PBS Funding and the Boston Tea Party

As Boswell to my husband Paul Hager, who blogs too infrequently, I wanted to report his latest political observations.

Romney has taken some criticism for focusing on PBS' funding, given that it apparently amounts to $1.25 per family. (I'm not sure whether Biden made this point during the vice-presidential debate.) Notes Paul: the British did not predict, and could not understand, why the colonists would throw perfectly good tea into Boston Harbor when the price of tea had been cut in half, and only a very small tax imposed. Principle? Did these colonists actually care so much about principle, when their pocketbooks would be spared by the change?

We've drifted very far from our founding foundations, but perhaps there are some vestiges remaining.

In the interest of accuracy, Paul also notes that Romney may not have been thinking of federal government overreach or the constitutional limits on federal power, the founding principles involved. However, a similar analysis may apply to what Romney did say, which was that any federal expenditure at this point should pass the test of whether it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it.