Should Opera Be Subsidized?: "Lighten Up!": Ripostes
Ackerman, Bruce
I AM STRUCK by Mitchell Cohen's embattled tone. It is as if we were locked in a lifeanddeath struggle with the Religious Right, which will settle for nothing less than the utter destruction of...
...Mitchell Cohen concedes as much when he urges us to keep "market-thinking" in its proper place and judge the case for subsidy "by qualitative considerations, including opera's place in a society's general culture...
...But it is precisely at this point that totalizing considerations enter...
...the more the neutralist voice of common citizenship is disparaged, the less it will thrive...
...The Religious Right exists, to be sure, but it is a smallish minority that does not pose a clear and present danger—unless, that is, it somehow manages to recruit a strong majority of co-religionists to its black-and-white view of the world...
...I have defended my educational ideals at greater length elsewhere.* Suffice it to say that, with the exception of the rare child coming from an opera-drenched home environment (for whom some Augustinian doubt is in order), my philosophy of education provides ample room for the robust cultivation of the musical imagination...
...But for whatever reason, the religious majority accepts the notion that, when we speak to one another as American citizens, we should not be making controversial appeals to the nature of God to justify our use of political power in the here-andnow...
...The only question is whether, despite this deep and troubling fact, Americans can nonetheless construct a form of civic conversation that allows us all to talk to one another with real respect...
...But this misrepresents the case for cultural subsidy...
...We are dealing, in short, with the dynamics of self-fulfilling prophecy: the more theists and atheists cultivate a neutralist voice when talking to one another as American citizens, the more it will seem sensible to continue this civic conversation of mutual respect...
...To exercise political restraint in the name of neutrality is to blind ourselves to the realities of power and the roots of the modern liberal state in the spirit of Enlightenment philosophy...
...But, of course, this effort to constrain our political conversation on neutralist lines may well unravel during the twenty-first century...
...By refusing to make ostentatious appeals to the ultimate truth of Christianity or Islam or secular humanism, we allow ourselves to talk to one another as Americans concerned with the solution of practical problems in a way that is worthy of free and equal citizens...
...Twentieth-century practice suggests that the answer is yes—but only by keeping our disagreements over ultimate meaning off the conversational agenda of practical politics as much as possible...
...It condemns the homogenizing character of much public schooling of the present day—my educational aim is not merely to train kids for the market and the rudiments of democratic life, but to introduce them thoughtfully to the conflicting moral ideals and practices they will encounter as grown-ups...
...But children aren't ready to confront responsibly the cacophony of moral voices characteristic of a free society, and the state's role is to help prepare them for this confrontation as thoughtful citizens...
...I myself do not hold this view—but for those who do, the case for selective subsidy vanishes immediately: why subsidize opera, and not skateboarding, if they are simply rival entertainments struggling for the consumer dollar...
...Because children are not adults...
...and that the tax exemption is properly seen as one of many means to assuring this ultimate end...
...and vice versa, for the children of Wagnerians...
...It is enough to affirm that, in a free and equal society, it is up to each citizen, and not the state, to take responsibility for defining the ultimate meaning of life...
...Lighten up Augustine...
...Instead, the principle of neutrality requires the liberal school to assure that all concerned citizens, regardless of their conception of the good, help shape the range of moral ideals presented to the rising generation...
...Most religious people are quite willing to recognize that the state should try to remain neutral between rival orthodoxies...
...Liberal states ought to give equal respect to adults, regardless of their visions of the meaningful life, and should not seek to bribe them to adopt a favored version of culture...
...This is no time for unilateral disarmament...
...IT IS FROM this vantage that I urge my fellow secularists to renounce public subsidy for the opera...
...Cohen is right to suspect that this liberal principle of educational diversity challenges many prevailing educational practices...
...We have gained access to the arsenal of state power thanks to the political triumphs of prior generations of liberal democrats...
...If this happens, Cohen will have helped create the very world his critique presupposes —a world of embattled liberalism, in which the idea of a mutually respectful civic discourse between atheists and religionists is dismissed as idle chatter, and the only serious question for politics is whether religion is a metaphysical illusion or the ultimate ground for collective salvation...
