I was a member of the Huckleberry Hound Fan Club in the first grade—50 years ago. I do not remember how many box tops it cost. I got a membership card and a ring! I kept the membership card all the way to high school until it became too frayed to keep. Even back then it fit my sense of the absurd.
Now my second grader is watching Boomerang Zoo on TV most mornings, so I caught an old episode of HH. Huck is the Purpil Pumpernickel. He could not spell worth a darn, the King said. Huck would rob from the rich, mostly the government, and give to the people, my kind of guy! Huck gave a speech like he was a politician running for office:
Huck: I will build roads.
Crowd: Yeah
Huck: I will have free schools.
Crowd: Yeah!
Huck: I will have old age pensions.
Crowd: Yeah!!
Huck: Of course we will have taxes.
Crowd: Boo!!!!!!
As the preacher said in Ecclesiastes 1:
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
Lord Maynard Keynes famously said that in the long run we are all dead. He was right of course, and he is dead. But we are alive and living with the consequences of his philosophy, the Huckleberry Hound Theory of Government. Even if a bar offers a “free” lunch, you will pay for it in the drinks you buy. We are like a drunk staggering to our next drink without the understanding that we are in trouble. We must think that government is magic, rainbows, and unicorns. Instead we need to understand that unless we cut the deficit, the market place will refuse to buy our bonds, and at that point the cuts will be made in an unorderly fashion. It is ironic that the writers of this cartoon understood the realities of government better than either political party will admit today.