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■ QUOTABLE
4 • The Red and Black • Thursday, October 18, 1990
OPINIONS
"The state saying you have to notify a parent is ridiculous. The
state won't be there to handle the consequences for the teen or
her family."
— Lynne Randall of the Feminist Women's Health Center.
The Red & Black
Established 1893—Incorporated 1980
An independent itudent newspaper not affiliated with the University of Georgia
Robert Todd/Editor-in-Chief
Jennifer Rampey/Managing Editor
David Johnston/Opinions Editor
■ EDITORIALS
Wake up
Earlier this week, Frank Kent, president of
national public-planning group, told local officials they
had done a poor job of planning the downtown Athens
area and urged them to do a better job when planning
the new civic center.
Kent said local politicians are trying to make
decisions about the civic center without the consensus
of the community when there is clearly a lot of
uneasiness about the project.
Well, Mr. Kent, welcome to Athens.
Athens’ officials are notorious for making knee-jerk
decisions without considering the long-term
ramifications of their actions. They frequently make
decisions which discriminate against the University’s
student body — more than 20 percent of the Athens-
area population. They continually ignore the resources
of the University when planning or making decisions.
Think about this:
• An open-container ordinance is a strong deterrent
to convention business. Convention-goers aren’t too
happy about paying hefty fines for trying to enjoy the
local atmosphere.
• As retail shoppers continue to flee to suburban
malls and shopping centers and downtown retailers
starve for new business, parking rates and fines
continue to escalate.
• Athens has residence laws restricting the number
of non-family members who may live together. This
obviously targets students who must share the burden
of rent in order to afford decent housing.
• As Kent pointed out, they have failed to use the
University’s resources to help plan and develop the
civic center.
We can only hope the new unified government will
take office with a new unified intelligence. With luck
and some informed voting, the new government might
just take the advice of Kent and the many others who
have talked themselves blue in the face about this.
Athens is ready. The University is ready. Students
are more than ready. The only question is whether or
not the new unified government will be ready.
Standing tall
With an increasingly chaotic domestic situation on
his hands, President Bush continues to display
unprecedented political courage and leadership in his
handling of the Persian Gulf situation.
According to the state department, the Iraqi
government sent out “diplomatic hints” this week that
they might be willing to withdraw from most of Kuwait
if they were allowed to retain an uninhabited island
that controls access to Iraq’s only military port in the
Gulf, and an oil field which had been shared by the two
countries before the invasion.
The administration acted wisely in swiftly and
unequivocally rejecting this suggestion.
The past 11 years have taught us that diplomacy
doesn’t always accomplish peace in the Middle East.
As Secretary of State James Baker III stated in a
press conference Tuesday, to compromise with Hussein
would be to permit “an aggressor to profit from his
unprovoked aggression.”
We must continue, in concert with the rest of the
international community, to back up economic
sanctions with a credible military threat. Hussein must
understand that the only way to survive is to
completely withdraw from Kuwait.
For too many years we treated terrorists like
gentlemen, only to have them contemptuously refuse to
negotiate.
The Bush administration, the American people and
the international community can only win if we
continue to stand tall against Hussein’s aggression.
STAFF
NEWS: 543-1809
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U.S. lags in government funds for arts
Last week a jury in Cincinnati ruled that the
works of Robert Mapplethorpe aren’t obscene.
It was a welcome decision, but one that
shouldn’t have had to be made in the first place.
The case was filed against the Contemporary
Arts Center of Cincinnati for displaying works
by Robert Mapplethorpe, a photographer and a
homosexual, who died in March 1989 of
A.I.D.S. It was the first time a museum had
been brought to trial on criminal charges. It in
volved seven pictures out of the 175 in the ex
hibit: some of which showed nude infants with
their genitals exposed, others men in homoe
rotic poses.
It is one thing to personally and morally ob
ject to such images. They may well be offensive
for a lot of people, and not in the best taste for
even more of us. But it is another to decide that
they aren’t ‘art’ and shouldn’t be displayed in a
museum.