...Moreover, a neutral rationale for the deduction is readily forthcoming...
...We Philistines have the votes, and democracies have the right to worship Mammon in whatever lascivious manner they please...
...This is unlikely...
...Cohen also questions whether my position requires me to reject subsidized musical education for the young: if an Augustinian objection to a subsidy for the Met exposes its lack of neutrality, why doesn't the same objection operate as a veto for musical instruction in the schools...
...By encouraging the flow of financial resources to civil society, we construct a vital restraint on governmental overreaching...
...Slowly but surely, more and more religious people may become convinced that the radical right is right—the neutralist rhetoric of American politics is merely a screen for the Mitchell Cohens of the world to use state power in the atheist's ceaseless war against religion...
...DISSENT / Summer 1999 99...
...If, for example, ten-year-old youngsters have been exposed to a severely Augustinian parental environment during their early years, a liberal school should seek to devise some (non-threatening) ways to introduce them to the Wagnerian convictions and prac98 DISSENT / Summer 1999 tices of some of the citizens they will encounter upon maturity...
...Neither theists nor atheists are likely to silence each others' doubts any time soon...
...The overriding tendency of religion in America remains liberal...
...He points to tax deductions for gifts to nonprofit institutions, and suggests that these too would fail my test of neutrality...
...How precisely is a liberal to respond to such concerns: Is the state publicly to declare Augustine wrong and Wagner right on this profoundly contestable matter...
...Cohen seeks to evade my appeal for reciprocal restraint by disparaging "their" establishment as "totalizing," while ours, of course, is not...
...To see why, consider what a "non-totalizing" understanding of the opera would look like...
...On this familiar view, a dynamic nonprofit sector is an important part of a larger strategy of checks and balances against totalitarian government...
...But this tax deduction is available for gifts to all charities, religious and secular...
...I understand our historical situation differently...
...It also challenges the legitimacy of parental efforts to monopolize the moral vision of their children and prevent them from appreciating the conflicting views of their fellow citizens...
...Cohen also worries how far my commitment to neutrality goes in disrupting other traditional cultural arrangements...
...Cohen himself cites Augustine's worry that music corrupts since "the senses are not content to take second place...
...Once unhinged from any totalizing view, the Met merely provides another form of entertainment no different from skateboarding or hula-hooping...
...In encouraging charitable contributions, a nondiscriminatory tax policy contributes to the stabilization of a society of free and equal citizens...
...It is as if we were locked in a lifeanddeath struggle with the Religious Right, which will settle for nothing less than the utter destruction of secular humanism...
...It DISSENT / Summer 1999 97 is only by reciprocating moves from both sides of the religious/humanist divide that we will manage to deepen, rather than destroy, our common civic conversation...
...See Social Justice in the Liberal State, chapter 5 (Yale University Press, 1980...
...This is the least we can do to show that disestablishment is not a one-way street—with Catholics getting nothing for St...
...For some, this is a matter of prudence—they would be happy to endorse theocracy if they were confident that their version of orthodoxy would emerge triumphant from the political struggle, but they're not...
...Instead, it envisions a tensionfull relationship between liberal schools and the ongoing efforts by parents and local communities to constrain the moral vision of their children...
...In taking on this task, however, the liberal state is not free to use its educational system to brainwash the young into the majority's favored ideals...
...This tradition of conversational constraint is a great achievement of American politics...
...We must reconcile ourselves, then, to the fact that most Americans believe that most other Americans have made a tragic mistake about the ultimate meaning of life (either by worshiping a false god or failing to recognize that all gods are false...
...For others, the separation of church and state is a matter of principle—if religionists enter the political struggle, the result will be the corruption of religion, not the purification of politics...
...Liberals and social democrats should respond in kind, using all the weapons at our command in the ongoing Kulturkampf...
...This rationale may or may not be persuasive, but judging its merit does not require the state to pronounce upon the relative merits of Wagner's or Augustine's rival philosophies...
...Patrick's while secular humanists keep the bucks flowing to the Metropolitan Opera from the public treasury...
...It would make a mockery of their struggles to surrender this hard-won power in the midst of a culture war...
Vol. 46 • July 1999 • No. 3
