English AWA

Steve Epting
AP English
I don’t think that such controversy should continue being funded by unsure taxpayers. Taxpayers should be notified about what they are contributing to. Some Americans don’t even support the art world, so why would they be patrons in the art subsidies.
Controversial art is art that causes offense to people. They are offensive because some people disagree with the message or it goes against their religion. Many Americans look at art as disrespectful and they think that the artists are too strong in their opinion, as talked about in source E.
I think that the public’s view of the spending habits of the government is not a good one. Most Americans have an apathetic attitude towards art because either they don’t like art or they’ve seen art that they disagreed with and they turned away from it. In source A, it says that in 1994, $123 million in grants leveraged more than $1.3 billion.
In source B, it says that, “if the state were free to deny funds to those whose speech it finds disagreeable, freedom of expression would be rendered meaningless.” In a way it’s kind of saying that the government has to give money to the arts. The way that it’s formatted, it’s saying that the government is contradicting themselves. The law says that everyone has freedom, but when the artist produces something that some people in government don’t like, they usually don’t support it
I agree that the US government should continue to award grants to artists, but I don’t think that they should be given out through the citizens’ taxes. Taxes should be used to fix communities and create better jobs and schools. The art grants should be paid for some other way.