Is the United States in urgent need of a national cultural policy? Is it likely to improve the quality of American cultural life if the Federal government establishes something like a ministry of culture in Washington to oversee the life of the arts in this country? Is access to the arts now to be made a government entitlement on the model of Social Security, Medicare, or—what may be a more plausible parallel—our failed Welfare programs? If so, who is to determine what qualifies as “art” under the jurisdiction of a national cultural policy? What, for that matter, will the now amorphous and much abused term “culture,” which once meant high culture but can now mean anything from museum exhibitions of motorcycles to the pornographic doggerel of rap music, actually signify for the bureaucracies that would be empowered to assess its value?

These are but a few of the alarming questions that have b ...

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