Macomb Rejects DIA Support

Macomb County Commissioners have effectively voted against a proposal which would have county residents vote on a tax to help fund the Detroit Institute of Arts. The vote was a tie, but ties don't get things done. It is seen as a blow to the DIA, which wanted to create an endowment payed for by voters of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties. Wayne County has approved an 'arts authority' to manage a millage question to be put before her voters. Oakland County has yet to act.

We have nothing against the Detroit Institute of Arts, nor against art in general. But it strikes us that any overt government support of the arts, whatever they may be, is, at the least, a tricky issue. This next question is going to rankle the supporters of the arts, again, whatever they may be, but it is fair to ask why taxpayers ought to support whatever the patrons of the arts call art. Especially when you consider the amount of taxpayer cash given out over the years for 'art' of dubious value, it doesn't seem right to ask for support for the 'arts' without asking what art is.

It also calls to mind the age old problem inherent in taxes: all that it takes for me to force you to fund my pet project is to have fifty percent plus one of the voters (or, more rightly, fifty percent plus one of those who bother to vote) decide to make you help me pay for it. Not that such is always wrong: some things need to be paid for out of the public coffers no matter what any given individual may think, and many necessary things would not get done without the democratic process to some degree making citizens ante up no matter what.

Yet it strikes us that there is a significant difference between, say, asking others to pay taxes for police and fire protection and asking them to pay for an art museum. Think what you will, it is better to have cops on the street than paintings on the the wall, even very good and exceptional paintings. Beyond that, consider what a given individual might think of as art compared to what an 'arts authority' may think art. That 'authority' may believe art what is in fact tripe. We've all seen things called art which we know are not: avant garde paintings and sculptures and displays which are little more than pretentious, or worse.

Further, we don't even see where it is wise of the arts community to want government of any kind at any level determining what art is or can be. A simple look at what government has determined about other things demonstrates readily what it might do to art. The City of Detroit cannot run its basic services; can it really defend or define good art?

This is not to say that we are against art, though we will be charged with that. But it is to say that some things should be left to the private sector, to the market and the forces which drive it. Art is one of them.

We cannot imagine any serious, rational person who does not appreciate Michaelangelo or Renoir. We do not see many serious, rational people in government or on arts authorities.

Laws must be moral; they must reflect true morality

A writer for the Canadian National Post, Diane Francis, had this to say recently:

“The ‘inconvenient truth’ overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.

A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days.

The world's other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere are being destroyed and pushed out of existence as a result of humanity's soaring reproduction rate.”

A great many questions come from that missive, not the least of which is whether people are more important than plants and animals (they are, by the way). Beyond that, we have the technology today to produce more than enough food and clean water for anyone here, as well as for an increasing population. If we used our resources rightly, and generally that means getting governments, especially projected world governments and busybody organizations such as the UN, out of the way and letting people find solutions to their problems.

But the real point which needs to made here is that Ms. Francis' views are precisely why, when we make laws and morals choices as a people, they must be moral. They must reflect what is really right and really wrong in this universe.

China's one baby policy is an affront to any all who want to have a family. It is an insult to the personal dignity of any human mother or father, who in their free will exchange of wedding vows have the right to have as many kids as they want. But if morals and law are merely manifestations of the local will, then we have released a power of one group of people over another which can only lead to such ends as governments, and read that other people, calling the shots on true reproductive freedom.

This issue, and a great many others, cannot properly be dismissed as merely what a given society at a given time wants. These are issues of raw power; power just as inhuman and debilitating in a democracy as in a dictatorship. We must remember what Abraham Lincoln said: all democracy ultimately means is that fifty percent plus one can make everyone else do what they want.

It cannot be rationally argued that such is the basis of good government. It cannot be reasonably believed that any group should have such strength, to force the minority to do its will simply because it holds the upper hand in this time and place. Such attitudes promote nothing less than inhumanity, a hatred of all things human.

If we really believe that law is merely a passing fancy, a historical accident of our times, then we have made ourselves less than human. If we are mere animals, then our laws have no useful value. That means of course that any consideration of the world's other species, vegetation, resources, oceans, arable land, water supplies and atmosphere lack meaning as well.

Such is not the sort of world a same man would care to live in.