A divertissement

Regular readers may recall my fondness for the cartoon strip “Day By Day.” Back in November 2009 when people (well, some people) still believed that Barack Obama was about to deliver beneficent Hope & Change™, I wrote about Muir, noting that “The Florida-based dispenser of drollerie and savvy social commentary . . . is a politically mature version of Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonsbury.”

Quite apart from his notable graphic abilities, what sets Muir apart from most of his fellow entertainers is his allergy to the poison of political correctness. He has a clear grasp of the dangers of what Tocqueville called “democratic despotism,” what conservatives today are likely to congregate under the rubric of “big government.” Muir pokes fun at pomposity and excess wherever he finds it, but he is perhaps at his best and most trenchant when exposing the sinister underside of the illiberal liberalism that has come to define the Democratic party of the early twenty-first century.

Here’s a strip from the heady time of bailouts and government take-overs:

I make it a point to look at “Day By Day” regularly. Today’s strip was a special treat:

I think I am correct in saying that this is the first time The New Criterion has been featured in a cartoon. For the curious, the article in question is here: “The Anglosphere and the Future of Liberty.”