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In Defense of Public Media

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The prospect of de-funding National Public Radio, long controlled by the political Left, understandably has many conservatives and libertarians salivating with glee. De-funding may be a good idea at this point - it's possible that the present system is beyond reform - but ultimately the goal ought to be the funding of public radio and television that truly works in the national interest.

Government has a vital role beyond lawmaking and law enforcement. Charged with "promoting the general welfare", the state helps to set the moral, cultural, and even the spiritual tone of the nation. Public media can be valuable component of this program, a powerful force for influencing culture and the common good. A genuinely conservative government will not neglect to employ its advantages. Let's take a look at some of those advantages.

1. Media content is not dependent on market forces. It should not be necessary to remind conservatives that market forces are not always positive or consistent with the common good. The freedom to offer programming that is worthy and important, but that the market does not necessarily support, is therefore indispensable. Likewise, a system of media that does not offer programming independent of market considerations runs the risk of dumbing down the culture.

The independence of public media has many positive implications. A public media can give voices to those who would not otherwise be heard - the unborn, the elderly and infirm, artists and musicians, writers and poets, teachers and scholars, etc. A public media can educate and inform on topics that are unsupported elsewhere: historical events long forgotten, obscure but important personalities, and neglected stories of every kind, without regard for ratings or the approval of advertisers. Yes - it's also true that the state can and does promulgate harmful programming, but the state at least is free to do better, even when "the market" screams otherwise.

2. No commercials! The bulk of corporate advertising, in its present state of vulgarity and crass amorality, is bad for everyone.

3. News as news, not entertainment. In the market-controlled media the news has become little more than mindless entertainment with an overdose of emotional manipulation - a joke. Public media, by contrast, is free to present the news as nothing but news, in much greater detail and depth, and without the aid of sirens, bombs, bells, whistles, keyboards, contrived chit-chat, and scantily-dressed women.

4. Public control. A public media is capable of addressing public needs as they arise and emergencies of every kind. It is capable of being a clearinghouse for information when profit-based operations are tied to other priorities.

5. Restoring a common culture. Americans, through public media, can begin to re-learn the same history, songs, and stories that once united us. Our present market-based media system, left to itself, tends toward cultural dissolution. Today one would be hard-pressed to find two random people on a crowded American sidewalk who know the words to any of our national songs, who have read three or four of the same poems, or who understand our national heritage in the same way. The same problem exists on the regional level even more acutely. A strong, conservative public media could be a source of unity and cultural renewal - not merely on the national level, where this goal is necessarily limited, but on the local and regional level where community life has suffered the most.

Comments (51)

I agree that the things you identify are goods. I also will say that I value the classical-music content on NPR (when it can be found) and PBS (the same). (At the same time, I feel compelled to note my intense and continuing dislike for Margaret Juntwait and Ira Siff, even if NPR is not responsible for their presence on Met broadcasts.)

But NPR and PBS do almost none of the things you describe. Actually, that's not true: they do some of these things, but only by interspersing them with the crass, ridiculous, or modernistic. PBS is probably better in this regard than NPR, which is often just truly terrible.

But regardless, to what extent does the entire enterprise actually depend on Congressional money anyways?

True, NPR/PBS have a ways to go. But with public media in the right hands, the goods described are at least a strong possibility. Not so with market-dependent media.

Jeff C.,

I hope you realize, that while some of the advantages you list for public media are indeed worthy, they are basically impossible to realize unless at the same time you ban all market choices. For example, you just can't get a large portion of the American public interested in "historical events long forgotten, obscure but important personalities, and neglected stories of every kind" OR a common culture unless you force them to tune in.

Following Lydia's lead (see next post), I could open up a fun can of worms and note that public schooling used to sort of serve this role of providing a common culture to everyone, but we all know how well they have done their job...

So, JC, you've got no serious problem with the existence of a Commissariat of Culture, so long as it's run your way.

Ughhh.

How on earth did we end up on the same blog together?

Government has a vital role beyond lawmaking and law enforcement. Charged with "promoting the general welfare", the state helps to set the moral, cultural, and even the spiritual tone of the nation. Public media can be valuable component of this program, a powerful force for influencing culture and the common good. A genuinely conservative government will not neglect to employ its advantages. Let's take a look at some of those advantages.

