[Posted by E&C on 22 Aug 2010 09:38 am]

This strip wasn’t so much inspired by Robin Hood as it was by The Tea Party.

There are a lot of people in the world who think of themselves as the hero of their own personal epic known as life--maybe everyone does this. I mean, even those of us with the most opportunities often refer to themselves as underdogs. Moreover, we tend to disregard the humanity of our opposition so we can see them as purely evil. It’s a bad habit, and we ought to knock it the hell off. This particular philosophical chicken came home to roost for me when i saw a Tea Party protester with a sign that read, “Dissent is Patriotic.” I saw that same sign at a preemptive peace protest right before the invasion of Iraq, when the political wind was blowing in very much the other direction.

The sign is a shortening of a Howard Zinn quotation that sometimes gets misattributed to Thomas Jefferson: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” I think dissent is patriotic. I think debate is patriotic too. And I think beyond such ego-driven passions as patriotism, we find a world with a little more ambiguity, and--through that ambiguity--a little more humility and a little more clarity.

Lastly, I wanted to share some music with you, not a specific song, but a Pandora Station of which I’m particularly fond. Free Loadin’ Folks.

Much obliged,
C