Recent battles over National Public Radio and a cartoonish, Workers-of-the-World-Unite-style mural on the wall of the Maine Department of Labor are only marginally about liberalism.
In its tone toward conservatives and libertarians and its treatment of the subjects it chooses to cover, NPR is, for all practical purposes, a Democratic Party stenographer - though with moderately less annoying production values than you're apt to find at MSNBC.
And the federally funded mural in Maine - fittingly removed by the new governor - was so slavishly pro-Big Labor that no one to the right of Chairman Mao or Al Gore could dream of calling it neutral without suppressing a snicker.
No, the struggle isn't over political content per se at NPR or in some building, but over government's use of tax dollars seized from the American people to promote favored political views.
Many supporters of NPR evidently think it appropriate to compel taxpayers to underwrite leftist gabble - I mean, "in-depth news and information you can't find anywhere else!" (including on bazillions of private-sector news websites and TV and radio stations).
And judging from signs at the union protests in support of the one-sided mural in Maine, some consider it suitable to use federal money to slap the faces of the 93.1 percent of private-sector U.S. workers who have not joined unions. Who knew art funded involuntarily by taxpayers had morphed into a First Amendment right?
Budgetary small potatoes, you say?
Maybe. But it was no small matter when, after virtually every other spending dispute had been resolved, the federal government nearly shut down because Democrats wouldn't hear of Republicans halting funding to abortion provider Planned Parenthood.
It should tell us something that the continuation of the functions of government never had a chance when it posed a threat that taxpayers might be let off the hook from having to subsidize an organization that kills unborn babies.
Society Unhinged
I suppose there have been school fights as long as there have been schools.
But what I never saw when I was in school was two students continue to fight after one of them had accidentally struck a teacher in the midst of the scuffle.
Usually, the arrival of a teacher was sufficient to end a fight. But even if it didn't, it would have been inconceivable for the fight to continue if a teacher took so much as a glancing blow while trying to separate the combatants. The students would immediately have broken down into mortified fits of apology and regret - not only because they knew an assistant principal and their fathers were going to take turns lighting up their backsides, but because you just didn't hit a teacher. Even if through sheer insanity the fighters hadn't ceased hostilities at that point, the enormity of the offense would have prompted appalled fellow students to pull them apart.
Which brings us to 2011.
A teacher in Kentucky recently intervened in a fight in his high school's cafeteria. Apparently by accident, he took a punch to the head and hit the floor hard. At this writing, the teacher, Dewayne Bunch, is in critical condition.
All of which would be quite awful enough even if the students had immediately ceased pummeling each other.
They didn't.
"The boys kept fighting after Bunch was knocked out," The Associated Press advises. "Two other teachers were also struck, but were able to stop the fight."
Other, unmentioned casualties include every student who had to witness the devil-may-care assault of no fewer than three people whom they regarded as objects of respect and authority. Tell me how those students are supposed to have the sense of order, security and safety in their classrooms that is essential if they are to learn.
More to the point, tell me our society isn't descending, unperturbed, into savagery.