Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for November 10, 2013

Better put your body armor on for what’s coming today.

They had health care in 1861?

The bowl with the apples is like totally collectible now.

Hey, I’m happy to present some Northern rhetoric, just so we can be Fair And Balanced:

“It’s evil to make another human being your slave, so that you can rape, maim or kill that person with impunity.”

“If you rebel against the United States government, you’re a traitor!”

There, how’s that?

Why is the father of a Union Soldier ranting against the Government in Washington? Isn’t what he is saying the stand of the Confederacy?

Missing the point here. The strip is showing that things never really change.

I believe the Boston Tea Party preceded the Confederacy…if my memory serves me.

So true, so true.

Why did I know what was coming by the second frame?

Given the way things are going now, it’s a pretty scary strip.

There are probably several southern states that would bring back slavery today if the question was put to a public referendum.

The question is still, are we one nation or several? Partly this is about so-called states’ rights. Partly this is about whether all Americans are REAL Americans, equally worthy of being heard, or only those with small-town values. If we first and foremost seek consensus, we may survive. If we first and foremost seek the triumph of Virtue and Truth (truth as we see it) over Wickedness and Error (truth as someone else sees it), we are doomed. And which road are we on, folks? Our system is designed to give greater weight to acres than to people. In the last election for the House of Representatives, 15,000,000 more people voted for Democratic candidates than voted for Republican candidates, and yet look at the house today. A half-million Wyomingites have the same power in the Senate as 38 million Californians. Rural counties take up 72% of America’s area, but contain 15% of her people. And the number is shrinking, not just in percentage, but in absolute numbers. 58% of all American live in communities of more than 200,000 people. And 68% in communities of more than 50,000. And 77% in communities of more than 5,000. Yet rural and small-town populations have an out-sized influence. Here in Virginia, in the last election, every urban area, in fact just about every city of at least 5,000 people, went Democratic. The large the population, the larger the margin. A mediocre Democratic candidate for governor won by a comfortable margin, and the Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor won by 10%. The Attorney General’s office is still undecided. This suggests an even split among the voter, as does the composition of the State Senate. But the state House of Reps is dominated by Republicans. In 1776 the Virginia Declaration of Rights asserted “that government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community … and that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.” Yet then and now the system was designed to thwart the will of the majority in favor of the select minority. Then it empowered only the free white adult male landowners. And now? Yes, the rights of the individual have to be protected from the tyranny of the majority. But liberty is not only a matter of personal freedom, it is also the liberty of the people to create the laws and institutions they want for themselves and their society.

Thank you, thank you for finally seeing the light!!!

Pretty lame. Go back to reruns.

Mr. Trudeau – This is one of your very best, and that’s saying something. There is no anti-body for hate and stupid.

Linwood

“This country is goin’ straight to Hell,” Col. Frank FittsGee, Colonel, what clued ya?

Excellent work, GT.

It seems like things never really change do they.

Most people in positions of power are as detestable as those who are not, yet crave it!

The only reason we’re having this conversation is the fact there’s a black man in the Whitehouse. For some this is unnatural and it’s driving these people insane and they’re willing to take the government down because of it.

How naive are you? George was a Democrat, through and through. He wanted things left alone, as did the rest of Alabama. Everyone worked, ate, and had a place there. Most of the underclass voted for him, even though he was a fan of Jim Crow.As with everything else, history gets written by the victors.

And just like all wars, older men decide things and let their sons and other people’s sons go to war. If you feel so strongly about it, go yourself.(which many fathers and even grandfathers in the south did, not so much so in the north)

Note to Gary, Re panel showing farmhouse, with mailbox next to doorsteps.. I don’t think they had mail delivery prior to the Civil War.

To all you people who keep saying, “you hate Obama, it’s because he is a black man”. Well SORRY that may be true for a small minority, but not all. I voted for the man for his first term, but after screw-up following screw-up I voted for Romney. The despising of the man didn’t come around until the latest fiasco, the roll out of the enrollment web site. The problem is he never ever takes responsibility for anything nor do the members of his administration. What this Administration should be called is the SGT. SCHULTZ Administration.

Oh, really?

“The foundations of our new government are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.” – A. H. Stephens, Vice President of the C.S.A.

Some of you don’t seem to realize that at one time they had slaves in the North, too. Indentured servitude and race based slavery both existed in the area. The reason it died out sooner in the Northern states was economics based.

On the separate question of sectional strife Southerners and Yankees had been fighting each other for centuries before the US Civil War for reasons other than slavery. Major cultural differences in British regions were carried into North America and they remain today.

You need to read “Dred Scott’s Revenge” by a foremost libertarian, Judge Andrew Napolitano. Libertarians are NOT Tea Party Republicans.

Odd that the soldier is wearing the cap and piping of the North. Of course, today people fighting to get responsibility back into the lexicon aren’t the minority, but they soon will be.

“The core of the Libertarians an Tea Party Republicans.”My son-in-law considers himself a libertarian, and would never sit still for being lumped in with the Tea Partiers. I can’t think of any Republican platform he endorses, except for the govt. staying out of the business he thinks it should stay out of.

Trudeau does it again. Brilliant.

Timeless!

So are you saying that we need to keep the South from seceding and hold it down anyway we can.

Next time they want to secede, I say let’s let ’em.

Calling someone a liar will certainly persuade them that you are correct. In some other dimension perhaps. In this one it does the exact opposite.

First of all you are a tool and and idiot.

Let someone who holds a doctoral degree in early American history fill in the gaps of your education.Slavery was not the defining issue of the Civil War and in fact to declare it as the sole cause of the War Between the States is a gross oversimplification. The primary goal of Lincoln and his general staff was to reunite the nation and preserve the Republic as it existed prior to 1861. Both political and military leaders in the South knew that slavery was a doomed institution and in fact near the end of the war Jefferson Davis was willing to abolish slavery provided that the northern states recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation. Slavery had been abolished in the British Empire and in Russia and was generally recognized not only as an immoral institution, but as a grossly inefficient economic system. The great majority of Southerners were not slaveholders, but subsistence farmers who competed against slave labor. They comprised most of the Southern army and resented the control of the planter class. They fought to defend their land from invaders, not to continue their disadvantage position in a slave economy.For many years prior to the war, political leaders in the South simply forwarded arguments made by Jefferson and Madison that the states remained the last resort against the overreach of the federal government. (research the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions) Additionally, if the nation was created by a compact agreed upon by the states – if acting as free agents they signed the Constitution – then as free agents they had a right to dissolve their relationship to the federal government.Forgive my rambling discourse, but hopefully, you will not continue in your leftist anachronistic idealism – but will examine the causes of the civil war. Turn off “Lincoln” and read primary sources and documents.

Are you sure those people are southerners? In panel six, there are no dogs on the porch or carriages up on blocks in the yard.

If I disagree on global warming I’m likened to a holocaust denier, if I think a 17 trillion dollar debt – $54,000 per person – is unsustainable I’m a racist.