On "Polish NPR," Revealing Omission, Admission

At a conservative site, one Tim Graham asks, "Who Will Deprogram the Radicals at National Public Radio?"

The very title just about sums up what is wrong with today's Alinskyite conservative movement because it shows just how much the right apes the left these days.

The headline could conceivably be fine, rhetorically -- except that the piece never challenges either (1) the propriety of the government running a media outlet, or (2) the government (de)programming the staff of a media outlet when it doesn't toe the party line of whoever currently holds political power.

To be fair, the piece considers what is plausibly an example of the kind of story that has become all too common from our leftist (and erstwhile dominant) news media -- in which a leftist bias and objectivity are being conflated:

"Morning Edition" co-host A Martinez touted an "Iron Broom" of democracy restoring Poland's public broadcasting, known by the acronym TVP. "Part of the new government's effort to rebuild the country's democracy involves returning a popular national TV broadcaster from a right-wing propaganda tool back to a bona fide news organization."

Unless you speak Polish, it's hard to know if this finger-painting is accurate, but we can assume that if NPR proclaims it as "bona fide news," it's soothingly socialist. The villains of this story were the "far-right" Law and Justice Party, which rudely took over the government broadcaster like they were in charge of the government. NPR is praising the socialists for cleaning house, doing exactly the same thing they accuse the conservative party of doing. But when they do it, professionalism is returning. [bold aded]

There is no mention of whether either party had privatize the media infrastructure as part of its agenda, but it is a very safe assumption that a party that starts off dictating editorial policy doesn't: Confidence in a free market wiping out an obviously biased "news" organization (or in the rightness of one's own position when stated forthrightly (and elsewhere, if necessary) in competition to an opponent's do not manifest as attempts to control the news media.

And there is no suggestion that, as an alternative, that NPR (or its Polish equivalent) should be privatized and allowed to sink or swim on its own merits. There's just whining about the left doing it -- while fantasizing about doing exactly the same thing, rather than thinking about how to do the right thing:

The American left and the right today might squabble and they might hate each other, but they are trying to do basically the same anti-freedom things. (Image modified from photo taken by Sue Clark and hosted by Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

Terms like "radical left" only seem to air on NPR in soundbites from Donald Trump, in segments containing headlines like "If Donald Trump becomes president again, how authoritarian would his agenda be?" (Dec. 10), "Trump's Rhetoric, Always Extreme, Is Getting More So" (Dec. 19) and "Trump Embraces Autocratic Language" (Dec. 21).

Trump had roughly talked of "rooting out" the "vermin" of the current government. Leftists don't use "autocratic language" like that. Instead, as they root out the opposition, they call it "deprogramming." [bold added]

So... The great advantage of the right over the left these days is that, while they both want to do the same thing, the right admits it?

I have always thought of Trump as a slightly outdated Democrat in obnoxious packaging. The silver lining of this article is that I now have a fan of his demonstrating my point.

Today, both left and right are anti-liberty and are only competing to control the existing machinery of improper government in order to control the populace. Do not expect prosperity -- which requires freedom of speech and freedom of contract -- to ensue when the only question being asked is some form of How do we enslave everyone and feed them our propaganda?

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a misspelling.