Since the creation of the NEA, they have provided grants for over 110,000 individuals. In sheer economics, the NEA is a power house. You probably never heard Helms mention these figures in his headlong quest to extinguish the endowment. Art is a public record. The arts feed our culture and allow us to find common links with our community.
Art reflects life.
What Helms saw in those photographs, whether or not one considers it pornography, was a record of our culture. Vaclav Havel, the current President of Czechoslovakia, is considered one of the most outspoken critics of the toppled Socialist regime. While under Socialist rule Havel was forced to hide his manuscripts in a tree to avoid persecution. Havel spent three years in prison because of his dissent from the authoritarian government. During the period before the democratic revolution he himself helped to inspire, Havel wrote a lengthy letter to then President Gustav Husak.