Posted by Jim Lindgren:
NEA conference call directs artists to push the Administration's agenda on
health care and the environment.--
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_23-2009_08_29.shtml#1251360555
At Big Hollywood Patrick Courrielche has a [1]disturbing account of
the politicization of the NEA and the attempt to convert it into a
partisan body to push controversial political positions favored by the
current administration:
I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take
part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and
art community luminaries �to help lay a new foundation for growth,
focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda - health care, energy
and environment, safety and security, education, community
renewal.�
Now admittedly, I�m a skeptic of BIG government. In my view, power
tends to overreach whenever given the opportunity. It�s a law of
human nature that has very few exceptions. That said, it felt to me
that by providing issues as a cynosure for inspiration to a
handpicked arts group - a group that played a key role in the
President�s election as mentioned throughout the conference call -
the National Endowment for the Arts was steering the art community
toward creating art on the very issues that are currently under
contentious national debate; those being health care reform and
cap-and-trade legislation. . . .
On Thursday August 6th, I was invited by the National Endowment for
the Arts to attend a conference call scheduled for Monday August
10th hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public
Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include �a group of
artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers,
taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together
and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and
celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!�
I learned after the conference call that there were approximately
75 people participating, including many well respected
street-artists, filmmakers, art galleries, music venues, musicians
and music producers, writers, poets, actors, independent media
outlets, marketers, and various other professionals from the
creative community. . . .
There is no shortage of problems within the art community that the
NEA could tackle. Museums across the country have been hit hard by
the financial crisis. Their trusts and portfolios have seen massive
declines. Donations, attendance, and memberships are down. Many
have had to reduce exhibition hours due to staffing and budget
reductions. And countless art galleries, the lifeblood and revenue
stream for many artists, have closed or are on the brink of
closure. Rallying the art community around these issues seems a
more appropriate use of its resources.
I�m not a �right-wing nut job.� It just goes against my core
beliefs to sit quietly while the art community is used by the NEA
and the administration to push an agenda other than the one for
which it was created. It is not within the National Endowment for
the Arts� original charter to initiate, organize, and tap into the
art community to help bring awareness to health care, or energy &
environmental issues for that matter; and especially not at a time
when it is being vehemently debated. Artists shouldn�t be used as
tools of the state to help create a climate amenable to their
positions, which is what appears to be happening in this instance.
If the art community wants to tackle those issues on its own then
fine. But tackling them shouldn�t come as an encouragement from the
NEA to those they potentially fund at this coincidental time.
And if you think that my fear regarding the arts becoming a tool of
the state is still unfounded, I leave you with a few statements
made by the NEA to the art community participants on the conference
call. �This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call
of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really
bring this community together to speak with the government. What
that looks like legally?��bare with us as we learn the language so
that we can speak to each other safely�� �
Is the hair on your arms standing up yet?
This is precisely the sort of thing that I feared last summer when I
blogged about private associations being brought under state control.
As I [2]warned last summer:
Unlike some European systems of the past two centuries, the
American tradition is for individuals to form their own diverse
communities and for each community to govern itself to the extent
possible. Universal national service seems to reverse the direction
of this relationship: its goal is to use the government to
transform people to fit within the government�s vision of what�s
important and how one should serve. Senator Barack Obama makes that
government direction clear, promising us that his administration
�will direct that service to our most pressing national
challenges,� eschewing the traditional American approach of having
the government take its direction from the diverse choices of its
people.
As de Tocqueville understood, voluntary associations are valuable
not merely on account of what they accomplish, either for
participants or for others, but also because they establish
cultural and political forces in society independent of government.
In modern society, and perhaps especially in America, each
individual stands alone as an independent citizen in relation to
the state, and individuals are therefore peculiarly dependent on
voluntary associations to ensure that the state does not acquire a
monopoly of cultural and political influence. Voluntary
associations help to protect us from what de Tocqueville called
�the tyranny of the majority.�
In Mr. Obama�s vision of voluntary organization, however, the
government would develop, coordinate, and focus the efforts of
private individuals and their associations, which thus would lose
their independence and much of their capacity to offer alternatives
to the state and its vision of life. Indeed, far from challenging
the state and holding it accountable, morally or politically, many
private associations would become aligned with the state. Rather
than being alternatives to government, they would become its
instruments. . . .
By bringing voluntary charitable activity under government control
and by presenting his scheme as a �civilian national security
force,� Mr. Obama is breaking down the barriers between private and
public life, between individual choice and government programs,
between childhood education and adult employment, and between the
diversity of freely chosen efforts on behalf of one�s neighbors and
subservience to the government�s vision of the good.
As the NEA said in the conference call reported above, "This is just
the beginning."
On [3]September 11 and September 12 we might start hearing a lot about
the administration's plans to implement the Edward M. Kennedy Serve
America Act by inducing schools to hire "service-learning
coordinators" (essentially community organizers interested in
education), monitoring and deciding which charities will qualify for
free labor, fulfilling Obama's campaign promise to "direct that
service to our most pressing national challenges," and changing the
nature of primary, middle, and high school education in the United
States.
References
1.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/pcourrielche/2009/08/25/the-national-endowment-for-the-art-of-persuasion-patrick-courrielche/#more-209182
2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_08_24-2008_08_30.shtml#1219976040
3.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-national-day-of-service-or-a-political-hijacking-of-911/
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