Posted by David Bernstein: Prepackaged Propaganda "news" videos [1]whether produced by Bush political appointee minions, or by any other government officials, are an appalling use of government money. Though much of the controversy has been over videos that seem to support specific Bush Administration policies, equally troubling in a somewhat different way are p.r. campaigns by government agencies that seek to build support for those agencies' "missions." Subsidizing, say, a pro-drug war point of view through a government p.r. campaign (hardly a partisan issue, as the overwhelming majority of both Republican and Democratic politicians favor it) is the economic equivalent of taxing the anti-drug war point of view. Americans wouldn't tolerate the latter, and we shouldn't tolerate the government using our tax money to encourage us to give it even more of our money (and freedom), meanwhile drowning out other voices with a tidal wave of statist shilling. I'm not even fond of the idea of the government using its money to, say, discourage drug use, as this is still an untoward interference in the marketplace of ideas, subject to all sorts of abuse (such as the "food pyramid" dictated for years by agricultural interest groups). But it strikes me that that sort of government noodging is a less dangerous animal than the government using money allocated to implement programs to propagandize in favor of those programs. And actually producing "news" propaganda in favor of, say, the Medicare drug benefit, as the Bushies (and prior administrations, apparently) have done is that much worse. The fact that the Bush Administration doesn't seem the least bit embarassed to be engaging in this sort of thing shows just how much the Admnistration has Beltway values.
References 1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35010-2005Mar14.html _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list Volokh@lists.powerblogs.com http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
