Posted on 03/26/2011 8:02:07 AM PDT by Shout Bits
Last week The House voted to defund NPR by cutting the Gordian ties between Washington and the radio network. A metaphor for everything Washington, nobody knows how much government nectar flows to NPR or in what form – estimates vary from $4MM to $90MM, not to mention its dubious tax exempt status. Sen. Harry Reid offered a typically pathetic defense of NPR by citing critical investigative reporting on dog racing. To be sure, NPR provides a left-leaning window into esoteric topics no other radio station covers, but time has passed NPR by. News sources like 24 hr. cable, blogs, and Sirius have made NPR hopelessly obsolete. Without government funding, NPR’s content could easily find a home on the internet or on Sirius. Why, then, does the left convulse at the thought of NPR’s defunding; why is a world without NPR unthinkable to statists?
The obvious answer to the left’s attachment to NPR is that it is a consistent voice for government. NPR uses government funds to report on opportunities to spend more government money. Statists and dictators have always had government propaganda outlets, and NPR serves this role comparatively benignly. NPR makes for fairly easy training in Becking a story (i.e. Internet searching the names of NPR guests to reveal that they are often radical revolutionaries and communists). Still, there is more to NPR appeal.
George Mason economics professor Daniel Klein published The People’s Romance, a paper on why people are so reluctant to give up even obviously worthless government programs. He presents several theories, including Adam Smith’s idea that people naturally seek to coordinate their sentiments, not just Pareto self-interest. Unlike talk radio and blogs, NPR is a one way flow of left wing sentiment; it coordinates the sentiments of its listeners. NPR is the left’s shaman telling his tribe the stories that define a cultural identity. Klein would argue that this collectivist instinct is part of what keeps government programs alive well past their logical termination.
Since NPR’s message and mission would surely continue without public funding, what difference does it make to the left? A $90MM program’s termination rarely makes the news, or draws the ire of the Senate Majority Leader. Who should care? Klein goes on to observe that capitalist entities are like clubs to which not everyone is invited, while government entities are perceived as The People’s Romance or belonging to the people. Even though capitalism provides more and better services than the government, non-investors feel a greater sense of ownership and kinship toward government programs. Defunding NPR will hurt nobody, but it goes against the sense of community at the heart of NPR’s admirers.
The concept of The People’s Romance sounds like communism because it is exactly that. At its heart, communism and collectivism offer less prosperity in exchange for a sense of safety. Collectivists often refer to the ‘Socialist Family,’ Orwell depicted ‘Big Brother,’ and Social Security is a ‘safety net.’ These terms are comforting, safe, and reliable. Socialism is stagnation, but also a false promise of security. Government waste and corruption is accepted because government poses as a substitute for family and community. These are the feelings that keep even the most obviously worthless government program intact decades after it ceases to serve the people.
People are easily lulled into collectivist delusions like NPR, but they are also resilient; they provide for themselves when there are no handouts. Once NPR is defunded, liberals will begin the painful adjustment of finding their news, entertainment, and tribal identity elsewhere. Eventually, as NPR’s defunding becomes a non-event, people will realize that there is life after government programs. Perhaps NPR will be a baby step toward reducing government’s role in more important areas. On the other hand, if NPR can’t be defunded, there is no hope for entitlement reform, or the elimination of larger, even more worthless departments.
Government programs like NPR are a comforting tonic for the collectivist instinct, and they are hard to abandon. Still, the road to restoring Washington’s financial viability starts with cutting even tiny programs like NPR because that is the way toward a US that is more individualist and self-reliant.
You should just excerpt your stuff.
We’ve survived just fine without Err America. We can live without NPR too.
I would say it's blatently obvious they are a propaganda outlet. Anyone with half a brain can see their bias.
I imagine that NPR will continue much as it is. They’ll just have to raise more money from their listeners and from progressive donors like Soros. The advantage to that change is that WE will no longer be forced to pay for it. And it will drain a few dollars out of the left’s vast coffers that would otherwise be spent on other leftist goals.
I write Shout Bits for free to advocate for free markets and less government. To do this, I want people to read it, which seems obvious to me. If that is ‘blog pimping,’ I don't see what is wrong with it.
I am sorry, but I am going to have to file this under ‘you can't please everyone.’
If anyone wants Shout Bits on the day it is published, feel free to subscribe either by RSS or email.
$4MM to $90MM my a$$. More like $450,000,000.
Do your homework.
That is assuming that the funding is actually cut. That hasn’t happened yet, and won’t, unless Boehner couples this with some bill that Obama has to sign.
My problem with this whole debate, logically, is that the NPR defenders argue that “no federal funding” = “no NPR.” I don’t think that is the case. I think they would quickly make up the difference with corporate and foundation funding. Nothing would change.
If NPR went of the air tomorrow, I wouldn’t know about it unless I read it here on FR.
Don’t take it personally. Someone is always complaining about something, the point in this case being that FR shouldn’t be used to fund people’s blogs.
No, I know, you were just explaining it.
The error is in thinking that NPR is going to go away. Believe me, it will be funded; it just won’t be funded by federal tax dollars. Well-meaning, guilt-afflicted liberals, classical music devotees, and large left-wing organizations will continue to fund it. I have no fear that Mozart is going away.
?
Illegitimi non carborundum
“Sen. Harry Reid offered a typically pathetic defense of NPR by citing critical investigative reporting on dog racing.”
Between this and the cowboy poetry, Reid needs to retire and visit a rubber room.
I clicked on your blog when I was done, just to give you a hit.
I don't really get the bizarre mouth-foaming anti-blog faction here anyway.
Buh-bye!
What are you talking about? FR is used to "fund" people's blogs
I did my homework.
Bland radio as well as TV is attributable to the FCC. Government defunding of NPR doesn't solve the problem but defunding the FCC does. Until the FCC is dissolved, the government will continue to interfere with communications free-market supply and demand which would bring us robust, innovative and delightful shows (the golden age of radio before the FCC forced their pablum on America).
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