1. Media content is not dependent on market forces.

2. No commercials!

3. News as news, not entertainment.

4. Public control.

5. Restoring a common culture. Americans, through public media, can begin to re-learn the same history, songs, and stories that once united us.

Our present market-based media system, left to itself, tends toward cultural dissolution.

I could not disagree more strongly. Setting the moral and cultural tone, and providing the content to attempt to do so are two very different things. The latter is not the role of government to provide, nor can it generally speaking. It is to protect an environment that can allow access to that which citizens and citizen groups wish to provide. Philanthropy and non-profits have always provided much of the most valuable material we have.

Besides which, the public library has always provided books that do almost all of the things you cite. Books and media that sometimes authors hoped to profit by, and sometimes not. And I'm probably in a minority here of optimists in seeing that continue with other media in other outlets. I've spent four hours between last night and tonight reading from a first-rate American history blog whose content is written by a professor from Arizona State. Blogs aren't market based. Here again, the government provides access to market and non-market sources provided by citizens and citizen groups.

One last item: NPR is only partly funded by the government. Does anyone think decreasing its market dependence by increasing its public funding would increase the quality? I doubt it.

It seems to me pretty pointless to talk about a conservative-controlled public radio because it exists only in a wholly imaginary world. It's not ever going to happen, so why talk about it as a purely theoretical possibility?

Also, on the matter of songs and people's knowing the words to our national songs, who is in fact preserving that? Non-government groups, that's who. People who _sell_ the stuff, that's who. I was on a train a couple of weeks ago and got to listen in to the DVD a little girl was watching across the aisle. It was by a group called the Cedarmont Kids and included everything from "This Land is Your Land" to "The Farmer in the Dell." A bunch of pretty little girls and well-dressed little boys all dancing around outdoors singing this stuff for over an hour. It wasn't produced by the U.S. government. So we can see sheerly as an empirical matter that it's false to say that government-controlled media preserves public culture which is impossible to preserve in the market, because in fact it's the government that is tearing down our common culture (ask people with their kids in public schools) and the market that is giving anyone a chance to keep it alive.

Like most gov't things, it's great in theory, but rotten in practice.

It's just too much power for the Wrong Folks not to desire it.

Funny thing is, the stuff it's praised for is the very stuff that COULD be marketable-- like I've been saying all over, OFFER me a streaming service for the old PBS stuff like classic Sesame Street, Mystery! and MPS (as much as they don't have licensing lawsuits happening on) and you'll make millions. For crying out loud, just cut a deal with Netflix!-- Growing up, my folks ALWAYS sent money in to NPR because of the classical music and A Prairie Home Companion. (The local NPR doesn't seem to offer either, so we have KING.ORg instead-- a non-profit classical station)

#5 is THE biggest problem. They don't want to "restore" anything, they want to control it. (Thus, "Cookies are a sometimes food.")

Why should the government's role be to disseminate culture? Where did we get this idea that it was the government's job to combat the evils of those vulgar market forces? While I do agree that aggregate demand obviously is not cognizant of conservative values, it does not follow that we should therefore look to the government as the source of preservation.

That's similar to looking to the government to institute a state church--not as mandatory mind you, but enough to promote "civic virtue" if one may call it that. Notwithstanding the absurdities that would arise in a state church designed to promote "civic virtue", one only needs to look at the history of state churches around the world and conclude that the most efficient method to destroy the institution of religion would be to bring it into the public realm so that it may rot and stagnate.

The privatization of religion is the best thing to ever happen to religion.

Well, if the BBC is anything to go by, then none of the advantages of the public media (in Jeff's list) will be realized.

If readers here watched BBC television regularly, they would know that it's an unfailing source of cheap, vulgar entertainment for the masses. There aren't any commercials, but the BBC advertises itself at every opportunity. A few gems are still found among the mountains of dross, so they justify the licence fee by exaggerating their quality and frequency.

Despite their feigned 'independent' stance, there is an undisguised and persistent liberal bias that influences BBC broadcasts on the political and social questions of the day.

I hope you realize, that while some of the advantages you list for public media are indeed worthy, they are basically impossible to realize unless at the same time you ban all market choices.

Indeed there are more than a few market choices I would like to ban, but that's a different topic. I do understand your point, Jeff, but I'm not really suggesting anything more than working with the present level of public media influence and turning it in a positive direction. NPR programming reaches 27.5 million listeners, and PBS up to 35 million viewers: that enough to do a lot of good. To be honest it does quite a bit of good already (along with the bad), in spite of itself.

