[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Canadian_Heritag...
America isn’t Europe. For one thing, it’s not nearly as culturally homogenous. More Americans want their state to leave the union (about 1 in 4 nation wide) than people in Basque Country want independence from Spain (about 1 in 6). The French have an idea of what “French culture” is and what’s desirable about it. Americans have highly divergent views on what is American culture or what’s desirable about it (or even if anything is desirable about it). In practice, the NEA and NEH end up funding not “American culture” but “coastal urban culture.”
Now, I happen to like coastal urban culture. My wife and I take the kids to the MOMA when we’re in NYC. But a federally funded agency picking sides in an active and ongoing culture war is wrong. The government shouldn’t be putting a thumb in the scale when it comes to influencing the evolution of culture. But that’s exactly what NEA and NEH end up doing in practice. They hand an elite cultural minority a $300 million a year platform.
Ultimately, this leads to exactly what the parent is worried about: a culture of the coast for the coast. I doubt that the "coastal elites" are out in Louisiana and Nebraska paying for art galleries, or even interested in showcasing rural work in urban galleries. That's solved via broad-based social contributions.
The people who don't like the NEH / NEA are arguing that that's what they're getting already. Only now, the people in Lousiana and Nebraska are being forced to pay for it as well.
The US is a country, not everything directly benefits everyone - the NEH and NEA actually do funnel quite a bit of money into the center of the country, but their funding is lopsided toward urban centers because those are the locations that attract and can sustain artists. But, tomorrow, someone from LA can head to NY, become an artist, and work on qualifying for a grant - they can secure a grant where they are if they can demonstrate their research topic and get in contact with the NEH.
Don't they though? Those are new potential customers and users. ie. market growth?
Currently there is a lot of comedy out there for free(ish) if it became more heavily capitalized, and there were constant steep costs to consume comedy, what would we lose out of society? Nothing super important, the trains would run, factories wouldn't shut down, but we'd lose a source of expression and joy that helped up think differently and approach hard questions in life... Art adds value to all of us and it's so insanely cheap to fund.
With "All of the private wealth sloshing around needs a home" there are lots of homeless who needs a home?
There are three articles suggested for further reading on the "City on a Hill" excerpt. One is about Henry Louis Gates Jr. in quite a contrast to Perry Miller.
NEH ends-up funding a wide gamut instead of being a kingmaker. In fact it funds a lot that would not be paid for otherwise. When criticizing something it's best to critique the thing for what it is rather than what it is imagined to be.
I'm sure the NEA does end up funding coastal urban culture because... a lot of people live in urban centers, maybe even an above average population of artists, so there's lots of art that happens in that context. And those of us who live in that context will probably see even more of it.
But even living in an urban center now, I see a lot of art that looks towards other places and times in the United States, and the people I know creating/practicing art do too. Where I've encountered elitism it's almost always adjacent to the private art market and/or certain historic treasures, and even in that context you will find people who fit the general rule that most of the arts-involved are some of the most open people I've met, as curious about shape note singing as conceptual art.
In fact, I suspect most of them would find your conception of art as culture war odd. It's possible that you're the one who needs to get outside any MOMA bubble and look around more.
Now imagine that some Trump appointee comes in and declares that their theme for 2020 will be "AMERICA FUCK YEAH". They're going to fund a bunch of 1960's style "cowboys and Indians" movies about brave settlers who conquered the West.
Then would you still be as comfortable with the concept? Most people here would not.