Isaac Butler

when I was three years old.

And it was really one of my foremost art-going experiences of my entire life, in part because I had a bloody nose during it and had to be carried out of the film, bleeding and screaming into and around the block line of parents.

But I just...

I can't imagine myself without it.

One of the things that I tried to do in this book, and I talk about this in the introduction to the book, is because of that and because of my own background, I'm not going to pretend to be objective about this stuff.

I think that would actually be very silly and would do me, the subject matter, and the reader a disservice.

Instead, I'm going to, when appropriate...

tell you what I really think and feel about this stuff, and then try to control for my biases as much as I possibly can and be honest about that.

And then the reader is free to disagree with me if they want to, because one of the great things about free expression is that we can disagree about stuff and then be enriched by that disagreement.

And I really truly believe in that.

I think the NEA is classically constructed.

The hands-off model, you know, all of that stuff was really brilliant and worked really well.

And I would love to go back to that.

That is not what we have right now.

The post-Doge NEA has all these rules about what you can and cannot fund.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I misunderstood your question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, beyond the fact that the results speak for themselves in terms of what was accomplished over the NEA's first 25 years, the truth of the matter is that I believe in a vision of American citizenship where we are more than just our capacity to make money.