According to Fox News: “Critics say that PBS has compromised its mission over the last 30 years, squandering taxpayer dollars with little thought to viewer accountability and becoming slaves to corporate underwriters and political correctness. And while some charge that PBS needs to take a bold stand by becoming more financially independent, others say it is just plain unnecessary today.”
Gee, now why would that be? If I steal money from my neighbor, by holding a gun to his head, and give you the money — not because you have earned it, but because you and I each claim you are somehow entitled to it — then how well can you be expected to perform with that money?
It’s no different with PBS. Allegedly good intentions can not wipe out the fact that money obtained by force (i.e. taxation) is what it is. Sooner or later, PBS had to be beaten by the competition of an ever-expanding private-sector media. It was inevitable that networks who had to earn their keep — and develop an audience not through the coercion of tax money, but through the honest persuasion of entertainment and excellence — would eventually win out.
There’s a lesson here for other public institutions — including ones more widely accepted and more popular than PBS. The most prominent (and dangerous) of these institutions are the public schools. As important as education — properly defined — is, this importance cannot be used to whitewash the fact that the money to pay for these monstrosities is taken by force, and utilized in a context of non-accountability.
Growing numbers of parents are learning that they can teach their children better on their own rather than leaving it to unaccountable, mediocre and vapidly political institutions of lower learning that pass for education in this country. If you approve of home schooling, you cannot help but be inspired by the sight of parents taking the education of their children into their own hands. If you don’t approve of home schooling, then what does it say about our public school system that greater numbers of parents are looking to it?
The initiation of force and coercion inevitably breed unaccountability. Public schools were brought into existence by government fiat, not through the voluntary consent of all of the governed. If I rob Peter to pay you, then you’re going to develop a pretty rotten attitude and deliver a lousy product. (The fact that a majority might approve of this robbery does not change the basic principle involved). It doesn’t matter whether I rob Peter to pay you to produce television, to teach children, or perform any other kind of activity. Theft, and the self-righteous sense of entitlement involved in political theft especially, will never lead to excellence. Republicans like President George W. Bush and Mayor Bloomberg of New York City — please take note. Stop trying to reform the unreformable — and stop throwing billions more down the toilet in the futile attempt to do so.
Only when we build a society based upon freedom and noncoercion can we expect reason and excellence to dominate. And only when reason, excellence and individualism dominate will we be wise enough to demand freedom.
