Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 642.0

524US2

Unit: $U95

[09-06-00 18:40:44] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 569 (1998)

597

Scalia, J., concurring in judgment

indecent, too disrespectful, or even too kitsch to attract pri-
vate support. But even if one accepts the contention, it
would have no application here. The NEA is far from the
sole source of funding for art—even indecent, disrespectful,
or just plain bad art. Accordingly, the Government may
earmark NEA funds for projects it deems to be in the public
interest without thereby abridging speech. Regan v. Taxa-
tion with Representation of Wash., supra, at 549.

Section 954(d)(1) is no more discriminatory, and no less
constitutional, than virtually every other piece of funding
legislation enacted by Congress.
“The Government can,
without violating the Constitution, selectively fund a pro-
gram to encourage certain activities it believes to be in the
public interest, without at the same time funding an alterna-
tive program . . . .” Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, 193
(1991). As we noted in Rust, when Congress chose to estab-
lish the National Endowment for Democracy it was not con-
stitutionally required to fund programs encouraging compet-
ing philosophies of government—an example of
funding
discrimination that cuts much closer than this one to the core
of political speech which is the primary concern of the First
Amendment. See id., at 194.
It takes a particularly high
degree of chutzpah for the NEA to contradict this proposi-
tion, since the agency itself discriminates—and is required
by law to discriminate—in favor of artistic (as opposed to
scientiﬁc, or political, or theological) expression. Not all the
common folk, or even all great minds, for that matter, think
In 1800, when John Marshall told John
that is a good idea.
Adams that a recent immigration of Frenchmen would in-
clude talented artists, “Adams denounced all Frenchmen, but
most especially ‘schoolmasters, painters, poets, &C.’ He
warned Marshall that the ﬁne arts were like germs that in-
fected healthy constitutions.”
J. Ellis, After the Revolution:
Proﬁles of Early American Culture 36 (1979). Surely the
NEA itself is nothing less than an institutionalized discrimi-
nation against that point of view. Nonetheless, it is consti-