Darkriders 2 Death Download: Defund public broadcasting or defund Jim DeMint: you choose

Congress spends ten times as much on itself as the US spends on public broadcasting. Which do you think gives better value?

Not speaking in any official capacity here. Not as an NPR host, not as an employee of WNYC, not even as a co-conspirator to undermine American values with liberal bias and too many stories about the third world, modern dance and kelp. I write this, basically, as an earthling with the capacity for reason.

The issue is the ongoing funding of public broadcasting, a reliable hot button of the culture wars. Conservative Action Alerts:

"NPR is notorious for being a leftwing propaganda machine. Do you really want your tax dollars going to fund such a media outlet?"

(Suggested answer: NO! That is tyranny!) That sentiment is often accompanied by talk of economic extremis – that we simply can't afford the expense of informing, educating and culturally enriching our nation. For instance, Senator Jim DeMint (Republican, South Carolina) and Representative Doug Lamborn (Republican, Colorado) have called for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to be defunded in 2013. "While so many Americans are making sacrifices around the country to make ends meet," they wrote, "CPB appears unwilling to do the same."

Still other critics, notably Newt Gingrich, argue that the private sector (that is, cable) uses the glorious free market to fulfil that mission. The Learning Channel, for instance. The History Channel. National Geographic.

Hey, let's begin there. The commercial alternative is a fetching idea that collapses absolutely at once, because the free market is a bit lacking, shall we say, mission-wise, with a tendency toward the lowest common denominator. TLC, the erstwhile Learning Channel, trades in such fare as Half-Ton Killer, a documentary about an obsese murder suspect. The History Channel offers Pawn Stars. National Geographic: Family Guns and Women's Prison.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he loves Big Bird. He has not weighed in on Women's Prison.

As for commercial radio, the biggest stars are Howard Stern, who presides over a junior high school locker-room, and Rush Limbaugh, who is a bigot and a demagogue. And as for so-called TV news, well, locate me some news on American commercial television, then we can maybe discuss it.

Now then: cost. The obvious response to the budgetary argument is that the federal tax dollars – mainly the $445m allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – amount to 0.015 of 1% of the $3.2tn federal budget. Yeah, let's zero out that 1.5/10,000; that'll balance the budget.

Congress spends 10 times that sum on itself – and there are exactly 535 member of Congress (yes, $9m per person.) By way of comparison, about 170 million Americans consume public broadcasting. So you're saying Sesame Street and Morning Edition are unaffordable luxuries? Here's a thought: shut up.

Just a brief word about liberal propaganda. Having spent 25 years in public radio, I have zero doubt that the news staff is overwhelmingly liberal, as is the case in most of the mainstream media. This has to do not with propaganda or "agenda", but with the overlapping values of liberalism and journalism. They share suspicion of power, the impulse for reform, the sanctity of the commonweal and a worldview that looks outward, not inward.

What is difficult for many to understand is that the overlap does not represent ideology; it represents mentality. It is a way of looking at the world that has a lot to do with engaging many ideas and very, very little to do with doctrine. Why, I remember when there were liberal Republicans – a category long since banned by the GOP leadership.

As for the reporting itself, has Jim DeMint listened to All Things Considered? Could it be any more apolitical? If anything, NPR and PBS's NewsHour bend over backwards to be evenhanded – let's say, for instance, by declining (I'd say "neglecting") to call global-warming deniers reactionary scoundrels cynically politicizing science, or by giving wide berth to religious fundamentalists. NPR News is propaganda like water is acid.

I'll give the critics this, though. Public broadcasting does appeal to elites – you know, that cabal of the curious who shamelessly consider ideas, no matter how alien or uncomfortable.

But since when is that suspicious behavior? Have the culture wars mutated into Cultural Revolution West, wherein wondering is a subversive act? So grotesquely has this notion of alien elitism metastasized that the majority of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination felt comfortable dismissing the educated class as socialist moles somehow out-of-touch with American values. (Rick Santorum: "We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.")

Once again, unofficially, let me offer this counter-assertion: anybody who promotes less knowledge over more, common wisdom over study, "tradition" over education, certainty over reflection, and superstition over science is a fool or worse. If public broadcasting is biased against anti-intellectualism, long live bias.

Not that the consumers of public broadcasting are some rarified club of Ivy League pencil-necks. Remember, there are 170 million of us. We're not some hoity-toity minority of cultural snobs. Mitt Romney take note: we are the 55%.

But you've heard that before, right? The society has been quarreling over this issue for decades. There remains, though, one constant theme that has not been much questioned: the idea that Americans should not be taxed for media they personally find objectionable.

Really? Why?

Federal programs aren't opt-in. The law is not a la carte; it's prix fixe. You get a lot of stuff you like and some stuff you don't like, but there is no tax credit for that. In a free society, more or less by definition, the laws and policies reflect a diversity of viewpoints, ideologies and solutions with the advantage to the party in power. And on 15 April, you're billed for your share of the pie.

Oh, but you do get a choice of what your taxes pay for. It is called an "election". Elected governments govern. You vote them in, and they get to decide how to spend the budget. Note to the Tea Party: that isn't tyranny.

Unofficially, it is the very essence of democracy, duh.