Monday, May 24, 2010

The General Theory of NPR

I had the local NPR station on the radio Sunday afternoon as I worked in the kitchen. As I half-listened to one liberal interviewing another, I formulated a General Theory of NPR: NPR's default position is that every human problem can and should be solved by the federal government. I noted that for some future blog post and then within moments, at 4:04 in the mp3 file, I heard confirmation of it, as one liberal asked the other about making websites more accessible to the handicapped, "I'm confused on this point. Now, I know the government has a fairly wide berth in mandating physical improvements in public space, that have pretty much become standard not just in government buildings but in all public places. Is the internet deemed, for the purposes of government mandate, a public space that the government can say to a retailer or some other website that you're simply not in compliance and you'd best start to comply?"

The General Theory is a corollary of Althouse's Maxim: "A love of autocracy often lurks beneath the liberal veneer." Indeed.