Following Lydia's lead (see next post), I could open up a fun can of worms and note that public schooling used to sort of serve this role of providing a common culture to everyone, but we all know how well they have done their job...

Yes, but even public schooling could serve this role to some extent if the American people so desired. Are you suggesting that public education ought to be abolished entirely? I'm all for abolishing the Department of Education, but I think some form of public education remains desirable, as just one component of a larger system that is also parochial and private. In any case there are problems inherent with mass, compulsory public education that have nothing to do with public media.

So, JC, you've got no serious problem with the existence of a Commissariat of Culture, so long as it's run your way.

Of course. And it's the same with you. A libertarian state, or any state, also functions as a "Commissariat of Culture" of sorts. That's because government is not just an arbitrary creation of men, something the "sovereign people" can choose to have or not to have, but is instituted by God to facilitate human flourishing. Men naturally look to the state as a teacher in public matters, and the state therefore teaches -- not only by what it does, but also by what it doesn't do.

That the modern secular state functions as a petty tyranny is beside the point. If the public media were an unambiguous force for good, it would mitigate the petty tyrannical impulses of society and also of government.

Ughhh.

How on earth did we end up on the same blog together?

We have a few of the same enemies?

It seems to me pretty pointless to talk about a conservative-controlled public radio because it exists only in a wholly imaginary world. It's not ever going to happen, so why talk about it as a purely theoretical possibility?

To the extent that public media is virtually the only means by which ordinary Americans are exposed to certain forms of high culture in the western tradition, it is already conservative and its benefits are not theoretical. Same goes for news: despite the leftist bias, public media news is usually better than the alternative. For 20 years the MacNeil-Lehrer Report was the best and most informative television news available.

Some of you might not remember this, but the cold-war programming of Voice of America is another example of how public media might work domestically. As an amateur radio operator in my youth (N6KLV) I used to listen to these broadcasts from time to time. A domestic version of the old, cold-warrior VOA, with a few minor ideological adjustments, should be welcomed by conservatives.

Also, on the matter of songs and people's knowing the words to our national songs, who is in fact preserving that? Non-government groups, that's who.

You're missing my point. These private purveyors of culture are doing excellent work, but they don't reach anyone who isn't already looking for them. They meet the private needs of a small market niche, that is all.

Funny thing is, the stuff it's praised for is the very stuff that COULD be marketable-- like I've been saying all over, OFFER me a streaming service for the old PBS stuff like classic Sesame Street, Mystery! and MPS (as much as they don't have licensing lawsuits happening on) and you'll make millions.

Foxfier, if that were truly the case, it would have happened long ago. I've been in markets without public media: with few exceptions classical music, opera, Music Theatre and so forth are not to be found. You're stuck with various forms of processed electric noise, sports, and Rush Limbaugh. Prairie Home Companion could make it on its own if it went commercial, but if it went commercial it wouldn't be Prairie Home Companion.

Growing up, my folks ALWAYS sent money in to NPR because of the classical music and A Prairie Home Companion.

I rest my case. :-)

The privatization of religion is the best thing to ever happen to religion.

Let me guess: Marx? Engels? Robespierre? Stalin? Mao?

How on earth did we end up on the same blog together?

That's a nasty comment.

We used to enjoy "With Heart and Voice" (songs from the 1940 hymnal) and Sunday Baroque but our local NPR pulled those programs.

Don't disagree with the basic point of the entry, though.

Public radio and television are invariably staffed with the usual suspects. Employable graduates who are looking for jobs in the public media have been thoroughly inculcated with every modish attitude and liberal prejudice while at university. That's why the cycle of liberal bias remains unbroken.

Jobs at the BBC are only advertised in the Guardian newspaper - which is the high panjandrum of liberal journalism in Britain.

I doubt that graduates of a conservative disposition looking for work in the American public media are likely to find any.

We used to enjoy "With Heart and Voice" (songs from the 1940 hymnal) and Sunday Baroque but our local NPR pulled those programs.

Don't disagree with the basic point of the entry, though.

I don't know, Bruce. I think the fact that your local NPR pulled them says something about the relevance of the point of the entry in practice.

