Sunday, October 7, 2007

"The Separation of Art and State"

From the Cato Institute, a 1997 piece by David Boaz (emphasis mine):
...[W]hen government gets into the arts funding business, we get political conflicts: Conservatives denounce the National Endowment for the Arts for funding erotic photography and the Public Broadcasting System for broadcasting Tales of the City, which has gay characters. Civil rights activists make the Library of Congress take down an exhibit on antebellum slave life, and veterans' groups pressure the Smithsonian to remove a display on the bombing of Hiroshima. To avoid political battles over how to spend the taxpayers' money, to keep art and its power in the realm of persuasion, we would be well advised to establish the separation of art and state.
Ron Paul supports abolishing the National Endowment for the Arts per the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. More on that soon.

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