Resolved: The National Endowment for the Arts should not be funded by the Government

First off, thanks dinosourhands for taking my debate! This should be fun. ^.^ Responses: "One negative connotation that comes with art, or supporting art, or pursuing a life of art, is the sense that it is totally unproductive, that you're just throwing your life away. But I would ask you, is a life thrown away if it is lived happily?" ["] "It's easy to hate on art and artists as unproductive members of society, but in reality, they're the ones who give our society our flavor, our fun. So when we fund art, we are not only giving people a better shot at living fulfilled lives, but we are giving our culture a shot at having something more interesting to live with." -I couldn"t agree with you more here. Many people consider art as a "fake" job"or unproductive"like you said. I personally LOVE art. Please don"t think that I"m bashing art in any way. However, I don"t think we should not be funding the NEA"I will address that later. "Most people with a 'purposeful' job are unhappy with it. If someone has a talent that they can pursue to live happily, we should be happy for them!" -Absolutely "Not only that, but, if it is do-able, we should assist them. We should assist them not only because we can make them happy, but because they can also make us happy. Just think about all the stuff we're surrounded by day to day. Music, movies, your favorite TV show, things like this are art. Our culture is full of art. By supporting art, we are supporting our culture." -This is where I am going to disagree. We don"t HAVE to assist them. Just because I and a group of friends love playing with playdoh"doesn"t mean that people should pay us. I don"t agree with this analogy. Happy doesn"t = support. "What if, by not funding and supporting those of artistic endeavors, we never get the next big painter, or the next big guitarist or singer? What if the next Christopher Nolan, or Stephen Spielberg doesn't get his shot at fame? What if the next Hans Zimmer can't get a loan for some recording equipment? What if the next Natalie Portman doesn't learn about her acting skills, because her town never got a grant to open up a live theater?" -First off, that is a very big "WHAT IF." The arts were doing fine before we started supporting them. If we stopped supporting them"I"m pretty sure they would still continue. Art has prevailed throughout history. "Put simply, the NEA is less than tenth of a percent of our federal spending. To be exact, the money given to the NEA is 0.00395380622% of our current federal spending[1][2][3]. So when we look at the positives in the above section, and then look at the tiny grain of sand of 'negative', we can see that there really is no logical reason to get rid of the NEA." -That is an interesting piece of evidence"however, I"m curious where you found it. There are two NEA"s"one for education and one for "the arts." My Arguments: Money pt. 1 Our taxpayer"s money is stretched too far as it is. As much as we'd like to see lots and lots of organizations get funded, the taxpayers' dollars are not designed to support things like the arts. If the art itself isn't good enough to support itself, it's not good enough for us to give them our money. Although this seems harsh: they need to stand on their own"or fail. Money pt. 2 There are so many more important things that need to be taken care of"Washington needs to get its priorities straight on this, because currently we cannot afford to do it! We are about 16 trillion dollars in debt and we are going into debt more and more every month. Supporting stuff that isn't vital when you are in serious debt is unwise. It is not our job. Even though art is great, we don"t need to be forced (especially people who don"t care for art) to support it. Accordingly, nowhere in its list of powers enumerated and delegated to the federal government does the Constitution specify a power to subsidize the arts." A weird example of something we are funding: "A $100,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts funded a video game that depicts a female superhero sent to save planet Earth from climate changes allegedly caused by social issues that affect women. Money pt. 3 Say that the government (taxpayers) stopped funding the arts. It"s not like they will just die. There are plenty of ways that they can get money. Attending the shows"buying the art"exhibits"fundraisers"the list could go on. Besides, self-respecting artists shouldn"t want to take government (our) money. Real artists want to be independent of government control. Money pt. 4 Supporting things that are not art. Most of the projects are pretty leftist (in my example above)"that, or they are just weird and disturbing. Now, I"m not one to discriminate (in general) what someone thinks is art. But this is NOT art. Here are some examples: "``Four Scenes in a Harsh Life' by Ron Athey, an HIV-positive actor- playwright. In his performance, Athey takes a scalpel and carves a pattern into another man's back. The blood from the wounds is then blotted with paper towels and dangled in the air over the heads of the audience. "Andres Serrano's photographs of a crucifix submerged in a vat of his urine "Robert Mapplethorpe's images of himself being penetrated anally by a bullwhip "Photographs by artist Joel-Peter Witkin include pictures of a corpse's head sawed in half and repositioned so it seems to be kissing itself; an obese nude woman holding three dead fetuses; and a nude man strapped beneath heavy weights that are suspended above his head by means of a pulley chained to his scrotum. The latter is titled ``Testicle Stretch with the Possibility of a Crushed Face.' The money that we are spending"is going to "art" like this. Where is the talent? More importantly, where is the art? Thanks. :) http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.heritage.org... http://www.experienceproject.com...-(National-Endowment-For-The-Arts)-Why-Or-Why-Not/1890474 http://www.heritage.org...