Let's Watch Libertarian Propaganda for Children for Some Reason
Hey everybody, look, itâs the Tuttle Twins!
Yeah, there they are. Zooping around on their time machine.
The Tuttle Twins is a streaming show from Angel Studios, the independent studio behind Sound of Freedom and various Christian and Christian-Adjacent movies. Theyâve got some movie about Jesus out right now.
No, you canât- The Buddy Christ thing isnât- You donât-Â
Anyway, although I first heard about this cartoon from a youtube channel called âFundie Fridaysâ The Tuttle Twins isnât a Christian propaganda cartoon, itâs a Libertarian propaganda cartoon.
One that teaches kids how to buy Bitcoin!
After watching just the episode about Bitcoin, I wanted to watch and talk about some more episodes. And I sketched out a bit of an intro explaining what Libertarianism is in the minds of the people who created this show, but then I had a second thought.
âAm I just describing a straw-man libertarianism? Am I just paraphrasing these ideas in a way that I find easy to refute? Have I become the very Tuttle Twins I was trying to defeat?"
And then I watched the very first episode and their description of what they believe is pretty much word for word how I was going to explain it.
And hey, they put that episode up on youtube, we can watch it together!
(You can also watch season 1 and 2 and most of 3 for free on their slightly wonky app or web site, but there are a few full episodes on youtube as well)
Or you could skip it and read my amazing summary below!
Anyway, after a brief cold open that sees the twins hurtling through dimensions, and a pretty cute gag we cut to our entrepreneurial twins selling lemonade. The science-minded Emily is using it fund a trip to science camp, and Ethan is using it to fund his purchase of an enormous gummy bear.Â
Until, that is, they are confronted by Karinne.
Likes: Fiat Currency, Communism, sweater vests. Dislikes: Freedom
I gotta be honest, I donât totally get Karinne, sheâs kind of a foil or frenemy for the main characters, and she comes off kind of preppy coded, sort of the snobbish rich kid used to getting what she wants, but yâall are libertarians, you shouldnât be shaming her for the fact that her parents are Randian producers.Â
Honestly I am eternally fascinated by kids show characters whose job is to be constantly wrong, but after watching a few episodes I donât really have a clear read on her. Sometimes she tags along on an adventure and acts as an ideological foil for the kids, but so far I've seen her argue for fiat currency, religious intolerance, the NSA, and using the power of the president for self-enrichment. So... Uh... Not the raging communist I was lead to expect, put it that way.
Also there is a running joke for the first season where people keep pronouncing her name âKarenâ and I donât know if the joke is sheâs supposed to be kind of a Karen in the slang sense? But honestly when I picture the kind of mother who would show this show to her kids⌠People who live in glass houses shouldnât throw stones, thatâs all Iâm saying.
Anyway, it turns out Karinne is the president of the âCul-de-sac Kids Clubâ and last night she held a meeting to amend the laws of the kids club to allow the president to have as much lemonade as she wants, so she has some lackeys just cart away all of the lemonade, leaving our heroes without a way to earn money in the glorious American free market economy, what with the means of production having been confiscated and all.
The good news, though, is that Grandma is moving in! Along with her pet, and very specifically not tame raccoon Derek, who was banned from her previous dwelling by the HOA because, quote, âHOAs are full of communistsâ. Someone should put that on a shirt and sell plush toys of that raccoon.
I do enjoy the fact that her first impulse on hearing that Karinne is going to confiscate the lemonade is to slingshot a bar of soap at her head:
Donât worry, she doesnât actually assault a child.
Anyway, that night as the twins are lamenting the loss of they hear the noise of an acetylene welding torch coming from their grandmotherâs room.
It turns out she made her mobility scooter into a gadget-laden time machine, so our show has a premise now. Huzzah!
After a series of actually pretty good gags, the kids end up in France, 1848 to meet with FrĂŠdĂŠric Bastiat, who I was not previously aware of but who appears to be one of the founding figures of modern libertarian ideology.
Apparently American politics these days are all your fault you french son of a gun. Also wow they drew your hand wrong in this frame.
And he describes what I was going to describe about the libertarian moral foundations of this show.
âMy book is about the idea that laws should protect our God-given rights or âNatural rightsâ. Having rights means there are some things you can do, and nobody is allowed to stop you!â
Specifically, rights to life, to liberty (Meaning the right to do what we want so long as it doesnât take away another personâs rights) and to own property.