I agree with Bill; Steve's comment was a nasty comment.

To the extent that public media is virtually the only means by which ordinary Americans are exposed to certain forms of high culture in the western tradition, it is already conservative and its benefits are not theoretical. Same goes for news: despite the leftist bias, public media news is usually better than the alternative. For 20 years the MacNeil-Lehrer Report was the best and most informative television news available.

Jeff, I took your main post to be envisaging something more thoroughgoingly conservative than just, "It's somewhat better than the alternative." Or even, "to the extent that _____." You refer to "A strong, conservative public media" which "could be a source of unity and cultural renewal."

I don't claim to know a lot about NPR, because I don't listen to it, but I don't think even you are claiming that this is what we presently have.

De-funding NPR isn't my own #1 priority. My own libertarian leanings are somewhat moderate, and one of the ways in which they are moderate is that I would prioritize defunding. Defunding Planned Parenthood is obviously much more important. And that's only one of many priorities. Defunding NPR would have to get in a long line.

But I do understand a certain frustration people with libertarian leanings might feel at a certain theme of yours: "X program, if only run in a thoroughly conservative fashion, would be so valuable, that it should be done by the government." I really do think many times these things start to sound like a picture of a Never-never land. When would _any_ of these things be done in a thoroughly conservative fashion?

Jeff C.,

You are fast becoming one of my favorite bloggers here -- while I tend to agree more with Lydia and Steve this thoughtful post and especially your gracious reply to your critics is a model for how I want to conduct myself in the blogosphere.

I think your specific responses to me (and Lydia and Steve) highlight the central tension between two nobel goals: how to we promote a virtuous culture using government and how do we make sure government doesn't undermine a virtuous people? You are right to highlight the potential of and real world examples of the U.S. using public media to achieve the former; your critics like to point to liberals using public media (and I would throw in the schools, but let's leave them out for now since they are a separate discussion) to achieve the later.

So to me there is an interesting cost/benefit analysis -- should we as conservatives continue to support public media and attempt to push for conservative reforms or is the harm from liberal public media too great and should we just push to get rid of it and encourage public virtue through other means?

Foxfier, if that were truly the case, it would have happened long ago. I've been in markets without public media: with few exceptions classical music, opera, Music Theatre and so forth are not to be found. You're stuck with various forms of processed electric noise, sports, and Rush Limbaugh. Prairie Home Companion could make it on its own if it went commercial, but if it went commercial it wouldn't be Prairie Home Companion.

How can they compete with NPR? The classic station that covers Seattle and Tacoma (streaming world wide on King.org !) only got going because the local NPR [redacted] so badly it was possible to afford a radio station from the folks that were [redacted]; they also offer all the operas when they're on.

Maybe you're just looking at the wrong spot on the dial; there are non profit Christian stations (Air1 being the most famous, although I've caught bits of several preaching ones), there's various Catholic Radio stations (largely EWTN shows), if there's a college near there's the college radio station and tons of talk radio of all flavors not currently on TV. They all have something in common: their programming doesn't cost much. As I understand it, it could cost even less if they were allowed to go fully syndicated, but the "local interest" rules screw them up.

PBS and NPR don't have interest in smart business, they have interest in promoting their beliefs. There's no special grant to be had from tapping the obvious profit involved in their over priced DVDs, so they don't.

Hm... a better solution might be to put NPR and PBS under private management with the stated goal of promoting culture. But that might cut into their 500th misleading story about global warming.

Government has a vital role beyond lawmaking and law enforcement. Charged with "promoting the general welfare", the state helps to set the moral, cultural, and even the spiritual tone of the nation. Public media can be valuable component of this program, a powerful force for influencing culture and the common good. A genuinely conservative government will not neglect to employ its advantages.

In the most abstract sense that might be true, but it would be possible with for a society with as many religions as France has cheeses to come to an agreement on that beyond a superficial declaration of what's good and what's bad. Given our unique history, I would be more concerned that what they'd try to conserve is non-judgmental tolerance toward every religion from Christianity to the Cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

"Let me guess: Marx? Engels? Robespierre? Stalin? Mao?"

Actually that would be William Lane Craig.

You are fast becoming one of my favorite bloggers here -- while I tend to agree more with Lydia and Steve this thoughtful post and especially your gracious reply to your critics is a model for how I want to conduct myself in the blogosphere.

