Should Government Support The Arts?

Edward Banfield, a political scientist at Harvard, is best known for his acerbic treatment of liberal hopes for urban renewal. In The Democratic Muse he provides a conservative analysis of the situation of the visual arts in America, arguing that arts spending does not fall within the “proper sphere of government” specified by the Founding Fathers, and advocating the abolition of government funding for the arts. (In 1981, while serving on Reagan’s Task Force on th...