Peter Bagge, libertarianism and Objectivism

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For those not aware of him, Peter Bagge is an cartoonist, usually known as an "underground cartoonist" or nowadays as an 'alternate' or 'independent' cartoonist. He has a fairly unusual style, its not very 'pretty' and lends itself to more satirical in style.

By and large, I don't care for most underground cartoonist. If their style isn't of interest to me, their politics and subject matter would. Most are quite obviously leftist, and all that entails (collectivism, socialism, communism, etc), and the subject matter seems to focus on the worse of people (my life is miserable, and my work reflects that, etc).

So while I had seen Bagge's work in various comics catalogs and the like, I never had a reason to check him out. (Aside, if you want to see examples of his work, here is his website: http://www.peterbagge.com/)

Until he started to do comic strips in Reason magazine. It seems that unlike his 'underground comics' collegues, Bagge is a libertarian. (you can see what he's done for Reason here: http://www.reason.com/staff/show/137.html).

His style with these strips is more like a reporter. He doesn't use this a a soapbox per say. They are not rants or lectures. Instead, he looks at a certain subject and shows the stupidity of the liberals or conservatives (or both) in the matter. (and he's not above poking fun at the lunatic fringe within the libertarian world either). I think his style is best compared with John Stossel. I've frankly enjoyed his strips and was even a bit worried when they disappeared for a time.

Comic book fanzine publisher Twomorrows has started a new series focusing on Indy comic creators called "Comics Introspective". The first volume came out and is on Bagge. My local comic shop had copies, so I took a look to see if I should get it. Since they do discuss his work at Reason and his libertarian views, I picked it up. Overall, pretty good.

Now, at this point some are probably saying, so what? Well, Bagge does address Ayn Rand. And Steve Ditko, as he did a recent one-shot comic at Marvel poking fun at Spiderman (one of the few times he's worked at the 'Big Two' of comics). The Orthodoxy will probably not like what he says about Rand, but I have to be honest and say that what he says about her pretty much matches my views.

He's quite clear on saying that Rand is a libertarian, despite her not liking us. This is some of what he says:

"Even though her politics were libertarian, she herself hated libertarians. She was very eccentric, very stubborn, and self-righteous, and very unforgiving. Everything with her was 'my way or the highway', and she got woese as she got older. The reason she hated libertarianism was because she thought it reached the wrong conclusions, especially regarding aesthetic matters."

While not a nice portrait, that is the impression I have of her at many times. Yes, she could be gracious, but too many times she wasn't. I'm not sure I totally agree with Bagge's reasoning as to her issue with libertarianism. My impression it was that libertarians were a diverse group such that many had different basis for their libertarian views.

He further comments about Rand's views on aesthetics, how she politicized it. This is something I have to agree with. The impression I got from Objectivism in the area of aesthetics was that you had to like certain types of art (visual, musical, plays, films, fiction, etc). If you somehow liked the wrong things there was something wrong with you ('check your premises'). Having come from an environment of private christian schools where (thankfully not at mine) you were expected to avoid 'worldy things' such as tv, movies, books (or atleast not those on some kind of approved list), this was a major turn off to me.

He has some final things to say about her that I think are important.

"[its] ironic [the] people who are critical of her see her as completely immoral. They always describe her politics as the politics of selfishness, as if that's all she's really advocating. She was avocating freedom more then anything else, which is what I very much admire her for, but to someone with a more socialistic or statist worldview, 'freedom' and 'selfishness' are somewhat interchangeable.

She's probably the most famous 'libertarian,' since her work is required reading at many schools, and it's more engaging then other libertarian authors and philosophers."

There is more that he says about her, but I didn't want to copy it all here.