Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Crisp Image
I wonder what’s on C-SPAN tonite.
...today’s up-to-date conservatism does not stand idly by expecting people to actually pursue happiness on their own...Given that the transition to digital has been under way for almost a decade, why should those who have adjusted be compelled to pay money to those who have chosen not to adjust?
But leaving the questions of inititative and subsidies aside--whether or not the government ought to be spending money to, in effect, make consumer decisions for us--what makes Congress think this particular sector of the market--televisions--has anything to do with their legislative responsibilities? Who am I, a faithful taxpayer, paying to sit around and write up these plans? Then again, the primary tool of Orwell’s Big Brother was the television screen.
So if these plans pass, twenty-five years after 1984 we can rest assured that Big Brother will be safeguarding all our entertainment needs. Unless, like one scholar around the corner from me at Acton, you hope to be rid of your television by that time anyway.
Comments
#1 2005-12-08 20:32 (Reply)
Congress might have a point on this “entitlement.” It was them, after all, who mandated the switch to digital television, which will give them a broad swath of the electromagnetic spectrum to auction off and also render today’s analog TVs obsolete. They have already made the choice for us, and now we are forced to buy new equipment just to keep watching what we already have.