Extremes like bloody backs distract from the main issue, which is not whether taxpayers should subsidize grotesque performance or perverse photography, but whether they should subsidize art at all. Market theory, of course, follows one simple rule: those who want something should be the ones to pay for it. In particular, those who want art, or a specific kind of art, should put up the money, whether by purchasing tickets or becoming a generous benefactor.
Eugene Genovese is a Marxist historian, but he is a Marxist of a most unusual kind. In this excellent collection of essays, he continually advocates conservative views, often expressed more trenchantly than is customary among rightists themselves
D'Souza's massive tome is structured by a simple message.
To this day Christmas remains a celebration of liberty and private life, as well as a much-needed break from the incessant politicization of modern life. It's the most pro-capitalist of all holidays because its temporal joys are based on private property, voluntary exchange, and mutual benefit.
From Left and Right, capitalism is condemned for all the cultural failings of the modern world—everything from mindless TV to dirty books to slatternly art to trashy movies to debasing music. It's an extension of the liberal habit of blaming a system for what are actually the failings of individuals.
Ludwig von Mises disliked hardboiled detective novels because he always knew who the murderer would be: not the butler, but a prosperous and respected gentleman of high social standing who pretends to virtue, but is actually a hidden criminal and sanctimonious hypocrite. Mises saw egalitarian envy in such tales.
It's no different on television.
Government cannot be trusted to pick and choose acceptable art, and that's merely one more reason to junk the two endowments. It's time Congress i and the administration promoted unlimited free expression by abolishing federal handouts to those doing the expressing.