Jeff S., that's quite a compliment - and it says more about you than it does about me. I have a long record of online cantankerousness, unfortunately. But thanks all the same!

Good comments, everyone. I'll be scarce today.

It seems there are several premises here. Some people are obviously perturbed because they reject at least one. Some of those premises relate to the benefits of culture generally; others posit the government's role in promoting it. The last would seem to be about the effectiveness of American public media in doing what the prior premises indicate it ought to be doing. I think the last premise is certainly the most debatable (although the libertarians will never concede the first two).

Here's one thought that I had not yet thought of when I typed my first comment: I don't want to live in an America with a common culture. I want to live in an America that has a collection of associated regional cultures. So much of the traditional culture that our western art and history reflects depended in large part on a relationship to some particular place. Love of hearth and home doesn't mean love of a place thousands of miles away on the same terms as love of one's own county. I live in the South; I was born and raised here. I enjoy it. I've lived elsewhere; I did not enjoy that. There's a difference between places. And to the extent that the difference is disappearing due to chain restaurants, Wal-Mart, federal regulations, and the internet, I don't think that's a good thing, for New Yorkers or for Alabamans.

So instead of one public-media monolith, I would vastly prefer a number of regional public-media providers. Let's overthrow the public-media hegemon and institute a multi-polar public-media universe. We might even get better programming.

promoting the general welfare

That is not a power granted to the Federal Government. It's a justification for the powers that are granted to it (see Article I, Section 8).

Here's one thought that I had not yet thought of when I typed my first comment: I don't want to live in an America with a common culture. I want to live in an America that has a collection of associated regional cultures.

I agree that regional culture should be a priority, but we need both at different levels, don't we? Something has to glue it all together (if we are going to have a nation, at any rate). And I think it's a bit pre-mature to give up on the idea of a nation.

Mike T.'s concern that, in the present political climate, the promotion of national culture in the public media would be reduced to mere tolerance at best, or "celebrating diversity" at worst, is a valid one but this result is not inevitable in my opinion. Finding the right balance wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't satisfy everyone, but great programming that more-or-less satisfies the goal of promoting a healthy national culture is definitely doable.

So instead of one public-media monolith, I would vastly prefer a number of regional public-media providers. Let's overthrow the public-media hegemon and institute a multi-polar public-media universe. We might even get better programming.

If we had to choose between national and regional, then regional is the way to go. But I don't see why we shouldn't have both. National programming, too, would incorporate regional culture and interests.

Jeff C, I listend to public radio daily and I financially support my local station. I agree with you 100%. The elimination of public media will simply have the effects of A) further consumerizing the rest of the media (thus causing more crap to come into existence, seeing that the market almost always reverts to the cultural LCD), and B) hastening the disappearance from the airwaves of valid culturally conservative alternatives to consumerist rubbish, like classical music, folk music, etc.

There are lots of areas where the federal budget can be cut. I find it wrongheaded for conservatives to get so animated about one expenditure that actually does some welcome cultural good.

Hi, Jeff.

I wrote: "So, JC, you've got no serious problem with the existence of a Commissariat of Culture, so long as it's run your way."

And you replied:

"Of course."

Well, I'm glad we're clear on that.

You continued:

"And it's the same with you."

I reply: you could hardly be more wrong. There is just about nothing that I could possibly hate, loathe & despise more than any sort of state-imposed "culture".

Steve, I assented to your "Commissariat of Culture" caricature purely in the spirit of caricature. But of course public media does not mean "state imposed culture". It has an influential role to play, just as do families and churches and communities, but it does not by itself create culture or impose it on anyone.

Libertarianism, by the way, is culture - the cult of property for some, the cult of the individual for others. A libertarian state would, in fact, impose that cultural paradigm much more forcefully and effectively on the population than anything else public media might hope to accomplish.

The libertarian view of the state as an alien force imposed upon contented and self-sufficient populations is false, a-historical, and completely at odds with human nature. Government in whatever form is an integrated, organic, collaborative participant in every human society. It has a cultural role just as other participants do, with undeniable advantages, and it has a duty to employ those advantages responsibly.

Libertarianism, by the way, is culture - the cult of property for some, the cult of the individual for others. A libertarian state would, in fact, impose that cultural paradigm much more forcefully and effectively on the population than anything else public media might hope to accomplish.

