Dictating What is Good Taste

For John, BLUF:  One of the ideas behind a Presidential Czabinet is that it serves as a group of advisors to the President.  If you make it big enough it will fail in that function.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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No ministry of culture, please, we’re American

Here is the sub-headline:

The Founders knew what they were doing when they separated art and state.

By Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist,Updated July 24, 2021, 3:00 a.m..

Here is the lede plus two:

On Aug. 18, 1787, at the constitutional convention in Philadelphia, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina proposed nearly a dozen powers with which he thought the new federal government should be invested.  Among them: the authority “to establish seminaries for the promotion of literature and the arts and sciences.”

Pinckney’s list was referred to the Committee on Detail, and some of his suggestions, such as federal responsibility for patents and copyright, were incorporated into the Constitution.  But his idea of empowering Congress to promote the arts was ignored.

The delegates were learned, cosmopolitan men who understood the value of literature, music, and art.  They knew that in the Old World it was normal for artists to be sustained by royal benefaction.  Indeed, King George III was an avid cultural patron whose largesse had made possible the founding of the Royal Academy of Arts.  But the men in Philadelphia intended the government they were fashioning to steer clear of such involvement.  Consequently, nothing in the Constitution so much as hints that overseeing art and culture is a job for the federal government.

Mr Jeff Jacoby has this by the right end.  We don't need a federal level culture minister.  The tastes in Maine are not likely to be the same as the tasts in Puerto Rico or San Diego or Honolulu or Fairbanks.  Well, maybe Fairbanks, but how about Seattle or Portland?

This project would be another boondoggle, costing the Taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars.  At the same time it would put the Federal Government in the business of picking winners and losers.  How will they know what is good art for today and for a century from today?

This kind of thing goes against the principle of subsidiarity.

Regards  —  Cliff