A “cheerleader for the arts” – that’s what one symphony-goer called me last week after hearing my pre-concert talk for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. I was flattered by his gracious assessment. I rather like that description because it captures my conviction that the Arts matter. They bring pleasure and excitement. But they also allow us to understand our history, unify our culture, and point the way to the future, for better or worse.

We need to have more serious conversations in this country about the state of the Arts, but not the hackneyed ones about “how to fund them” or how to “fill empty seats in the concert hall.” Rather we need to talk about their content and our attitudes toward the arts.

Great art always tells us something. It has a message, whether we receive or ignore it. And to be great, art needs to be grounded in tradition and in craft. So often we view the classical arts as merely historic. Then we relegate contemporary art as merely entertaining or trendy. Message? Truth? Power? Well, all of that seems to be passé.

So I was pleased to follow this serious conversation about our misguided notions. Camille Paglia, writing in The Wall Street Journal, addresses the current disconnect between culture and what passes for art in certain circles.

What do contemporary artists have to say, and to whom are they saying it? Unfortunately, too many artists have lost touch with the general audience and have retreated to an airless echo chamber.

She describes this echo chamber as a “blasé liberal secularism” and points out how young artists have no exposure to (and no appreciation for) the manual trades and basic craftsmanship. They are instead fed a constant diet of disdain for our culture and for the values upon which it rests.

Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women. The routine defamation of capitalism by the armchair leftists in academe and the mainstream media has cut young artists and thinkers off from the authentic cultural energies of our time.

Dave Carter at Ricochet builds nicely on Paglia’s comments:

This ideology that seeks to disconnect an entire people from their heritage and culture is the same ideology that teaches students to ridicule and scorn the very system that has afforded them a standard of living and a wealth of knowledge that previous generations could never have imagined. To defeat that ideology is to make possible the day when abiding truths are celebrated and the arts again, as in the past, lift the human spirit up, up toward the Author of all that is truly beautiful.

In fact, knowledge of the Arts and our artistic heritage is one of our best tools for defeating that debilitating ideology. The Arts, properly understood, have always been there not merely to entertain or to shock our sensibilities, but to lift the human spirit and celebrate abiding truths.

That’s why I’m a cheerleader for the Arts.