8 thoughts on “We Don’t Need Monet”

  2. Having grown up with relatives Behind the Iron Curtain, I guess my political sympathies lean Rightward otherwise I would not frequent Rand’s fine virtual salon. I certainly don’t post disagreements with the main-stream opinion around here in knee-jerk defense of every airborne dissemination from the Obama Administration.

    But it seems there can be every bit of a reflex-response orthodoxy on the Right as there are with those who find no flaw with Mr. Obama.

    I really have no answer as to “what to do with” the public art collection as I do with the recipients of City pensions or the people stuck with unsellable houses and have to continue living there. And I am aware of the factors leading to this, including Mr. Obama being the anti-FDR — didn’t FDR promote a cheap-energy socialism in the TVA that help refine the uranium that ended WW-II without consigning a million US service men to being casualties and tens of millions of Japanese civilians to starvation? Why are you making energy expensive, Mr. Obama, and you said you would and you are when it leads to this and other misery?

    I suppose the art collection will be auctioned off, some going to other public museums, much of it going into private collections where it will disappear from view? What difference does it make whether we can look at some doodlings of Dead White Guys?

    What difference does it make whether the Taliban took some heavy caliber guns to those Buddha statues? They are only the stone carvings of some Dead Central Asian Guys of the Caucasian Race but of Dark Skin.

    What difference does higher education make when even the faculty in STEM disciplines are pinkos or worse yet, Greens, and this has even infected Engineering schools? Who needs even an Engineering degree when a person with motivation can pick up Covariant and Contravariant Tensors in the Stress and Strain of Bulk Materials from the Khan videos.

    I don’t have an answer, but for this son of refugees from the lands of the Hapsburg Emperors who regarded themselves as the heirs of Ancient Rome, those Dead White Guys, the conceit of your Blue State Elite, they are my culture, my heritage, my identity.

    People don’t take to scoldings easily, and certainly not on the Internet, so go ahead and stick up for what you believe and call me a pinko Commie and I should move to Zagreb where I belong where street musicians play classical music and the fine arts are celebrated in a municipal museum. Stand up for what you believe and forget about the need to build a political coalition and read “Blue State Elite” people like me out of the Movement.

    1. “I don’t have an answer,…………”

      Well I do.

      More than half the nation (I include a lot of Republicans in this) have completely lost sight of the concept of “business before pleasure”.

      Or “first things first”

      They’ve lost sight of the difference between need and want. They no longer understand that you can afford a museum stuffed with priceless art treasures *only* if you have first taken care of business so you can afford such things.

      This is the government version of poor people having huge wall-covering TV’s in their house.

      We see it everywhere…. grammar an high schools refuse to focus on reading, writing, arithmetic and history all the while begging for more and more and more money. They need curriculum coordinators, sports teams, s3x classes, drug classes, environmental classes, band, art classes, they say.

      How about turning out kids who can read, write, and reckon and who understand the assumptions and beauties of their National political origin? How many friggin’ times do you have to redesign the curriculum for 3rd grade arithmetic?

      In terms of Detroit, you can have millions tied up in art treasures inside a building you have to maintain, heat, air condition, and have guarded to protect the treasures and staffed by ticket takers, and advertised in the papers and on tv………

      ..or……

      You can put that money into the police force and maybe save a life or two.

      It’s a no-brainer so I can only conclude that there are people with no brains running Detroit (and running the country as well).

      The no brainers will says, “Welllll what about quality of life? What about attracting people to a place of beauty?”

      Morons.

      You will attract people to a place where they can work hard, execute a plan, prosper i.e. make money.

      You will not attract people to a place where they have to worry about being killed, or worry about a government that makes it a lot harder to prosper by regulating and taking their property away (which includes money they make).

      It’s every bit as simple and obvious as that and the lefties who do not see it are simply inexplicable humans.

      1. The art collection, is not as you suggest going to raise enough money to hire enough police to make the streets safe and enough teachers to make the kids literate. The art is essentially a hostage in the drama for going forward with bankruptcy proceedings.

        I guess the Blue State elites are the only ones who care about it because the Jacksonian response is “Art, who needs it, business before pleasure.” This is living up to the Blue State Elite caricature of TEA Party Libertarianism.

        Harry: “Alright, pop quiz: The airport. Gunman with one hostage, he’s using her for cover, he’s almost to the plane. You’re a hundred feet away. (Long pause) Jack?”
        Jack: “Shoot the hostage.””
        Harry: “What?”
        Jack: “Take her out of the equation. Go for the good wound and he can’t get to the plane with her. Clear shot”
        Harry: “You are deeply nuts, you know that? ‘Shoot the hostage’… jeez…”

        Libertarians are deeply nuts, “Sell the art collection”, . . . jeez

        1. Reportedly, their art collection is worth many million dollars. That’s far short of their debt but a start. I’ve read some 200,000 companies and individuals are owed at lot of money by Detroit. It isn’t as if the art will be destroyed, it’ll go to the highest bidders and the money will pay some of the city’s debt.

        2. “The art collection, is not as you suggest going to raise enough money to hire enough police to make the streets safe and enough teachers to make the kids literate.”

          And of course that’s not what I said is it?
          Nice straw man (throws a lit match onto it).

          Here is what I said:

          “..or……

          You can put that money into the police force and maybe save a life or two. ”

          Now, do you want the millions tied up in art? Or used to perhaps save a life or two.

          Simple situation; simple question.

          Your strawman is typical of statist dismissal of simplicity and obviousness.

        3. Libertarians are deeply nuts, “Sell the art collection”, . . . jeez

          It’s also a valid point. Detroit and its creditors will get more out of the proceeds from a sale of that art than from the art itself. And if they should happen to squander that money, the art will at least be out of a city that can’t manage even basic services. A few less things to break when it all comes down.

          Also, selling the art “removes it from the equation”.

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