Don Satz writes: >My opinion is that Government needs to stay far away from as many >activites as possible, because it is inherently inefficient and >arbitrary. Since there is no compelling need for public involvement >in the arts, this is an area for Government to vacate. Anarchy is also inherently inefficient and arbitrary--indeed, that's why we condescend to be governed. Ever since the philosophizing of Parmenides twentyfive hundred years ago we've been soundly instructed that every truth is true only because it also subsumes its opposite. And it is sensible to check and balance the power of government for the protection of the liberty of the citizen--experience teaches us that--but subsumed in this truth is also the knowledge that private means should act mainly as checks and balances in the great visionary tasks of a nation. In places like New York City the arts bloom because there's enough private incentive, knowhow, and money around to husband them. (Though every time I go to the Metropolitan Opera and read the plates graven with the names of donors, I cringe, having known personally known some of them as intellectual misfits to that sort of setting.) But elsewhere the public must be made to make the arts flourish lest high culture perish. Typically, the per annum price of sustaining one good symphonic orchestra is equivalent to the cost of purchasing a military aircraft of the sort that's now engaged by NATO to operate in the Balkans. (Whether Alburque, say, could handle such an orchestra is another matter--but there are towns of comparable size, and wealth, here in Europe that can, and wish to have the national public help them in that regard. And their wishes are catered to, quite properly.) Denis Fodor Internet:[log in to unmask]