Tuesday, May 31, 2005

The Left's Pervasive Tyranny

Paul Jacob at Townhall.com has a very interesting piece on NPR and its bias. Here is the part that interested me the most:

That some folks or most folks or nearly everyone fails to see a bias in public TV and radio matters not at all to me. Part of my day job is dealing with the media and that requires some consideration of where media outlets and personalities are coming from. I've been interviewed countless times by people at PBS or NPR. There is no slant more socialistic, and more consistently so.

This has never surprised me. Publicly funded media is socialistic, so it doesn't seem odd at all that those working for such entities might have a stronger belief in socialism than even the very liberal folks at privately owned big media outlets.

There is bias in news reporting and there always will be. That's hardly the problem. The problem is forcing people to pay for the bias and propaganda with which they disagree. As Jefferson once wrote, "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."

This sort of tyranny has become a fixation on the left. Leftist artists cannot seem to enjoy their craft without the controversy that comes from forcing people who are offended by it to pay the bill.
Leftists also want public financing of political campaigns, so that Americans are forced to pay to promote political views they oppose. Of course, this could just be a pragmatic decision based on the realization that they cannot raise funds voluntarily.

And too, the liberals who predominate at PBS and NPR are likely much happier pretending that they work in a commercial-free sector where they can escape having to do programming based on what customers with their filthy money might desire. This is a charade, of course, since ads from big corporations make up a huge chunk of PBS's support. But still, they do pretend. (Emphasis mine)



This insight identifies, I believe, the underlying cancer that has eaten away at civil discourse in this country. It describes almost all the the intensely emotional conflicts in the social arena-- from abortion to Gay rights to almost all instances of public financing of art and culture. This is the reason that no resolution or compromise can ever be made between opposing viewpoints.

One side --primarly the Left (I will note the one exception I can think of in just a minute) is much more comfortable imposing its will on anyone who disagrees. They discovered several decades ago that what they cannot make happen via democratic voting can be ever so easily accomplished by judicial fiat (on a national or state level) or by adminstrative fiat in the non-governmental area (e.g., academia).

As Jefferson noted and Jacobs notes, this really adds insult to injury, because the people who disagree with you are now forced to pay (either through their taxes or their tuition)for your point of view.

The one instance where the Right is guilty of the same offense is in the K-12 educational arena, where they are trying to impose (at least in this country)some of their religious beliefs (e.g., the evolution/intelligent design controversy). I suppose it was just a matter of time to where the religious Right would say, "well, if the Left can do it, we should be able to to also!" Although I totally disapprove of these efforts, they generally remain on a local level; in local schoolboards and are not part of a an attempt to legislate or judiciate opinions that the majority would not approve.

Though it could be argued that they might do such a thing if they needed to, I suppose, the point is that the Left is already doing it--it is not a theoretical for them.

I certainly don't applaud this foray into tyrannical methodology by the religious Right.

But the Left has made it their primary modus operandi to use the force of the government to give clout to their cultural, social, political and moral and quasi-religious beliefs in all areas. Of course, they do it because they understand that they are much more knowledgable than you or I are about what is right.

It is the pervasive tyranny of the elitist.

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