Our Threatened Freedom

Are You a Patron of the Arts

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 160-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 160

Dictation Name: Vol. M - Part 04 - Are You a Patron of the Arts

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Are you a patron of the arts? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

Very few of us have the money to finance art works, and if we did have it, we would prefer to pay for what we believe is good art. All of us, however, through our tax dollars, are very definitely patrons of the arts. The annual appropriation for the national endowment of the arts to budget is being pushed closer and closer to the one hundred and fifty million dollar mark. These millions go to many things most of us would consider bad art, and to much we would not at all call art. In recent years, such funds have been used to produce a film on making a blue cornmeal bread, for producing a gay Sunshine journal, to publish a feminist publication, to acquaint ex-criminals and ex-drug users with art, and much more. Some of the funds go to strange causes. The National Conference of State Legislatures is a lobbying group, but it has received art’s funding. The same is true of the National Council on the Aging, also a lobbying group. In Washington D.C. one sponsor, an erotic art show, received funding, and so on and on. Of course some in Congress will argue that one hundred and fifty million dollars is not much. It may not be much to Congress, but it is a great deal to the rest of us. Moreover, we have our growing deficit because grants of a hundred and fifty million dollars to many thousands of like causes add up to billions of wasted dollars, and an economic crisis.

We are regularly told by state and federal officials that their budgets cannot be cut. What we are not told is of the thousands of foolish grants which are regularly made, and need to be eliminated totally. Our national deficit is becoming the national disaster, taxes are increasing, and so too is the tax revolt, a dangerous fact in that it represents a growing vote of dissent and no confidence in our form of civil government. If Congress continues to spend money as usual, it will not only bankrupt the country, but also destroy all confidence in our Constitutional order. The end result of fiscal irresponsibility and inflation is all too often been a totalitarian regime. Those who want subsidies to the arts should remember that such subsidies, which are always followed by controls, are the hallmark of every totalitarian state.

This has been R.J Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.