Government Force as a Corrupting Influence

I enjoyed the opening of this article, as well as its warning. (HT John Lewis via OActivists). Here's the intro:

There are all kinds of corruption. Some are pretty easy to identify. You can’t miss it when a congressman sells the public’s vote for money, say, or a husband sets his personal promises at nothing in order to score some extracurricular sex. But the slow rot that enters the soul of individuals when the tendrils of the state overcreep the life of a society—that’s a little tougher to define. It may just be the toadying deference that steals into your behavior with the guard who searches you at the airport. Or it could be the baksheesh you pay the safety inspector to keep your business from being shut down. But as subtle as the effects may be, the rule is ironclad: the more areas of life are funded and regulated by government, the less free you are, and the more corrupt and servile you ultimately become.

Through the work of artist and blogger Patrick Courrielche, Andrew Breitbart’s new website Big Government—reporting the news so the mainstream media won’t have to—has just released a sickening transcript of an August 10 conference call jointly hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House’s Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve, an initiative overseen by the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency. The purpose of the call was to urge a group of pro-Obama artists to get out there and start creating art that would support the president’s agenda on health care, the environment, education, and community services. Speaking at the request of “folks in the White House and folks in the NEA,” Michael Skolnick, political director for Obama-mad hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, told the assembled artists, “All of us who are on this phone call were selected for a reason, and you are the ones that lead by example in your communities. You are the thought leaders. You are the ones that, if you create a piece of art, or promote a piece of art or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and our young people sort of what do and what to be into, and what’s cool and what’s not cool.”