Museums are repositories of the common le
gacy of human achievement. Art is one of those
achievements and one of the most important, if
not the most important. But who is to say what
is art and what is not?
Art belongs to the artist. The rest is up to
museums or collectors who are willing to pay
for it and publicly or privately display it. When
a museum chooses to exhibit a work, it is then
up to each one of us to go see it or not, and then
to denigrate its artistic value — an always per
ilous exercise. But in no way is it the role of gov
ernment — in this case the judicial branch of
government — to judge a work’s artistic value.
Artistic standards are highly subjective mat
ters, for one thing. They evolve and differ from
epoch to epoch and from culture to culture. The
Valerie
Berta
paintings of Vincent van Gogh were ltxiked
upon as horrendous during his lifetime and
would certainly have outraged people in the
sixteenth century, for whom it would not have
been art at all but blasphemous insanity.
Robert Mapplethorpe may not be van Gogh but
his work is art and should be respected as such,
obscene or not obscene.
What is obscenity anyway? The standards
here are nowhere clearer. What shocks one may
leave another perfectly comfortable.
In short, and in the land of the less govern
ment is best government,’ such matters should
be left to everyone’s own private decision.
Some will object that the government, and so
the taxpayers, is paying to support the arts and
so should have a say in the way they are han
dled. Wrong.
Art is a major feature of civilization, a mea
sure of its richness and soul. It should be every
government’s goal and duty to support it so it
can flourish unhindered. The U.S. is lagging be
hind among industrialized nations in the allo
cations it makes to the arts. The National
Endowment for the Arts, at the heart of the pre
sent controversy, is pitifully underfunded if
compared to similar agencies in Europe.
France for one spends about 10% of its gov
ernment’s budget on the arts — the U.S. only
2%. Recipients range from theater and film pro
ductions to museum exhibitions and official
events like the new European ‘Music Fest’
every June 21st. The idea came out of the
French Ministry of Culture of the Socialist gov
ernment in 1984 and has spread since to most
European countries. The festival celebrates the
advent of summer. People go down in the
streets and play their instruments, in solo or in
bands, just for the fun of it; it usually lasts all
night.
So for people to say there should be controls
on the arts tne government helps fund is plain
ridiculous. It would be funny if it was not dan
gerous in its implications, as we have just wit
nessed with the Mapplethorpe case. Even if it is
reasonably contributing to the welfare of the
arts, the last thing the government is entitled
to do is overview them.
A seal of approval involves censorship, and
censorship means the death of art.
The Mapplethorpe photographs may have
been crude and degrading but the reaction to
them was backward and even more degrading
in terms of cultural mentality and intellectual
maturity.
America is where some of the most daring art
has been created. You found it ugly? Maybe it
is. But please let me see, too.
Valerie Berta was a teaching assistant in the de
partment of Romance languages.
Mediocrity is linked to waning economy
As Americans look around themselves, remi
niscent of our former greatness, we continue to
wonder why we slipped into mediocrity? True,
we still enjoy cultural popularity across most of
the globe (excepting, of course, tne Middle East)
and our military prospers as the world leader.
Yet few would dispute the fact that our na
tion’s vitality is not linked as much to these fac
tors ns it is to our economic condition. With this
in mind, why has the United States’ role in the
international marketplace waned over recent
decades, depleting our ability to survive and
compete?
The answer to this question lies, ironically,
in our own past. When the Founding Fathers
conceived our nation, they recognized two es
sential principles which were considered cen
tral to our Constitution. First, the State exists
to protect and preserve individual freedom.
Second, separation of governmental powers is
essential to maintain any republic. As soon as
Americans began to forget these original ideals,
the decline commenced.
The State exists to preserve and protect indi
vidual freedoms. This does not menn nor has it
ever meant that anyone may do as he plenses so
long as he doesn’t directly injure another. In
stead, it simply means that the government
will not stick its nose into the citizens’ business.
