LOS ANGELES — Because our "natural order" is so blessed, it's only obvious to most Americans that government doesn't do news delivery. It does law enforcement, it does law making, it does policy, it even does debate and — under our Constitution — mail delivery. But Uncle Sam is not our paperboy. Government doesn't do news delivery.

In the marketplace of ideas, we can all pretty much agree that the government should not maintain any sales stall of its own. A monopolistic state news agency is one of the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime, and any "official" state news agency has Rodney Dangerfield's problem with respect.

Our nation's founding fathers, less nervous about what powers government should have than they were about what powers it should not have, enumerated no news delivery powers to the government except for census taking. We have remained a nation of politically free and boisterous citizens by way of privately published and broadcast accounts of the affairs of the day.

We have never depended on any regular government news service, and if one were ever needed, we would hardly be citizens worthy of further democracy. For any body politic the impulse to individual free speech is simply a vital sign. But speech is supposed to be free — not tax supported!

Appropriately, then, it's the role of government to protect political speech, but it's ridiculous to think the government has a role to provide it.

The same sentence in the First Amendment that prohibits government from "respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" also prohibits government from "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

We often get reminded these days that "separation of church and state" is not in the text of the Constitution. But we've taken to widespread agonizing over it. The time has come for doing likewise over separation of press and state.

If permitting the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public property is an example of government respecting an establishment of religion, isn't government abridging the freedom of the press when subsidizing the advocacy of a controversial proposition — as often happens on a PBS broadcast?

There is only finite broadcast time available on PBS, so if certain polemicists use it up, they have gained advantage over their opponents. A logic no more strained than that of many judicial rulings could say that their opponents have had their freedom of the press abridged.

Ah, come on, now! PBS operates under a statutory mandate for "balance and objectivity," don't you know? The temporarily disadvantaged opponents will get their fair hearing during subsequent broadcast time. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Oh, and when will that happen uniformly and exactly? When it sleets in Hades? Why don't we just acknowledge that the Information Age has changed everything — and let artists and media folks find their own likeminded supporters?

Why is taxpayer-funded "public broadcasting" still deemed necessary — or even constitutionally appropriate, for that matter? What's been said before deserves merciless repetition here: Once any government program is in place, it never gets dismantled.

Let the likes of Bill Moyers and the Cookie Monster shout from any of the burgeoning numbers of electronic rooftops that will accommodate them, but let's drop having the government provide for them.

A "wall of separation between church and state" isn't in the Constitution, but it's generally understood that one exists. We really could use such reverence for a wall of separation between press and state.

DE-FUNDING PBS WILL ONLY CAST IT ADRIFT ON PACIFICA’S ULTRA-LEFTISH FLIGHT PATH

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Every 10 years, conservatives and their Republican allies launch a major assault on public broadcasting. So far, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) have beaten back the attacks. But this year the enemies of public broadcasting seem to be more determined and more vindictive than ever.

While Congress is seeking to cut the funds, PBS's federal paymaster, Kenneth Tomlinson, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, is seeking to control the content of public radio and television. Here the allegation is that they are too liberal and lack conservative input. It takes a special cast of mind to think that radio in America does not adequately represent the right wing. Ditto television.

For all of the complaints, public broadcasting in the United States is held together by the most fragile arrangement. It breaks down to about 15 percent of government money and the rest coming from members, business, foundations and local government.

By comparison, the giant British Broadcasting Corporation levies a direct tax — in the form of a license fee — on viewers and listeners that brings it a whopping $5-billion a year. No wonder it employs 5,000 journalists — which enables BBC to establish a gold standard for global reporting.

Public broadcasting is not a healthy institution. It is poorly managed, lacks transparency; and the stations are impenetrable fiefdoms, self-satisfied and self-deceived. Yet they are the flawed jewels in the tarnished crown of American broadcasting.

Rather than examining the whole structure of public broadcasting, its critics are out to weaken and destroy it. They have decided that the patient needs the leeches before the disease has been diagnosed.

The critics' course is a dangerous one. If they succeed in de-funding public broadcasting, it will drift off like an untethered balloon, answerable to no one — an accusation that has been leveled at the BBC for 50 years. If you think that public broadcasting is too liberal now, imagine what it would be if its tether were cut.

My prescription is that PBS should become a membership organization subject to the will of its contributors, who could vote in and out programming and managements as they liked. I believe it should receive some public money for infrastructure and none for programming.

Subsidies to news organizations have always been a ticklish matter, but not beyond intelligent resolution. The British government, for nearly 100 years, subsidized the Reuters news agency, and all other British news undertakings, with a device known as the Commonwealth Cable Rate.

This was as elegant a subsidy of news as ever devised. All news organizations benefited from cheap cable transmission, while the government could not be accused of influencing editorial content.

Even American publishers and news agencies found ways to avail themselves of the Commonwealth Cable Rate by routing their transmissions through outposts of the British Empire. Time magazine correspondents, for example, filed their stories through Montreal, while United Press used a subsidiary called British United Press.

If you want to see where public broadcasting might go without any government funding, tune into Pacifica Radio: it is the closest thing to socialist broadcasting in the United States. While PBS has carried such conservative voices as William F. Buckley and John McLaughlin, Pacifica is untrammeled by conservative thought.

Those who would de-fund public broadcasting might end up with an alternative they find even more disagreeable. Be careful what you wish for.