{"id":10829,"date":"2011-03-19T13:52:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-19T13:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/03\/19\/the-bigger-the-government-the-more-to-fight-over-the-npr-case\/"},"modified":"2011-03-19T13:52:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-19T13:52:05","slug":"the-bigger-the-government-the-more-to-fight-over-the-npr-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/03\/19\/the-bigger-the-government-the-more-to-fight-over-the-npr-case\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bigger the Government, the More to Fight Over: The NPR Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

An excellent illustration of this truth is the current brouhaha over the defunding of National Public Radio (NPR).  Why is time and money being wasted debating this?  The short answer is that government has assumed a function that is obviously inessential to it and arguably illegitimate.  If government stuck to its essential tasks, one of which is obviously not public broadcasting, then we wouldn't be having this debate which is not only unproductive,  but also distractive from truly pressing issues such as 'entitlement' reform.  (A curious coinage, wouldn't you say?  As if prosperous oldsters who, having had a lifetime to accumulate substantial net worth in a relatively stable political and economic environment, are entitled<\/em> to  intergenerational wealth transfer payments even in excess of what they have contributed  plus a reasonable return.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The quality of the NPR debate in the House of Representatives was truly depressing.  (I have watched a good portion of it on C-SPAN — which is not<\/em> supported by Federal dollars and is as objective as an media outlet  gets.)  It's as if the participants live on different planets.  One expects liberals and their opponents (both conservatives and libertarians) to disagree about the  role of government.  But they can't even agree on the 'green eyeshade' issue.  A sensible Republican gets upon and explains how the defunding of NPR will save taxpayers' dollars.  Then a Dem rises to flatly deny that there will be any savings.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Liberals and conservatives  will argue until doomsday about the size, scope, and legitimate functions of government.  Those arguments are unavoidable and intractable due to profound axiological and philosophical differences.  But one would have thought that agreement could be reached about simple economic facts.  A husband and a wife might argue over whether the tax rebate should be spent on upgraded carpeting or on security doors.  That would be par for the course.  But if they argue about the size of the rebate or about whether or not cancelling their subscription to cable TV will save them x dollars per month,then they are in deep trouble and headed for divorce court.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Dems are either lying or engaging in some other less blatant form of prevarication when they claim that defunding NPR will not affect the Federal budget deficit.<\/span><\/p>\n

The liberal case is exceedingly weak, an indication being the rhetorical tricks and distortions liberals sink to.  For example, Representative Louise Slaughter claimed that the Republicans are out to "destroy" NPR.  See here<\/a> at :34.  That's an outright lie. Or is she so stupid as not to know that defunding a program which its own officers admit does not need Federal funding is not to destroy it?  Contemptible.  Another Dem claimed that the Republicans are ought to"silence" NPR.  Another outright lie.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, here is where civility meets a limit. One is under no obligation to be polite to a liar.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee takes the cake.  She claimed that defunding NPR is an affront to the First Amendment.  How stupid can a liberal be?  Apparently she thinks that the First Amendment protects a government-funded propaganda arm of the Left from the people when it is the other way around:  the First Amendment protects the speech rights of the people against the government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, no liberal will admit his bias, either out of mendacity, or more likely, because he is simply incapable of seeing it. For a typical liberal, his view <\/em>of the world is <\/em>the world.  Hence liberals are mostly incapable of  seeing that NPR pushes a liberal-left point of view.  The problem, again, is not that they have that point of view, but that they feel justified in using taxpayers' dollars to promote it.  Part of the problem is that they do not understand how anyone could reasonably disagree with them.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The bigger the government, the more to fight over.  Do you like pointless bickering?  Then support an ever-expanding state.<\/span><\/p>\n

For more on NPR, see here<\/a>  and here<\/a>.  <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excellent illustration of this truth is the current brouhaha over the defunding of National Public Radio (NPR).  Why is time and money being wasted debating this?  The short answer is that government has assumed a function that is obviously inessential to it and arguably illegitimate.  If government stuck to its essential tasks, one of … Continue reading “The Bigger the Government, the More to Fight Over: The NPR Case”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,231,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-free-speech","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}