"America's arts in crisis as hard-up states threaten to suspend all funding;" proclaims an Independent [UK] headline. Upon reading the word 'crisis' come visions of starvation, disease, and other sufferings. No, by crisis they mean that we are to spend another year in want of penile sculpture, body-fluid painting, and guano modeling. I am not sure I can face another day under such oppression.

For starters, public support of the arts is nothing more than welfare for unproductive half-wits. Under the guise of culture, these tempra-slinging reprobates skim millions of dollars a year from the public till - money that might have been used for something productive...like a cruise missile. In most cases, the devastation left by a cruise missile is more attractive to behold than the so-called art - the depravation of which we totter on the edge.

Arizona is listed as the chief prude among states - looking at retracting some twelve million dollars of arts funding. Surely, Barry Goldwater is rolling in his grave at the mere suggestion. And like Stalin eyeing the Ukraine, Missouri and New Jersey are scoping their respective budgets, seeking to trim a talking vagina performance here and a urinated crucifix there, to ensure that state programs such as social services and mental health continue [wait...maybe the art is better?]

"Arts in the United States have never enjoyed the kind of government support seen in most European countries..." says the article. There's a good reason for that - it's that most Americans think that the stuff most Europeans like, are stupid. The author - David Usborne - fabricates a new clause in each of the 50 states' constitutions stating that "[t]he prospect of state governments abandoning their responsibilities towards culture altogether is something new..." [emphasis mine.] This so-called responsibility is likely only perceived by those whose livelihoods depend on such public excess...it's a shame to have to go and look for real work when the public teat has been so good for so long.

And to those of the leisure class, who seem to be the primary consumers of such creative tripe, we would say, get out your checkbook and support the arts yourself. But alas - "Making matters worse, private donations to the arts are also drying up as the squeeze on the economy tightens" - which I will translate for the author as 'everyone has to prioritize when times get tight, and the first to go are the non-essentials.' In the real world, when the market for a product disappears, the assembly lines are shut down.

[Hint-hint!]

Perhaps the assertion is wrong, but it seems that there was a day when to enter this country, you needed a reason to be here. Yes, there was a time when America was young, expanding, and needed lots of fresh faces to do the hard work of building this country up. The late 19th century saw mass immigration in the hundreds of thousands, yet this type of influx was limited to peoples of Christian nations who could assimilate into our society easier. Today, no assimilation is expected, as government agencies in most states publish booklets and forms in more than one language. Our gutless Congress can't even manage to make English the official language of the United States. As time goes by, to do so becomes more of a stretch of logic, since fewer and fewer people speak it fluently enough to matter.

Such a change in immigration policy will take time to enact, but it is logical and necessary that we do so as quickly as possible. Even more urgent is the 'forbidden question,' that being "why are non-citizens from Islamic nations still here?" Certainly we don't want to make the same mistake we did in WWII, locking up all US Citizens with Japanese surnames living on the West coast. That was stupid and unproductive. Just as there were patriotic Americans of German and Japanese descent during WWII, there are also Muslims in this country that are citizens, and mean it.

What would not be unproductive at this point is to immediately deport all foreigners visiting from any nation which the State Department deems likely a terrorist breeding ground [I don't think they have a classification exactly like that, but whatever is close.] We shouldn't have to constantly look over our shoulders and subject ourselves to the loss of rights for which our forefathers died protecting. We - the Americans - should not have to suffer a whit more than we have already.

Let them who have not earned the privilege of being counted countrymen pay a little inconvenience for once. All these politicians babbling about safety and security - they could give it to us in a week, if they were serious.

Send them back.

Now.

[By boat!]