As a faithful NPR listener, and as a faithful right-wing conservative Christian Constitutionalist classical liberal with libertarian leanings, I am more than a little  sensitive to the subtle and not so subtle left-wing, modern liberal, progressive bias that suffuses everything NPR does. But a story I heard Friday afternoon on the way to the golf course (how bourgeois!) simply takes the cake. The title of the piece on NPR’s website is “Lone Star State Of Mind: Could Texas Go It Alone?”

It would be comical if it wasn’t such a revealing picture of the perverse heart and mind of modern liberalism. Back in 2009 before Texas Governor Rick Perry had his sites on the White House, in a speech to a bunch of Tea Partiers he said that because the federal government had strayed so radically from the country’s founding principles that Texas might just decide to secede from the union. Or maybe not. Of course he was roundly ridiculed by our enlightened cultural elites; what a Yahoo! What a hayseed! What a yokel Live without the beneficent benevolence of our kind hearted Federal benefactors? Never!

I’m sure it never occurred to NPR writers and producers that the story is mocking Texas, I think. Worse, it is mocking liberty and self-reliance, which of course is not surprising at all for those who think government dependence is a state of grace. Introducing the story:

It’s a popular idea in Texas that the Lone Star State — once an independent republic — could break away and go it alone. A few years ago, Texas Gov. Rick Perry hinted that if Washington didn’t stop meddling in his state, independence might be an option. In his brief run for the White House, he insisted that nearly anything the feds do, the states — and Texas in particular — could do better.

So we’re putting Perry’s suggestions to the test — NPR is liberating Texas. We asked scholars, business leaders, diplomats, journalists and regular folk to help us imagine an independent Texas based on current issues before the state. (Though, to be clear, no one quoted here actually favors secession.)

In the fevered liberal mind, NPR wasn’t actually liberating Texas, it was casting it into outer darkness, where the light and righteousness of out blessed federal government does not shine.

You have to hear it to believe it, but here is one of my favorite parts::

Texas Tea Party member Katrina Pierson adds, “There’s a safety net that’s always been out there. We don’t have that anymore. You will be a productive member of society and our environment doesn’t allow for people to not be productive.”

Well, there hasn’t always been a government safety net, but somehow the Republic survived. In fact America and Americans survived 178 years without Medicare and Medicaid. The country even survived 148 years without Social Security! But to the good folks at NPR that is a tragedy. How dare we require healthy citizens to be productive! The shame!