The children's television show Dora the Explorer has generated billions in revenue from retail sales alone and has captured the imagination of children everywhere. On the surface it's a quasi-interactive bilingual show about the misadventures of a young girl and Boots, her companion monkey, but according to a list of trivia on Wikipedia, it was also the first show to begin a trend of "applying liberal politics to children's shows."

Is Dora a subversive attempt to mold more Democrats? Perhaps it's a subtler version of Why Mommy is a Democrat, which illustrates such stereotypical socialist mores as "Democrats make sure we all share our toys, just like Mommy does." From what I've been able to gather, even many Democrats cringe at the book's depiction of their party as totalitarian apologists. Surely the party whose ideal is social libertarianism can offer more progressive ideas than tax-and-spend, just as the Republican party whose ideal is economic libertarianism can offer more conservative ideas than tax-and-war.

I have watched my share of Dora, and what's most interesting to me is a minor character named Swiper. I'm not alone in my fascination: the same Wikipedia article devotes more than a thousand words to Swiper; Dora gets less than 150.

Why is Swiper so interesting? I think the creators of the show, perhaps unconsciously, made the character the embodiment of government. And viewers, sensing that familiarity, perhaps also unconsciously, trigger in themselves the same feelings of unease that they get when thinking about government itself.

Like the government, Swiper the Fox appears in every episode and tries to steal an important item from Dora. Yet Swiper doesn't need or use the item himself. Instead he merely hides it and Dora finds it again. He will apparently also return the item if the right lobby group comes calling: Swiper has an affinity for puppies; when Dora says an item is a present for her puppy, Swiper hands it back immediately.

Swiper is clever, a technical wizard—like a savvier Coyote from the Road Runner cartoons. He wears disguises and sneaks around a lot. He nearly always appears in a blue mask and gloves. Government, too, is largely anonymous, and has impressive domestic espionage abilities.

Swiper the Fox has his counterparts in other lands: the French Fifi the Skunk, the Tanzanian Sami the Hyena, the Russian Fomkah the Bear, and the Chinese Ying Yang the Weasel. Every country has a large portion of its government that does nothing more than redistribute. It takes important items from you and hides them behind a load of paperwork, bureaucracy, and cronyism. Whoever finds it (or, whichever special interest claims it), gets it. Sometimes, as with Dora, it is even the same person from whom it was taken in the first place. In all cases, it is not Swiper or Fifi or Fomkah who use the object themselves. Were that the case, they wouldn't remind us of government but of thieves.

But don't we need someone in charge who makes sure our wealth gets distributed fairly? The question answers itself. Whoever is in charge of distribution is essentially the owner. I can distribute only what I own. I can't distribute your property to others any more than you can distribute mine. It's like the caricatured Democrats above who "make sure we all share our toys." By implication, the Democrats own all the toys and there's only one way they could have gotten them: by swiping.

Fortunately, there is a way to stop Swiper, and it is the ultimate clamp on government, too. Before Swiper appears, a menacing whisking sound reverberates in the background. If you help Dora spot Swiper in time, you just have to yell "Swiper, no swiping!" three times. She usually succeeds, causing the frustrated Swiper to snap his fingers and mutter, "Oh, maaaann!"

The whisking sound in the distance is getting closer every day. How many items have we lost to the fox? How many times have we been fooled when the fox disguises himself as a donkey or an elephant? There's only one way to stop it. We have to yell real loud.

phil@maymin.com