Having some libertarian views doesn't make one a Libertarian any more than considering the consequences of one's actions makes one a consequentialist. Going the full route and adopting the views of the party or trying to make too many ideas fit a libertarian mold is another matter.

Anyway, I'm not a Libertarian, and I don't know whether Steve is a Libertarian or not, but I'm with him in deploring a state imposed cultural viewpoint any more than is strictly necessary. You are correct to point out the state is not neutral, and can't be, but there is a difference between an expansive role and a minimally necessary one. We see the same distinction between a judge and an activist judge.

Whatever term we'd give to an expansive state directed cultural transmission, I wonder what would be the historical precedent for this in American history. I can think of Voice of America, and other foreign or wartime media broadcasts, but the state's use of this has always been very limited, and even much more so when for domestic consumption. There is a reason for this.

Regarding NPR, I'd suggest that if they do cast off or be deprived of state funding it would be the best thing that ever happened to them. I think they'd flourish, and I'd be happy to see it. Like oil has corrupted every nation that has an abundance of it, a 20% stream of non-stop cash is a detriment to the success of the organization. I suspect their donations would go up to match it pretty quickly too.

The defunding is not that important, as NPR can survive without government funding. The poor fellow who got hoodwinked recently thought they'd be better off without it. Good thing, as it is clearly unconstitutional for the federal government to fund it.

In terms of culture, I wouldn't want our ridiculous and traitorous government to get their hands on even a modest cultural mouthpiece. I suppose all such questions should be considered theoretically, supposing a government that doesn't hate us and seek to destroy us. A decent government might be allowed to fund a radio station, if for no other reason than to give us an alternative to Lady Gaga or whatever other trash is on the commercial radio. But then, a decent government would require a decent populace, one which would shun Lady Gaga anyway. So it's perhaps a moot point.

The NPR classical station is the only decent one on the radio around here. If it went away I might as well disable my radio. Someone over at The American Conservative commented asking why it is that liberals are the only ones who take an interest in higher culture. I don't want to rag on the booboisie too much, but it was a good question.

Jeff - I get the impression that you skimmed Atlas Shrugged at the age of 12, and haven't read any libertarian theorists since.

"A cult of property?" A "cult of the individual?" "The libertarian view of the state as an alien force imposed upon contented and self-sufficient populations?"

Who on earth do you think you're arguing with?

Steve, you dish out caricature pretty freely but don't seem to take it well. Just sayin'.

And yet I don't exaggerate much when it comes to coffee-house libertarianism. I've more than skimmed Atlas Shrugged: I swallowed the whole libertarian fantasy hook, line and sinker. I subscribed to their journals, studied their tomes, and adopted their polemics as my own, much to my embarrassment. Thankfully I was over that phase by the age of 30.

Have I grossly mischaracterized your own views? Then you tell me what you believe about the role of government, and why. I'm all ears.

Steve, you dish out caricature pretty freely but don't seem to take it well. Just sayin'.

You said Steve's comment was caricature, but I didn't think so. In contrast to others, I didn't read the "on the same blog?" bit as mean, but rather an honest shock at the nature of the stark difference of opinion over such fundamental issues. The shock happens when classifications don't mean what one thinks.

I doubt a stark and self-evident difference of this type can be better understood by explicitly discussing contrasting views on government, because the disagreement in question displays the difference in views at least as well as any example one could hope to give in the course of such a discussion.

Mark, I assumed the same thing about Steve's "on the same blog" remark.

If Steve's "Commissariat of Culture" comment was not caricature, then he's a dolt. As I happen to know that Steve is not a dolt, his comment was therefore caricature.

I will admit that describing the libertarian philosophies of property and the individual as "cults" was a caricature, but it served to emphasize their absolute pre-eminence in libertarian thought, and the undeniably cultural implications of their pre-eminence. Nothing has greater social value for the libertarian than the rights of property and the individual, the latter even being described as "sovereign" in the literature.

You will seldom ever hear libertarians speak of "social value", however. Chapter 7 of F.A. Hayek's "The Fatal Conceit" - a book not without some important insights - is partially devoted to an attack on the word "social", and contains a list of 167 anathematized terms, one of which is "social value".

i think the president agrees.

he's on the phone with his much-beloved pastor of twenty years' standing, now retired, to appraise him of his interest in being just the man to lead us culturally, morally, and, ahem, spiritually.

