I'm a big fan of NPR as much as i am of our own CBC... also accused of a liberal bias. I would like to comment, however, that acknowledging the existence of an opposing viewpoint is not the same thing as not having a bias. That kind of thinking is the same that got us the circus that was 'crossfire' and any number of other he said/she said perversions of public debate. Here's one point of view! here's another! meh.
This is probably an unfair oversimplification, but the republican value chain seems directly connected to things like 'tradition' or 'virtue'. However much you may disagree with their interpretation of this... this is, in their mind, a kind of intelligence. It is not the unrealistic dreaming (again, their words) of a portion of the population unwilling to live up to the more difficult morals of the right and unable to see the economic and social realities of (pardon the sarcasm) old things good new things bad.
There are a number of cynical people on the right (and a few very, very crazy people) who are capitalizing on a weakness of the right to overpower with their own personal agendas of power. It is possible, if you can send a message broadly enough, to make it sound like it is tradition. Simply repeat. repeat. repeat. and it becomes something we have always believed.
For one side it is a debate to establish what is the proper dogma, where tradition and authority are the arbiters. For the other, the enlightenment and, lets say, philosophy are the arbiters. IMHO the idea that anyone who is not actively participating (in a closed door way) in the political process can have ANY opinion is kinda silly, regardless of 'wingness'.
Believing that you can have an opinion, based on NPR or cnn or msnbc or FOX or any other media we have is, i think, where the mistake lies. I wont say that NPR is 'pandering' to your intelligence, because i believe that they are probably not being cynical in their approach (though i have no proof of this) but really... after all that listening... what do you actually know? This is the weakness of the left. If you are treated to what you think of as an intelligent discussion, you can think of yourself as informed.
It's the closed-ness of our system that makes it broken. (in your country and in mine) Broken for the right. Broken for the left.
