A few weeks back, Hollywood movie stars and groups such as the Creative Coalition stormed Washington, D.C. to lobby for increased taxpayer funding of the arts. Most memorably, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey told Hardball’s Chris Matthew that Abraham Lincoln was a huge theater fan who “understood that he needed the arts to replenish his soul.” (Not surprisingly, Spacey didn’t mention where Lincoln was assassinated or the profession of his killer).

But funding the arts with taxapayer dollars is a bad idea for at least three reasons.

1. Publicly financed art is easily censored art. Last December, the National Portrait Gallery almost immediately pulled a four-minute video called “A Fire in My Belly” after complaints from the Catholic League and politicians such as Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who objected to images of ants crawling over a crucifix. It’s hard to imagine a private museum so quickly and cravenly pulling an offending piece. But when the taxpayer is footing the bill, the most easily aggrieved among us yields a thug’s veto. Indeed, in February, scandalized Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) even called for getting rid of a 1922 statue in New York City due to what he says is its sexist portrayal of women.

2. We’re broke.

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Those of the Left rarely like to admit or acknowledge that they are of the Left.

Witness their repeated vacillations on what they call themselves.  It was “progressive” – until people figured out what that meant and loathed it.

So they bastardized the classical definition of “liberal” – until people found out what they meant by that and loathed it.

So they are now back to “progressive” – hoping that no one remembers how much they loathed it the last go ‘round.

So too is it with the Leftist grievance groups.  The assemblages that exist aren’t really to promote their alleged agenda items – but to grow government, and demonize and silence those who stand opposed to their so doing.

To give you but one example of this misdirection, let us consider the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  The name says it all, right?  They purport to stand for the “Advancement of Colored People.”

But they really do not.

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Will someone please get West Virginia Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller and Texas Democrat Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee some Zicam?

The afflicted Senator Rockefeller was chairing yesterday’s television retransmission hearings when his self-described “little bug” caused him to swerve off on a censorship tangent:

Senator Rockefeller:  I hunger for quality news.  I’m tired of the right and the left.  There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC (Federal Communications Committee) to say to Fox and to MSNBC “Out.  Off.  End.  Goodbye.” Would be a big favor to political discourse, our ability to do our work here in Congress and to the American people to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly in their future.  We need slimmed down channel packages that better respect what we really want to watch.

So the Chairman of the relevant (Commerce, Science, and Transportation) Senate Committee has a “little bug” which causes him to wish to grant the FCC sweeping new powers – because they do not currently regulate cable television – that would then allow it to throw Fox News, MSNBC and whomever else the likes of Senator Censorship wishes off the air.

Clearly the Senator’s condition causes him to forget or forego the First Amendment.

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Thursday, in his resounding defense of the First Amendment in the Citizens United decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:

…[w]hen Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

“Censorship” is a dirty word in America, and that is why the restrictions at issue in our case were cloaked in the guise of “campaign finance reform.”  But the fact remains that any restrictions on political speech, especially those that criminalize such speech, send us down a very slippery and very dangerous slope.

Last March, our government argued in court that it has the Constitutional authority to ban books that mention a candidate for federal office.  The government later retracted that statement, but is there any doubt that such a statement never would have been made if there had not been 100 years of progressively more intrusive restrictions on political speech preceding it?    Had the Court not acted, what was to prevent the government from asserting that authority over the internet, which does not have the benefit of two centuries of tradition and jurisprudence protecting it?

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