Yet this is precisely what the Congress in
sists upon doing. Federal legislators, supported
by ignorant masses, decide how they wish the
country to run. By enacting legislation de
signed to ensure their re-election, Congress has
by-passed the electorate. They tax, spend, and
rule without the true consent of the people, pro
tecting only their personal interests along the
way. Consequently, America is polluted by the
very machine that was intended to preserve it.
Striking examples of misplaced Federal in
volvement are illustrated everywhere. Perhaps
the most blatant trespasses have occurred be
cause of the liberal welfare state. Please note,
the Constitution calls for Congress to promote
the “general Welfare" of this nation, not to gen
erally promote welfare! However, leftists argue
that such activism is their duty. I submit that
their ‘duty’ is America’s doom.
Welfare’s only redeeming aunlity is that it
purports to help the truly needy. But while bil
lions are spent to run the bureaucratic monster
that administers welfare, fewer than 5% of wel
fare’s recipients, at a average yearly cost in ex
cess of $150,000 each, are lifted from poverty.
Instead of providing help, ( ongressmen have
only offered jobs to otherwise unemployed so
cial workers, ensuring a permanent lower-class
in the process. Meanwhile, taxpayers continue
to spend too much on liberal theories, sacri
ficing real economic opportunity for everyone.
Even programs that don’t offer any substan
tive benefit whatsoever find a sympathetic ear
in Congress. Programs such as the NEA,
clearly unrelated to any compelling national in
terest, are funded at the expense of worthwhile
endeavors. Are dollars better spent on creating
art-official exhibits than on performing the
tasks assigned to the Federal government by
the Constitution? Liberal action indicates that
the Democratic Congress believes so. But if we
continue to allow the Federal regime to inter
rupt every scheme of life, our economic poten
tial will be undermined since the free market
approach will be effectively abandoned.
The separation of governmental powers is es
sential to maintain any republic. Tne Founders
realized that the only effective way to organize
this republic included a system whereby no
single authority had an absolute monopoly over
its citizens. By separating the branches of Fed
eral government from one another and distin
guishing Federal power from the States’,
America could prosper. However, once we
forgot these basic precepts, a tail spin began.
The separation of powers is an anachronism
to Congress. Perhaps the most blatant violation
of this notion is seen in the appointment of Su
preme Court Justices. Originally, Justices were
distinguished from mere elected officials in
order to avoid political influence but they no
longer enjoy this neutrality. Judge Robert
Bork’s ordeal is a painful example of this poli
ticizing. Traditionally, a Justice’s personal
views were never nn issue, that is, until liberal
activists began to substitute their own ideas for
the law. Despite evidence that Bork would
never do this, he was a victim of our distraught
system.
An even more offensive instance of Federal
interloping began long ago. Congress has re
peatedly ignored States’ rights, arguably the
most important concept behind our republic.
Congress has invaded arenas such as education
that were originally excluded from their influ
ence to prevent Federal intermeddling. With
time, however, Congress disregarded these sa
cred limits, also. Nowadays, the States must
yield to the Federal authority in far too many
situations, a direct contrast to the Founder’s in
tentions.
If America hopes to stop its own demise, we
only need to look toward the principles upon
which this nation was realized. By dismantling
the aberrant Federnl engine and wresting
power from the socialist majority in the
process, we can deliver ourselves from the
course to destruction. However, if we ignore
this imperative, we will surely fail our
Founders and their glorious vision.
Scott Kelly is a first-year law student.
Hunter: ‘X’ has ‘real guts’
I was certainly impressed by the
rebuttal of my letter of Oct. 11 by
the mysterious Mr. or Mrs. “X."
I know it must take real guts to
take a “public stand’’ behind the
cloak of anonymity. It certainly
says to me, for one, that this un
named hero has made that crucial
first step "toward dignity and lib
erty from self-persecution."
I feel congratulations are in
order for The Red and Black as
well, for daring to keep its Opin
ions page free from the twin bo
geyman of accountability and
responsibility.
John V. Hunter, IV
junior, English
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