PULLING THE FUSE ON CULTURE

Democratic nations," wrote the ever prescient Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, long ago in 1840, "will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should be useful." What would Tocqueville have thought of today's assaults on the fabric of America's public culture?

The Republican leadership in Congress means to sever all links between American government and American culture. It wants the Federal Government to give no support at all to music, theater, ballet, opera, film, intelligent television, literature, history, archaeology, museum work, architectural conservation and the visual arts. It intends to abolish federal...