I don't have much of real substance to add to an already interesting discussion, but I'll just throw this out there:

Like so many good-government-type programs, the role of public media that Jeff describes sounds like precisely the sort of thing that would thrive in a circumscribed and homogeneous social environment--in other words, the kind of society we manifestly don't live in at the moment. These sorts of ideas are beautiful when kept "small," and there was a time in America's past when even the whole of the United States could be described as coherent enough--culturally, religiously, and ethnically--as well as small enough in brute scale to permit the use of federally-funded media to promote commonly-appreciated goods.

In contemporary America, though, it's impossible to see how that could be made to work. In an era so thoroughly ideological that Americans can't agree on such minutiae as, I don't know, whether the country ought to be an aggressively anti-Christian tyranny, the whole notion is preposterous. And in an America which is nigh-totalitarian in its devotion to the advanced liberal state, I don't know how Jeff or anybody else could see federally-funded radio as anything other than a conduit for promoting an advanced and demented liberalism. Which is what it is. Not coincidentally.

Sage, as usual, has sage words.

"And in an America which is nigh-totalitarian in its devotion to the advanced liberal state, I don't know how Jeff or anybody else could see federally-funded radio as anything other than a conduit for promoting an advanced and demented liberalism. Which is what it is. Not coincidentally."

In the same way that one can see Fox as a conduit for promoting an advanced and demented corporate consumerism? But that's somehow ok since Fox doesn't get $0.11 a month from the taxpayer? Please.

Perhaps you can explain how 24/7 classical music programming, or a 4 hr. Sunday evening bluegrass show, or an all blues Saturday afternoon promotes liberalism? Au contraire, I'd say that things of this type are actually promoting a cultural conservatism which is subtly but diametrically opposed to public media's liberal bias, and is in fact subversive of it, unbeknownst to the libs.

"Someone over at The American Conservative commented asking why it is that liberals are the only ones who take an interest in higher culture."

Mainstream American conservatism tends to devalue things which function in some way or another outside the cash nexus and/or do not have an obvious pragmatic value. As Jeff C. said above, the notion of "social value" is suspect to it.

These sorts of ideas are beautiful when kept "small,"

I take it, then, that you would at least approve of regional public media? We can do business.

And in an America which is nigh-totalitarian in its devotion to the advanced liberal state, I don't know how Jeff or anybody else could see federally-funded radio as anything other than a conduit for promoting an advanced and demented liberalism. Which is what it is. Not coincidentally.

Jim Kalb (who may or may not agree with my views on public media) often makes the point that traditional beliefs and mores survive, even in an advanced liberal state, because those are the only things that work. The Achille's heel of liberalism is that it is hopelessly dysfunctional and inconsistent. And so we have the odd specimen of a public media that, on the one hand, does indeed promote "advanced and demented liberalism" to some extent, and on the other hand offers the kind of wholesome and traditional programming Rob G. and I have been describing.

Programming doesn't need to be overtly political at all. Cutting off the majority of NPR's federal funding in the 1980s did not result in a less politicized network. NPR presently receives only $90 million from the feds, approximately 10% of its budget. The rest must be generated by private fund raising. Let me suggest to you that private donors don't give without strings, and that much of NPR's leftist slant is the result of those strings. Government funding, if anything, is a force for restraint.

Let me suggest to you that private donors don't give without strings, and that much of NPR's leftist slant is the result of those strings. Government funding, if anything, is a force for restraint.

Well, I don't know. You make an interesting point. But I would suggest in reply that government funding is also an incentive to favor larger and more intrusive government, if for no other reason than an unconscious fear of hypocrisy. Government funding also is notorious for coming, not just with strings, but with chains. The relatively low percentage of funding it receives from the Feds is perhaps the real constraining factor in this instance. But your argument does suggest an indirect case for private funding of NPR by more conservative outfits, (though whether the bidding war with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the soul of public media could ever be won, I'm not so certain).

I take it, then, that you would at least approve of regional public media? We can do business.

