The Entreblog!

Recently, I’ve been thinking about exactly how involved I think the government should be in my life. As a libertarian, I generally believe it should be as little as possible. I think this extends to television and radio broadcasts as well. I haven’t quite come to a conclusion on this, so I’d like to hear what you have to say.

I think the government should not regulate things that require some sort of action to see or hear. In other words, if I have to do something (e.g., turn on the TV/radio) to experience something, I don’t think that should be regulated by the government. Things that I have to experience with no effort, like billboards, I believe should be regulated.

It seems that having the government decide what is decent and what isn’t causes a few problems:

1. The government has no idea what I think of as decent or indecent. This means they are likely to do a bad job at filtering the media by either filtering too much or not enough. However, since they advertise that they filter the media, it gives me a false sense of security as I flip channels that I won’t see something I don’t want to or that I’ll see everything I do want to. If they had said they weren’t going to filter anything, I would have been on my guard as I flip channels or would have chosen not to watch TV at all.
2. Because the government is taking upon themselves the responsibility to filter what I watch, I don’t have to. This takes away my chance to stand up for what I believe in and say no to things I don’t want. In essense, I don’t get to “exercise” that “muscle” by consciously choosing not to watch things I don’t agree with.

I realize the first reason sounds like Ayn Rand’s reasoning for never helping anyone, but I think it applies in this case much more than it does for the overall sense of never helping another person.

Incidentally, if you go to the website for Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org), you’ll notice that it spouts the Objectivism philosophy all over the place. Here’s a quote from the site:

“Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.”

So, we shouldn’t sacrifice ourselves for others. Now, if you look at the top of the website, towards the right side of the screen, you’ll see an link that says “volunteer”!! If you click the link, it talks about how the ARI relies on volunteers and that volunteers aren’t compensated.

I actually emailed them and said “I’d love to volunteer with the ARI, but unfortunately, that’s against my principles as a devout Objectivist.” I got an email back with some excuse about why it’s okay, which didn’t make any sense.

Anyway, just thought I’d share that.