In praise of censorship - government and the arts

Public Interest, Wntr, 1994 by Stanley C. Brubaker

THE DAY AFTER he was asked for his resignation, John Frohnmayer assembled his staff at the National Endowment for the Arts and spoke of the attacks on the agency as an "eclipse of the soul." A month later, his tone grew even more ominous, as he compared the forces of darkness stretching across our land--those objecting, for instance, to the use of tax dollars for such "art" as Serrano's crucifix immersed in urine or Karen Finley's smearing of her nude body in symbolic excrement--to the forces that sustained fascism in Germany. Frohnmayer received a standing ovation from the journalists and academics in attendance. His theme also found favor among Democratic presidential candidates, including then-Governor Clinton. His nominee to head the NEA, he announced, would not apply content restrictions in making funding decisions for the arts. To contemporary liberals, content restrictions are a form of censorship; they are profoundly unAmerican.

Defenders of the NEA charge that Jesse Helms and others attacking the agency cannot be sincere, since the total budget of the agency is only $180 million, of which less than a million goes to truly controversial art, not even a penny per citizen. But if the politicians are not sincere, they surely are responding to sincere concerns of American citizens. And the vehemence of NEA defenders shows likewise that more than money is at stake. In truth, what is at stake, as Frohnmayer's metaphor suggests, is the soul of American politics. As his recent memoir illustrates amply, Frohnmayer was politically inept and philosophically confused.(1) But in saying the American polity was suffering an "eclipse of the soul," he at least begged the right questions: Does man have a soul? If so, what is its proper relation to politics and the arts? What understanding of that relationship undergirds the article of faith among contemporary liberals that the government should fund the arts, but not question their content? I would like to approach these questions by taking a long view, placing the questions in the context of three major schools of thought on man, politics, and the arts: Enlightenment liberalism, classical republicanism, and postmodernism. Then, I will make a modest case for censorship, or rather a case for modest, that is, cautious censorship, as befits the soul of American politics.

Enlightenment liberalism

As descendants of the Enlightenment, we are naturally skeptical about the existence or meaning of souls. And that skepticism is in fact the starting point of modern liberal politics. Talk of the soul was to be displaced from political discourse. The Enlightenment targeted its skepticism on the Church, but it also took a broader aim to include as well the classical, or Aristotelian, understanding of the soul and its place in political life. Instead of excellence of the human soul, the enlightened liberal polity should be concerned with material things, the goods of the body. In his Second Treatise of Government, which unfolds more clearly than any other work the natural rights foundation of modern politics, John Locke does not once mention the word "soul"; nor does he mention the virtues marking its perfection--courage, moderation, generosity, love of honor, wisdom. Toward the soul, the state should be indifferent, or tolerant, a doctrine that Locke spelled out explicitly in his Letter Concerning Toleration. There we find the propositions that have resonated throughout the history of liberalism: The ends or needs of the soul we cannot know with any degree of certainty. Even if we could know them, it is in the nature of faith or other ends of the soul that they cannot be coerced; they can only be freely chosen, for their worth is destroyed in the act of imposition. Those who extract professions of faith from unwilling confessors are usually moved more by a love of dominion, and even a lust for cruelty, than by the spiritual concern that they proclaim. In the face of rationally irreconcilable views on the ends of mankind, to adopt any one view and enforce it on others is certain only to spread civil strife, or civil warfare. By contrast, a polity concerned with the goods of the body will be calm. We get less excited, Locke thought, by what people do with their bodies. Thus, the proper concern of the state is not with man's soul, but with his body. Not with conceptions of virtue, but with rights: "life, liberty, and property," as we find in the Constitution, or "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," as we find in the Declaration of Independence. Both phrases are found in Locke; he did not see much difference between property and the pursuit of happiness. And neither did most of our Founders. The liberal polity is concerned with the material things, the conditions for happiness, not with happiness itself. Happiness itself suggests the province of the soul, and pretended knowledge of the true ends of mankind. So, in light of these propositions and the displacement of the soul, on the question of censorship, Enlightenment liberalism says "no." Censorship meddles with men's souls. It violates the principle of toleration. No comfort here for Jesse Helms. On the other hand, on the question of government funding for the arts, Enlightenment liberalism also says "no." Support for the arts outstrips the narrow concerns of the liberal state. No comfort here for the NEA either. Our Constitution bears the imprint of this liberal legacy, not just in the familiar protections of religious freedom and freedom of speech found in the First Amendment, but also in Article One, Section Eight, which enumerates the limited powers of the federal government. There it states that Congress shall have power "to promote the Progress of Science and the useful arts." The useful arts--like agriculture, medicine, commerce, and engineering. Not the fine, soul-improving arts--like music, poetry, painting, drama, and literature. No censorship, but no funding. That seems to be the legacy of early liberalism. The concern of Enlightenment liberalism with the goods of the body involved a new understanding of nature and knowledge. Nature was not to be understood, as it was by Aristotle, as pulling or inclining its objects towards purposeful ends, but as the interplay of purely mechanical forces. In the classical view, man was inclined by nature to moral and intellectual perfection, ends that could be completed only in a political community. In the liberal view, man was moved by necessity. Just as Newton's apple is brought to earth by the force of gravity, so man is driven by self-preservation. Of course, as the founders of liberalism recognized, the drive for self-preservation is not really as certain as gravity. But we can be far more certain about it than we can about virtue. Self-preservation, and the natural rights allied with this concept, provide a more compelling, stable, and peaceful basis for political life than does virtue, about which we can know nothing with certainty.