Letters
Editors: No veteran reader of Dissent will be surprised at the editorial support of a recent U.S. war (or the next either, wherever that may be). But what is striking, no less than in the...
...Faith in the market and in Marxism, belief in the "unnaturalness" of homosexuality, defense of various destructive "rights," adherence to principles and authorities even when harmful, avoidance of needed medical care, acceptance of the status quo as divinely decreed, faith that people get what they "deserve,"sexism, racism, divisiveness, and fear of sexual pleasure: religion bears too much of this fruit to outweigh the good that many people do in its name or the beauty of its celebrations...
...Their influence in the Republican Party has been formidable...
...Marjorie Heins Replies: Jim Mann is correct in pointing out the contradiction between the government's protestations in harm-to-minors cases that it is helping parents control their children's reading and its insistence on imposing its own, presumably majoritarian, standards of morality or decorum...
...I find that argument profoundly undemocratic...
...It seems to me that the primary reason why the state cannot dictate what children should learn or not learn is that it cannot do so without violating the rights of parents to raise their children...
...DAVID SWANSON Charlottesville, Va...
...We are unable to acknowledge letters...
...That opera can be a secularized quasi-religious experience is certainly true...
...The big question—When is the child mature enough?—differs for every child and frequently for the same child under different circumstances...
...Unfortunately, both arguments ignore the real issues...
...Shame on you...
...GEORGE SCIALABBA Cambridge, Mass...
...But I would not kid myself about my ability to impose such a neutral stance on theists like Stanley Fish or atheists like Cohen...
...The government, to be neutral, should therefore not spend even a penny on scientific research because it would then forfeit its neutrality between religion and science...
...Such facilities should be restricted to the affluent who can afford to have their own parks...
...And there are other ways of enhancing moral seriousness...
...But the issue is before the Supreme Court again this term in Playboy a FCC, a challenge to a law that requires cable companies to make sure that any "sexually explicit" or "indecent" signal bleed (intermittent sounds or images from sexually oriented cable channels) is totally blocked from households that have not subscribed to the channels, or else aired only after 10 P.M...
...One does not join opera, does not profess to "believe in" things in order to become an operalian...
...To single out opera from among the many cultural activities depending on tax-deductible contributions and public monies is, of course, arrant discrimination, particularly when dance (in all its guises) is not mentioned: dance, which is historically and culturally the fount of so much religious experience, and which continues to this day to have a religious connection far stronger than opera...
...If you could use troops effectively without casualties or even the risk of casualties, then so much the better...
...If the leader risks the death of soldiers in waging war, perhaps that enhances the possibility that going to war is done with due deliberation and gravity, giving the decision moral weight...
...Nor is it some form of subliminal argument for secular humanism...
...now that the Red Cross has declared that more refugees exist from "environmental disasters" than from wars, perhaps the whole issue of "collateral damage" will finally come into view...
...it apparently cannot imagine that large numbers of parents might have child-rearing philosophies that differ from its own...
...These must be governmentally subsidized...
...Editors: I have never seen anyone converted to or from religion by attending operas...
...Summer 1999...
...How else will these get into the school curricula...
...recognition of the material and civic costs of a militarized foreign policy...
...Editors: Bruce Ackerman's neutral liberalism is an argument for a fatal cul-de-sac into which we may all naively enter...
...A law that effectively bans all indecent programming —as does the statute in this case—does not facilitate parental supervision...
...The whole question of the secularized religious experiences, however, both in for-profit and not-for-profit arts, is a topic that could yield enormous results if pursued...
...now that labor has finally joined in the cry against toxic dumping in the Americas...
...What About Parents' Rights...
...The Justice Department's brief views these parents as careless or distracted (and therefore in need of the government's assistance...
...rejection of elite definitions of "national interest...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...ELLEN MICHEL Bloomington, Ind...
...Or have they...
...If a police sniper shoots a gunman who is killing people, is it morally important for that police officer to be at risk of getting killed...
...Let all children taste the glories of the arts and the sciences...
...DISSENT /Fall 1999 127...
...Several years ago, D.C...
...They do not believe in freedom of religion or separation of church and state...
...that certain operas are quasireligious experiences is also true...
...Admittedly, there is considerable subjective judgment involved...
...The early warnings against the immediate, lasting radiation danger from uranium-tipped shells, the anticipated consequences of bombing chemical factories, and the wholesale destruction of conservation and wildlife areas all seem to have fallen upon deaf ears...
...But American law has always given parental rights first preference in the final say on children's education...
...Nowhere, so far as I can see...
...In particular, the list of questions Rule urges his readers to consider when evaluating foreign interventions can hardly be improved on...
...What does this mean, practically...
...This funding is unquestioned and exists with both liberal and conservative governments...
...troops would be consequences —unintended, inevitable, and regrettable—of their employment, not the moral justification of their use...
