you (you, the world, not you as an individual, you are flawless) are doing and can use it to blackmail you into doing whatever we wish just as J. Edgar Hoover did so successfully so long.-Pretty smart planning on President Obama’s part.

the_kraut “I still believe the base of all this is a super sized paranoia. I don’t know where you got it. Is it a result of 9/11?”-Nah, we were paranoid long before 9/11/01.-Our nation is filled with people descended from folks who couldn’t get along with the folks back home. Some were paranoid. Some were outright thieves on the run from the law. Some just didn’t like people. Some had religious beliefs their neighbors would kill them over. (Like when Lutherans agreed with Calvinists and Catholics that we Baptists should all be burned at the stake — the only thing they agreed on.)Some were Jews being terrorized by Germans or Russians or Poles.Some couldn’t stand the idea that anyone else was better than they were simply because of who their parents were.-As a result, we are a nation convinced the Commies are out to get us, the Muslims are out to get us, the Krauts are out to get us, the British are out to get us, the Pope is out to get us, the gun nuts are out to get us, the anti gun nuts are out to get us, the Yankees are out to get us, the Hispanics are out to get us. (Consider how our response to Islamic attacks was an attempt to keep Mexicans out.) Continuing: the intelligencia is out to get us, the ignoramus are out to get us, the atheists are out to get us, the Klan is out to get us, the ACLU is out to get us, the Republicans are out to get us, the Green Party is out to get us (even though all of us Greens are sweet people), the Democrats are out to get us.-We come by it honest.

Oh, and I forgot to mention even thought it was strongly implied that many of us are alive today only because our ancestors were paranoid enough to get while the getting was good.Thereby passing on either the paranoia gene or the paranoia meme.

Jefferson did not invent a machine to make macaroni. He helped introduce “macarons” to the country after his trip to Europe.

Night Ranger – macaroni with a feather in his cap is a reference to a club started in France by young men who dressed up, wore a lot of makeup and put feathers in their hair to dress it up. They were considered odd and oddly dressed by most. Over the top as we would say.

Bawana – In New England there is still democracy in the town meeting.

Looks like a word was left out of the 3rd panel here— “It was if…”. I assume he meant “It was as if…”