And to be clear, and this is explained later in the episode, these are very negative rights. The role of the government is not to ensure that you have any specific amount of property, liberty or life. Rather, you have to gather as much as you are able by your own lights, and the governmentâs sole role is to prevent other people from taking whatever property you have or abrogating your liberties or killing you.
Does that mean that taxation for the public good is the same as theft?
You betcha, which is what we learn in the next part of the show. A part which is largely so boring that I can't be bothered to screencap it.
The time machine runs out of âKnowledge Juiceâ and strands them in an Old West Town. Knowledge Juice is the fuel for the time machine, itâs a green goo that goes down when they travel through time, and up when they explain that theyâve learned something. And itâs a plot device that I think they eventually get rid of just because it gets kind of redundant.
Actually Iâll just sort of go over the formula of the show.Â
The kids have some more or less relatable real world problem;
Grandma takes them back in time to meet a historical figure who tells them about some libertarian principle;
On the way back the time machine runs out of knowledge juice in some fantastical situation;
The kids solve the situation using their new libertarian knowledge;
They refill the knowledge juice reserves by explaining what they learned;
They then go back home and use what they learned to solve their ordinary kid problem.
Just from a story structure perspective the part where they refill the knowledge juice is extremely redundant; It would be more elegant to just have them explain the lesson to the other kids when they solve their problem at the end of the episode. I think eventually they figured that out.
Arguably, if you really wanted to condense things youâd have the kids go on a historical adventure with the historical figure, then come back to the present and explain what they learned and apply it to their current situation, but the reason they have sections 3 and 4 is because those are usually where the crazy cartoon stuff comes in, they end up in some alternate fantasy dimension or shrunk down and fighting a worm war, or something fun like that.
Except for this pilot episode, where parts 3-5 just take place in a generic old west town. Not really starting with a bang honestly.
Basically, the Sheriff fights off two cattle rustling bandits, who then return in the guise of tax men, taking cows away from an innocent rancher to use for business subsidies and charity, which isnât fair because the law is supposed to protect her property, and anyway the rancher gives cows to charity sometimes already.
Since taxation is theft, the kids lobby to get the laws changed, and after an amusing title card that says,
The whole town has voted to repeal the taxes and they capture the rustlers, huzzah!
Anyway, the Tuttle Twins go back home, and call an emergency meeting of the Cul-de-sac kids club to hold a vote to repeal the law that allows the President to have as much lemonade as she wants. Of course, the vote goes their wayâŚ
Which is when Karinne reveals her trump card, which is that the club by-laws allow the President a unilateral veto over any proposed amendments to the club rules.
Furthermore, she points out that the Kids Club is not a government organization, but a private one which is simply a contractual relationship that the twins entered freely. And since the governmentâs job is to enforce contracts and protect private property, the twins will be arrested if they try to violate the contract by taking any of Karinneâs honestly earned lemonade.
Yeah kids, thatâs right. Have grandma teleport you back to talk to Murray Rothbard, heâll explain it to you.
Okay okay I made all that up. I'll stop arguing politics with a children's cartoon.
They successfully overturn the rule but give everybody in the club a glass of lemonade on the house anyway to show thereâs no hard feelings.
So, this episode is not that out there. Something I canât get across in summary is that there are a lot of classic cartoon gags, and a lot of them land. Iâve watched a few episodes of this show now and smiled at a lot of gags and laughed out loud once or twice. As much as I donât agree with a lot of the ideology behind it itâs not something that was tossed out there.
The animation quality of any given shot varies quite a lot, but there is some attention to the animation, visual gags and comedy timing as well as some funny writing. This isnât a half-assed scam or complete amateur nonsense, this is clearly made by people who are trying to make something genuinely good outside of its propaganda purpose.
That said, I obviously have some issues with the show.
Honestly going in I thought my biggest problem with this show would be ideological disagreement. And donât get me wrong, thereâs some stuff in this show that I strongly disagree with, but there are quite a few episodes with perfectly fine messages. Thereâs an episode where they get into a prank war at science camp and eventually it starts wrecking the science projects so Ghandi teaches them about de-escalation. Rosa Parks talks about civil disobedience and how sometimes you should disobey unjust laws, but you should always be aware of the consequences beforehand and think carefully about how and when you should do it. Thereâs an episode where they talk about respecting different religious traditions and how the government shouldnât mandate or prevent any religion.