...American culture (with a small c) seems incapable of understanding the human need for the aesthetic experience and does not quite know what to do with it...
...Tradition and most laws presuppose that the best way to handle the raising of children is to leave it to the parents, even though the state can and should provide assistance...
...I find them far more enjoyable and beautiful than operas...
...You can't kill unless you are prepared to die...
...When art issues are discussed, they are always set in an economic or political context...
...PAUL BUHLE Providence, R.I...
...Ackerman seems to be arguing that since opera has become an elite pastime (which it was not in earlier times) only the affluent should enjoy its pleasures...
...In our current, very mixed society, parents have to learn that they cannot dictate to other parents, which is what they do when they ban books in libraries or films in schools...
...The Supreme Court has never faced this problem— indeed, in the Pacifica (seven dirty words) case, it pretended that the two interests converged...
...Secular humanism," if you follow fundamentalist reasoning, encompasses all of modern science...
...The question of the opera is a tiny portion of a much larger question...
...As I understand it, since opera is a secularized religious rite, it is subject to the doctrine of separation of church and state...
...The fact is that American policy about the giving of public monies for the arts (and we here are only discussing the United States, for public funding in Europe is far too entrenched and societally accepted to be negated —though in the past decade it has been to an extent reduced) has been and continues to be based on criteria quite different from the "separation of church and state" rationale, and any serious attempt to argue it for opera alone will, I feel, release a host of bogeymen— which may be the ultimate point of the exercise...
...If I held the sort of neutral stance toward religion that Ackerman seems to, I would definitely want to fund Catholic services...
...And who is to limit the experience to "opera...
...Now that the stories of abortions (spontaneous or otherwise) have begun to emerge, with war's heritage of poisoned air, land, and waterways making future health problematic for all survivors...
...RODNEY OAKES San Pedro, Calif...
...And there has to be...
...Again, this is especially true in the leftist press...
...Adults, too, need subsidies for what the market does not provide...
...In jousting and dueling, honor demands bravery and physical risk...
...There is no comparison between a Catholic mass and an opera, for the mass is not entertainment, however dramatic and elaborate it may be...
...And why only the children...
...Death and injury among U.S...
...But they have no right to limit freedom of expression in public facilities used by other people's children...
...Opera is neither a religion nor a political movement...
...Circuit Judge Harry Edwards wrote in a dissent to a decision upholding the Federal Communications Commission's relegation of indecent speech to late-night hours: 1 do not comprehend how the two interests can stand together...
...For some of us liberal, secular humanist, social democrats, an ideal government would, among other services, provide quality universal health care, seriously attempt to eliminate poverty, and support and encourage all the arts, including opera...
...As with other countries, France realizes that the aesthetic experience cannot be supported exclusively in the marketplace, and that it is the responsibility of a mature government to make art available to all of its citizens...
...A responsible critique of the new NATO is imperative today, one that exposes the dangers of "liberal humanitarian imperialism...
...Opera is an artistic mixed medium whose primary function is to express an aesthetic message...
...ARNOLD LIEBER New York, N.Y...
...Opera, the State, and Subsidy Editors: Dissent is to be congratulated on the opera argument between Bruce Ackerman and Mitchell Cohen ("Should Opera Be Subsidized...
...Presumably more lives could have been saved, atrocities prevented, with less "collateral damage," if ground troops were used, so it should have been done...
...Of course, these have all been dissenting opinions...
...Their aims are subversive...
...JIM MANN Gales Ferry, Conn...
...Parsifal at Bayreuth, Saint Francois d'Assise at Salzburg—or the Alagnas singing in Romeo et Juliette...
...It is the celebration of a religious belief...
...If there is no opera on commercial television, how can the non-affluent ever acquire a taste for it...
...Parenting is an essentially human endeavor, and parents, being human, are imperfect...
...Criticizing NATO does not require becoming an apologist for Milosevic, but it does involve shifting one's focus to the perils of the larger picture, one in which a small country is attacked relentlessly by a supranational institution defining itself so as to escape the strictures of international law...
...LAURENCE G. WOLF Cincinnati, Ohio To Letter Writers • We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...Why, in the wounded and suffering world, did we have to wait so long...
...Editors: I must say that Bruce Ackerman's rationale [against public funding of opera] was one of the more bizarre and outré I have heard...
...Justice Brennan's dissent in Pacifica, however, and Justice Fortas's ten years earlier in the Ginsberg a New York "variable obscenity" case did (in Fortas's words) question the wisdom of giving the state "a role in the rearing of children which is contrary to our traditions and to our conception of family responsibility...
...All the essay's emphases are right: skepticism about official justifications for the use of force...
...With such attitudes we should have no public parks...
...But who is to determine the "religiousness" of the experience...
