Leave My Money Alone!

I'm sure I have written before about my loathing for the spending of taxpayers' money on the arts and sports and similar hobbies.  Almost every day my opinions on this are hardened with new evidence.

This morning I listened to a locally-based nationally-known stage actress tell a CBC radio interviewer that, with the reduction of Federal (i.e. taxpayer) subsidies, Canadian theatres are being forced to rely on box office receipts.  She said this with shock and horror, and with that professional certainty that the vast majority of her white middle-class audience would agree with her disgust at this wanton neglect.   She claimed that this would stiffle creativity because theatres would be obliged to put on old shows with a guaranteed clientele. The unspoken corollary is that the ticket-buying public is too stupid or too stuck in its ways to pay for new and inventive works and so they have to be forced to pay for them through their taxes. 

Such arrogance!  It is no wonder that such "liberals" or "left wingers" (for they would certainly describe themselves in such terms) are detested by anyone who actually cares to listen and think about what they are saying.  Their solution to every damned thing is to put their hands in my pockets and to do it while telling me how much better they know what I need than I do myself!  Social conservatives and corporate marketers are no less grasping and omniscient.

Liberals, left-wingers, corporatist fascists, Trotskyites, fundamentalists -- they are all the goddam same!   Leave me and my money alone!