Everyone has a right to their point of view. NPR, also known as National Public Radio and funds grantee the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, has definitely shown their point of view. It’s decidedly left-wing. As I said, I have no problem with that. To each his own, even if it’s completely wacky.
Where I have a problem is where all taxpayers have to fund any part of it. How would liberals feel if some of their tax dollars were going to The Wall Street Journal, or, God forbid, Fox News? Their heads would explode!
Every year millions of taxpayers dollars go to the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, and they in turn give funds to NPR. So you, me and every other taxpayer is funding a particular political point of view; in my case, one I fervently disagree with. Why should I or any taxpayer have to pay to have a view, any view, extolled? Is that something our tax dollars should go to?
Even if they agreed with everything I believe in, I’d be just as opposed. Our government has no business using any taxpayers dollars to promote a particular political point of view. It’s one of the reasons I don’t agree with matching dollars going to any political campaign. The governments role was never to help promote a particular political view. We have elections to decide how we want tax dollars spent, not the other way around.
So Rep. Doug Lamborn, Republican of Colorado, is leading the charge to cut public funding to NPR and the Corporation For Public Broadcasting. What’s NPR’s response? Well of course, it’s right out of the progressive playbook, they demonize Lamborn as trying to limit free speech.
If you remember, NPR is the organization that fired Fox News contributor Juan Williams a few months ago for having the audacity to say that when he saw someone boarding a plane in Muslim garb he felt a little uncomfortable. Williams was honest enough to say what 70% of the American people already thought, so NPR attacked him personally and then fired him over the phone. Williams could hardly be called a right-wing advocate. Far from it. Williams is a center-left reporter and probably one of the most honest there is. I don’t agree with much Williams stands for, but isn’t what NPR did the epitome of limiting free speech? What a bunch of hypocrites!
Yank their funds. Let them get all their money from donations. Let people that want their kind of biased views broadcast pay for it. Or better yet, let them earn their money like the rest of us, and pay for it through their own hard work and not through a dole out! We don’t need public radio or TV. It isn’t 1950 where we only had a handful of channels. There’s hundreds of channels addressing every aspect of human existence. We don’t fund the New York Times or The Washington Post, and the value of their product is driving them into bankruptcy. I assume if NPR or CPB had to earn their own keep we’d be rid of them rather quickly and I say Good Riddance!