In principle, absolutely. I'm not an ideologically committed libertarian, and I really do believe that on a manageably local scale this kind of thing can achieve--in fact, has achieved--the goods you say it can. Perhaps my point just boils down to the fact that things aren't what they were, and that I would support defunding NPR, not because I am philosophically opposed to the idea of public media, but because I don't think it works in the present environment. As evidenced by NPR, which is utterly beyond reform. It seems a lot of things fall into that category, and maybe it really is just the "National" part of the formula that is the cause of the problem. The Jewish kibbutz is different from a massive welfare state for reasons even Stalin could appreciate--quantity having a quality all its own, etc.

Programming doesn't need to be overtly political at all.

Oh, too true, and this is the real frustration, isn't it? One thing that's percolated in the background, something that perhaps merits some attention from a more insightful writer than me, is the mainstream right's piling on with respect to NPR's "whiteness." See here, for example:

http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/2511-peeling-back-the-onion-that-is-white-liberal-elite-npr

Sure, they use other descriptors like "elite," but we know the game here. We shouldn't be surprised, but the usual suspects are really starting to take to this notion that NPR's appeal to cultured whites is some kind of demerit. One gets the impression they won't be happy until it has irreparably degraded its programming to appeal to "urban youth" in an attempt at "relevance." It's more likely they just haven't even thought that far ahead, and see the whole "It's bad because it's so white" thing as convenient cudgel. Anyway, the really interesting question isn't why high-status whites are so interested in making something like NPR, but rather, why nobody else is. If there's a wider problem with respect to NPR's appeal, it's that non-whites and poor whites don't appreciate the best aspects of public radio, such as opera, reasonably clean humor, cultural literacy, etc.

Which, again, suggest to me that perhaps we on the right should be asking ourselves, not why NPR is so white and so liberal, but why conservatives foundations aren't nearly as interested as liberals in promoting and preserving the best of the West, so to speak. It's a subject that's come up here before, I believe.

"Which, again, suggest to me that perhaps we on the right should be asking ourselves, not why NPR is so white and so liberal, but why conservatives foundations aren't nearly as interested as liberals in promoting and preserving the best of the West, so to speak. It's a subject that's come up here before, I believe."

Absolutely. If there were just one conservative cultural foundation for every four or five libertarian "think-tanks", we could make a good start.

By the way, I just spent 30 minutes listening to our local NPR member station's "Harmony Ridge" program. Wow, what a delight! A jewel! And it happens for just two hours on Saturdays. If there were sufficient profits to be made broadcasting this kind of music, in this region, the commercial stations would have figured it out a long time ago and would be filling out the rest of the week.

In the same way that one can see Fox as a conduit for promoting an advanced and demented corporate consumerism? But that's somehow ok since Fox doesn't get $0.11 a month from the taxpayer? Please.

No. I would say, rather, that promoting an advanced and demented consumerism is not OK, with or without federal funding. But at most, that's just an argument for denying Fox News federal funding, something you'll notice I never suggested doing in the first place.

If you're going to try to catch me in an inconsistency, at least do me the courtesy of faithfully restating what I said.

This is the kind of mindlessly partisan argumentation that gets conservatives precisely nowhere. I don't like federal funding of NPR, so that must mean I am on the hook for defending consumerism, or that I'm opposed to the concept of social values, or something.

In short, Rob, I don't think I think what you think I think, and if you read my subsequent responses to Jeff more closely, I'm sure you'll agree.

Jeff - so there aren't enough interested listeners out your way to make the broadcast of "Harmony Ridge" profitable, without public subsidy?

Apparently not, Steve. I don't know what else to conclude. It seems that even two hours of this music on a Saturday needs a subsidy.

That doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds, perhaps thousands, of interested listeners in the area, along with thousands more who simply have had no exposure (and with more exposure might become fans). But operating a commercial radio station costs a pretty penny, and it's a big risk to start one on a "maybe". The market knows what works: formulaic, mass-produced electric noise that requires no patience and quickly stimulates. It's a winner.

Sage, you wrote "I don't know how Jeff or anybody else could see federally-funded radio as anything other than a conduit for promoting an advanced and demented liberalism." If this is truly the case, and if I could say a similar thing about Fox, then the only real differences between the two are that they conduits for different dementias and that one is taxpayer subsidized and one isn't.

Point being that neither are merely conduits for dementia -- there are good and bad to both. I'd prefer not to see public media subsidized; but the results of its subsidization aren't wholly bad, in the same way that the results of Fox's reliance on the market aren't wholly good. This is what I was getting at. I can see now that my original comment was somewhat unclear.

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