Every now and then, I swallow a couple sedatives and visit the moveon.org web site. I figure it’s my duty to head over there, if only to confirm in my own mind my views. Needless to say, it provides fodder for discussions in arenas like here.
At any rate, there’s a current campaign to elicit fellow liberals out there to send an email to congress demanding that they do not cut the funding for PBS. As they quote in their email that will be sent:
Congress must save NPR and PBS once and for all. Congress should guarantee permanent funding and independence from partisan meddling.
Isn’t this just like a liberal?
The thing we lose sight of is that when they refer to permanent funding, they’re talking about OUR MONEY. Funding, as we hopefully all know, comes out of the taxes we all pay. So, those wonderful people over there at moveon.org want us to be forced to support PBS – they just don’t view the money stolen from us as OUR MONEY, they view it as THEIR MONEY to spend as THEY wish.
Don’t get me wrong, I have listened to NPR from time to time, and I do agree PBS produces quality television, but do I think I should be forced to pay for it, at the point of a figurative gun? No.
If we reduce the funding of PBS, it just means that they will have to pursue other forms of funding. We might end up seeing formal commercials on the broadcasts. We might have to endure the funding drives on a more freguent nature. And, to be honest, we might end up seeing PBS folding.
Will I be sad to see that? Yes. Does that change my view? No. If PBS can’t survive without government funding, maybe it didn’t deserve to remain alive at all.
The point is, funding should come from those people who want to watch the programs – they have to be the ones that are willing to invest in it. They shouldn’t have to force those that don’t even watch to pay for the support of it.
I can hear it now: “PBS provides a public service and therefore requires us all to pay our fair share.”
Yes, just like a liberal…
PBS is just the tip of the iceberg, of course.
You hit the nail on the head when you said, “The thing we lose sight of is that when they refer to permanent funding, they’re talking about OUR MONEY”.
Both the government and the advocates for spending “lose track” of the fact that the money they’re spending belongs to someone else, specifically you and me.
I’ve never understood how they can justify the forced transfer of the result of my work to someone else…