I agree with all of that, even if some of that is something that kids wonât really get to put into practice much.
My big problem is that even though there are gags in the historical parts, this show suffers a problem that a lot of educational shows do, which is that it feels like it stops dead to lecture you about something and you have to just sit through that until the fun bits start up again. The historical figures tend to be heavily simplified in a way that some people might object to, but I think the bigger issue is that this simplification makes their stories less compelling.
Youâre not so much living through a recreation of the exciting things the historical figures did so much as listening to them talk about what they did. Itâs a real âtell, donât showâ approach that makes about a third of every episode really kind of dull unless itâs one of the episodes where what theyâre telling you is batshit crazy.
So if youâre going to watch it for camp value, I really donât recommend starting with the first episode or trying to watch it in order, Iâd just scan the episode summaries and watch one that sounds crazy to you. There are at least two that try to sell Bitcoin to children. Thereâs a few genuinely bananas episodes and ideas to gawk at if youâre into that kind of thing like I am, but thereâs a lot of fairly bland episodes.
And talking about how viewers will view the showâŚ
I have had to accept in my heart that I have no idea who this show is made for.
It has a lot of parallels to American Christian pop culture programs, but like, okay, so right-wing American Christians have built this entire parallel media ecosystem because theyâre paranoid that Hollywood secularists are going to corrupt their kids with secularism and paganism. I knew a guy once who said when he was a kid his parents made him stop watching Tiny Tunes because they saw one of the characters meditating, but thatâs okay, he could still watch McGee and Me.
Now, I donât agree with that kind of strict parental thought control, it is at least internally consistent. A lot of parts of the Bible are about devout Godly people being corrupted by worldly concerns or religious apostasy, going at least back to the worship of the Golden Calf in Exodus. And the right wing Christians who are worried about media corruption think any deviation from their theology is a threat to a personâs immortal soul.
So the impulse to shield your child from any media that even slightly questions or contradicts your own views isnât good, but at least itâs theologically consistent and in keeping with the Bible.
Meanwhile, if you find yourself saying, âAs a staunch libertarian and tireless advocate for personal freedom, I believe in strictly controlling what my children are allowed to watch or think.â LikeâŚ
You know come on and think for a second about what youâve just said.
The kind of paranoia about controlling your childrenâs worldview that would make someone want to watch this really doesnât seem to me to be in keeping with, well, uh, the actual values espoused in the show.
So I kind of donât know how to feel about it. Personally, I would never expose a child to this on purpose unless they were old enough to ask some very critical questions about what they were hearing.
On the other hand, when I imagine the kind of person who is going to show this to their kids⌠I kind of almost wonder if most of the other stuff those kids are seeing is a lot worse. I can kind of imagine a very earnest child taking this stuff seriously enough to start questioning some controlling parent or religious authority.
So I really just donât know. If anybody has any insight into the culture of the people who watch this kind of thing, Iâd be really curious.
Iâm glad I found my way back to Tumblr. I was last on here in 2015. Itâs changed a bit. I have too. Have you?
I like Tumblr for that it feels like everyone on here gets me, and my quirky habits. They see things differently, feel differently, even live differently to others who use only the more mainstream social media platforms. My art that wouldnât normally make sense to some, yet on here people respond. My art is seen, really seen, not just looked at.
I like the anonymity too. Not that I donât wish to share more about me to someone who asked, but it doesnât matter anyway. I donât have to know who it is exactly on the other end, and I still feel connected. You see a picture, a drawing, my art, a quote, whatever, and thatâs all you see - but you still get it. I feel known. Let me get you, too. Youâre not alone.
On here, the abnormal is whatâs normal. And preferred. We band together in all our intricate oddness. We are masters of the creative universe. Iâm glad this isnât mainstream. Thatâs why we live here. Thanks for having me move back in.
Follow me for what will be my occasionally rambling blog, my art, my photos. Maybe some more of my mind. Iâd like some of yours too.
INFJ: Hey intj- a long time ago you called me cold. You still think so?
INTJ: ...yeah. Maybe cold is the wrong word though, it's just I think you're very clinical and very what-must-be-done-i'll-do. and i think you're very selective - like you choose what's best for you in that moment
INFJ: Hmm. Yeah, yeah... okay thanks. Very Well Observed
INFJ: *internally* well I guess I definitely use that Ti huh
