Pooch Cafe by Paul Gilligan for October 22, 2009

For once Poncho gets the burn! I sense a new friendship brewing.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

A dog and his boy. What lyrics!

Ha ha, the anti-psychotics are working!

At least Poncho saw the funny side…

A boy after your own heart Poncho!

Looks like Poncho walking into a trap HAAAAA!

I bet he’s a postman.

Who’s cheering up who here?

i can see Poncho turning to Chazz and saying “Now why can’t you be more like that?”

PPPP and the sick boy have bonded. I am teary eyed.

“…the value of a selfless act”?

Precisely zero.

Self-denial, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice: these have been presented as the moral ideal for millennia. History shows they lead to poverty, conflict, and death. It is what every dictator demands of his subjects.

Contrast that to America’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. That’s YOUR happiness, not everyone else’s.

I love you Poncho, but you’re terribly wrong about this.

“Self-denial, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice: these have been presented as the moral ideal for millennia. History shows they lead to poverty, conflict, and death”

Hardly.

At least, no more or less than wars fought in the name of, say, capitalism and manifest destiny and things like that.

Looks like Poncho’s got a new friend…

More evil has been done in the name of religion than those who claim to be religious like to admit, and more “selfless” good (albeit disguised as enlightened self-interest!) has been done in the name of capitalism than those who call themselves capitalist would like to admit, but good and evil are not restricted to any system – both exist in just about any system you can name. Just depends on what the system sets as it’s ‘norm’ that makes it seem more or less hypocritical in the end. A capitalist being greedy seems somehow less evil than a priest hoarding gold, but in the end, it really is the same thing.

Too deep for a comic? … how about ‘Poncho’s new friend is a stitch’? :)

Comicsboi: As capitalism rose in Europe, from the fall of Napoleon to WWI, they had the longest era with the least war in their history, combined with the greatest growth and prosperity. What wars did happen, like the Franco-Prussian, was the last gasp of the old feudal, militaristic nobility on both sides. Capitalism has never been pro-war; contrary to traditional Marxist Big-Lie propaganda, it’s bad for business.

Compare this to the ideological wars of the 20th century. There was nothing capitalist about Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. It is socialism with its subjugation of the individual to the State, the Nation, the Race, the Proletariat, whatever–which has killed tens of millions. It takes a blatant disregard of history to deny that.

A good reference is Andrew Bernstein’s “The Capitalist Manifesto”.

(Manifest Destiny is another case for another time. But it still wasn’t because of capitalism.)

you’re probably right, he might be a postman. maybe if we spread it out, the writer will have to change the plot :P