Ghost of a flea: How to end the war (one thing only)

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October 22, 2008

How to end the war (one thing only)

Socialists do not create wealth for themselves; they parasitize the wealth of others, primarily through confiscatory state bureaucracies. Therefore, to destroy the left, the next real conservative government has to do one thing (and one thing only): Stop paying the left to destroy civilization. Shut down the CBC's national television news, shut down funding to arts and social science departments at all publicly funded universities, shut down all fine arts funding, shut down all tax incentives to write or produce leftist propaganda in whatever medium and let all of the above fend for themselves in the marketplace.

Problem solved.

We can no more win this war so long as we continue to fund the other side through our taxes than we can expect to defeat the Islamic forever war against us even as we fund the jihadis every time we buy gasoline.

Note: By applying this simple philosophy of only paying for our own side we reveal the asymmetric nature of both conflicts. Neither the left nor the jihad has a parallel weapon with which to retaliate. I could live the rest of my life without any good or service provided by the genius of Islamic art or science without noticing the difference (with the possible exception of Iran's pistachios) and live the rest of my life without a single (tax payer financed) arts grant funnelled through a leftist university or leftist arts council to scholars or artists who publicly express conservative opinions (because such funding already equals zero for anyone straying from the left's agenda).

Related note to Stephen Harper: Those arts grants cuts did not cost you any votes; at least not until you restored them in a bid to placate Quebec. Quebec was not - and cannot be - placated and you must know there is not a single publicly funded artist or arts functionary in the country who would vote "Conservative" under any circumstances. But you can alienate your base by kissing Quebec's ass and you can alienate your base by tacking so far to the centre we might as well vote Liberal Classic instead of your New Coke version of the same agenda. Do the right thing now, please.

Exit observations: Give it about six months and we could be back to the best things about the 1950s. Yes, there will be a small core of artists and activists to be found in whatever today's real estate equivalent of Greenwich Village might be. But this not incidentally means something profoundly positive for the arts. Give me one William Burroughs and one Jack Kerouac and one Allen Ginsberg (though I could do without Ginsberg, frankly) and with fewer men than it takes to count with the fingers of one hand I will have found more inspiration - more grit - than in the entire output of the Canada Council for the last thirty years or for the next hundred (assuming their output is not primarily written in Arabic in fifty years' time).

Did Leonard Cohen require a panel of bureaucrats to give him permission to be a genius? He did not. Cutting public funding to the arts is not only good for civilization, it is good for the arts.

Someone like Gwendolyn MacEwan, to my mind Canada's greatest poet, gave more to this country in her brief life than countless nameless parasites rewarded before her because they had the right things to say to arts council grant reviewers. In that strictly limited medium, the funding application, they were better storytellers and fabulists but they have left nothing to their country save their bad example. MacEwan, by contrast, is immortal.

I have achieved nothing comparable to her work but I write and publish (obviously) and I make music, the latter effort perhaps more important to me than the former. I do not receive a dime in public funding and yet I struggle on. To my mind, what I produce is more interesting - and demonstrably has a larger public - than 100% of the work produced by artists supported by the Canada Council this year. It is easy math, I have never heard of any of them, most probably never will and doubt anyone reading this blog (who is not personally employed by Canada's arts bureaucracy) has either. Queue the outrage from leftists forced to consider the grim possibility of having to interest an audience in their work or, failing that, having to work for a living like the rest of us. But remember in all that canned outrage not a single voice in the arts bureaucracy suggesting my writing or my music deserves some tiny portion of the largesse they award to themselves, not least because it is my taxes paying for it.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at October 22, 2008 07:01 AM

Comments

... and whatever happened to artists hooking up with wealthy patrons who were looking to have their family visages placed in some classic portrait? It has occurred to me while strolling through some of the world's great galleries that this was mostly produced by artists working for wealthy patrons, or people who just muddled through because they felt they had to, or people (such as some of the Impressionists, I believe) who produced work for a mass/'tourist' audience creating sort of postcards writ-large.

One of my favourite Mark Knopfler songs is "In The Gallery" from DS first album. It was inspired when he and Ilsley were visiting a friend's gallery in Soho and were basically slackjawed at the crap that was on display ('strings of beads', etc). "Then you get an artist, says he doesn't want to paint at all; just takes an empty canvas, and sticks it on the wall..."

He was comparing and contrasting his view of art compared with what was being promoted. While he comments on the 'artists', he also makes great points about the art sellers.

"Harry made a bareback rider proud and free upon a horse
And a fine coalminer for the NCB that was
A fallen angel and Jesus on the cross
A skating ballerina you should have seen her do the skater's waltz

Some people have got to paint and draw
Harry had to work in clay and stone
Like the waves coming to the shore
It was in his blood and in his bones
Ignored by all the trendy boys in London and in Leeds
He might as well have been making toys or strings of beads
He could not be in the gallery

And then you get an artist says he doesn't want to paint at all
He takes an empty canvas and sticks it on the wall
The birds of a feather all the phonies and all of the fakes
While the dealers they get together
And they decide who gets the breaks
And who's going to be in the gallery

No lies he wouldn't compromise
No junk no bits of string
And all the lies we subsidise
That just don't mean a thing
I've got to say he passed away in obscurity
And now all the vultures are coming down from the tree
So he's going to be the gallery"

Fitting that Knopfler put a Chuck Loyola painting on the cover of DS's first album. I've always liked that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Loyola

Posted by: The_Campblog at October 22, 2008 09:35 AM

Hear hear!!

Posted by: Pogue999 at October 22, 2008 10:18 AM

Today is St. Crispin's Day?

Posted by: Clayton Barnett at October 22, 2008 12:32 PM

Heresy!

You'll be burnt at the stake Nick...just as soon as a properly vetted artist can get a grant for a stake and a community organization can gather some wood and a collective of feminist scholars issue a fatwa (and how appropriate is that?) stating that while fire is a patriarchal tool of oppression in your case they will make an exception.

Posted by: Jay Currie at October 22, 2008 12:49 PM

Oh, I do love and worship Leonard Cohen.

Posted by: agent bedhead at October 22, 2008 10:23 PM

From Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land":

"What modern artists do is pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is intercourse, in which the artist renders emotional his audience. These laddies who won't deign to do that - or can't - lost the public. The ordinary bloke will not buy 'art' that leaves him unmoved. If he does pay, the money is conned out of him, by taxes or such."

"Jubal, I've always wondered why I didn't give a hoot for art. I thought it was something missing in me."

"Mmm. One does have to learn to look at art. But it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood. Most of these jokers don't want to use language you and I can learn; they would rather sneer because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If anything. Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence."

...

"I want praise from the customer, given in cash because I've reached him - or I don't want anything. Support for the arts - merde! A government supported artist is an incompetent whore!"

That conversation between Jubal and Ben has always resonated with me.

Posted by: Damian at October 23, 2008 02:01 PM

Ghost of a flea

October 22, 2008

How to end the war (one thing only)

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