...Whether my support extends to opera depends on the funds available and projects in need, and—with some allowance for people' diversity of tastes—on my opinion 126 DISSENT / Fall 1999 of opera (which is rather low...
...As he acknowledged, "any thorough answer to this utterly legitimate question" was beyond the scope of that essay...
...Letters must be no more than 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...Editors: Why no mention of parents' rights in Marjorie Heins's knowledgeable article ("Rejuvenating Free Expression: An Argument for Minors' First Amendment Rights," Summer 1999...
...It is a question of the influence of the theocrats versus democrats, as well as a question of culture for the masses or only for the (upper) classes...
...I do not support banning religion, which I think would strengthen and worsen it...
...Rarely are issues concerning the performing arts addressed in the American press, especially the left...
...They have the right to withdraw their child from particular classes or activities, or even to teach their children at home...
...Other industrialized societies understand the inherent human need to experience art, and that it is essential to the quality of life...
...The Department of Justice argues that the law is necessary to help parents who haven't subscribed to channels like Playboy in supervising their children, and also in enforcing the government's own interest in the "well-being" of minors...
...Risk for pragmatic reasons, yes, but please, no false heroics or wrong notes from the armchairs of the left...
...We cannot claim, he says, that the lives of Serb soldiers are expendable while those of our soldiers are not...
...I do not support state funding of Catholic church services because I consider religion, on balance, harmful and would, in fact, like nonviolently but quite thoroughly ecraser me...
...Foreign Policy Editors: Thanks and applause for James Rule's "On Evils Abroad and America's New World Order" (Summer 124 DISSENT / Fall 1999 1999...
...If a thirteen-year-old's parents want her to read Morrison's Beloved or see Spielberg's Schindler's List, what right has the state to interfere...
...And the state is also a human endeavor and imperfect...
...But it doesn't always (did the Serbs' risking death give them moral authority...
...But the evidence in the case suggests that most parents are simply not concerned that accidental exposure to DISSENT / Fall 1999• 125 fleeting televised sounds or images of sex will have a dire effect upon their children...
...Rule imagined some readers asking doubtfully...
...If we can afford subsidies for stadiums and for corporate empires, certainly we can afford subsidies for "high" culture...
...Operas are not, even though some have religious themes...
...PATRICK SMITH New York, N.Y...
...But what is striking, no less than in the provocative lead essay by Alice Amsden and Takashi Hikino ("The Left and Globalization," Spring 1999), is the complete absence of ecological consideration...
...You are disturbing the shade of Dionysius by ignoring him—at your peril...
...Unlike our scientists, the religious, especially the evangelicals and fundamentalists, have hundreds of television and radio programs, and some of their propaganda efforts are well funded by millionaires...
...I am not a legal expert, but I am puzzled that the courts have never made the point that freedom of speech begins in the home with the rights of parents to communicate with their children...
...But because we have a long "lead time" for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...
...See The Bassarids, by Hans Werner Henze...
...So, I tend not to view opera as an enemy of or alternative to (other) religions...
...The power of these hard-core religionists has forced their God into our national pledge of allegiance and is responsible for innumerable acts of censorship in libraries and schools...
...In my view, my right as a parent has been preempted, not facilitated, if I am told that certain programming will be banned from my television...
...Symphonies, string ensembles, choral societies—all are helped at the public purse: is Schubert's C Major Quintet less "religious" than Beethoven's Missa Solemnis or Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore...
...As Walzer says, "Leaders [must] safeguard the lives of their own people, all of them...
...I support state funding for arts because I and others love art, because I see art as socially beneficial, because the funding is not always available elsewhere, and because state funding is democratic and noncommercial...
...awareness of officially manipulation of public discussion...
...As a composer, performer, and educator, my sympathies fall with Cohen's point of view...
...Editors: It is amazing to see a magazine that calls itself Dissent fall in line behind NATO's war the way you have, with articles such as those in the Summer issue that offer only generalities about "firefighters" and the responsibilities of the left (or information on the role of the Internet that passes over the most powerful Web sites critiquing the war...
...Editors: Michael Walzer, commenting on the lack of NATO ground troops in the Kosovo war ("Kosovo," Summer 1999), suggests the danger of a "new and dangerous inequality...
...The French national government spends three and a half billion dollars a year supporting art...
...Surely the important thing in Kosovo was to stop Serb aggression...
...Where does Dissent examine these complexities...
...So this is not merely a question of subsidies for operas, and is not so rarefied as to involve Plato and Aristotle...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, selfaddressed envelopes...
...One fervently hopes that the editors of Dissent will encourage him to pursue this question in future issues...
...Does Milosevic require this of us...
...NOTE: The author is editor-at-large of Opera News...
...Admittedly, the state has the right to protect the child when parents are totally unfit or patently abusive...
Vol. 46 • September 1999 • No. 4
