And Now PBS

I just wrote a blog post questioning why government money should pay for NPR.  I would use identical reasoning in answering why government money shouldn't pay for PBS.

Then I read this article.  Be careful, PBS.  Publish too many more such articles and the left will turn on you, too.

We live in an era of alarmism. Everyone, or at least Trump opponents, seems alarmed nearly all the time. Even when we can’t quite summon the energy, we’re expected to be outraged. Our outrage is then presented as a badge of honor, evidence of virtue at a time of historic challenge to the Republic. But the nature of the outrage – overwrought before even Trump took office – has taken a new turn.

We are confronted daily not simply with outrage, but a kind of end-of-worldism: America is on the brink of dictatorship; Trump is going start World War III; the president’s access to the nuclear codes might actually destroy the universe; if he manages to control his impulses, then his withdrawal from the Paris climate change accords will still destroy the universe, just a bit more slowly.

As someone who works on the Middle East, I find myself, oddly enough, in a near constant state of relief. Nine months into Trump’s tenure, it could have been better, but it could just as well have been worse, perhaps much worse.

The world hasn’t ended...

Before Trump even had a chance to prove just how unfit for office he was, liberals and Democrats were already preemptively tossing around the word “impeachment.” The vigor for the Russia investigation is driven, in part, by the hope that clear evidence of criminal activity will emerge, thereby justifying the introduction of articles of impeachment. Yet despite no smoking gun, 40 percent of Americans – and more worryingly 72 percent of Democrats – say they would support impeachment, according to one recent poll...

Ironically, the arguments made by the likes of Posner and Cohen represent a greater long-term threat to American democracy than anything Trump has done so far. With the exception of some tweets that have raised the possibility of de-licensing certain networks or challenging judicial independence, Trump’s actual policies have been a number of things: damaging, dishonorable, illiberal, and racist, but they have not been undemocratic. Making this distinction – difficult for Americans since constitutional liberalism and democracy have gone hand in hand – has never been more important.

Whew. Thought I was going to get through an entire article without a "Trump is a horrible person and a racist" thread. Couldn't have that, could we? Perhaps PBS is still safe from leftie ire after all.

In effect, what many Democrats would like, whether explicitly declared or privately hoped for, is the criminalization of behavior that the “smarter” or “rational” among us deem unacceptable, racist, or evil. But, the great thing, and sometimes the scariest thing, about democracy is that it explicitly allows people to be, well, evil, as long their “evil” is expressed within the the law. Democracy is not meant to protect us from other Americans we don’t like.

Given that my side of the political aisle is much more heavily armed than the other side, it's good that the author recognizes that we don't have to like each other, but we do have to tolerate each other.

While "my side" plays by Marquess of Queensbury rules, though, the left gets more and more physically violent.  They should stop before the right decides it's had enough of such criminality.