It’s been said that if you’re a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Likewise, it appears that if you’re an art critic, the whole world looks like a painting. There has been a lot of comment on the Williams College Art Museum’s Hitler exhibit. Generally, the theme of the exhibit is that Hitler was at bottom an aesthete, and his political actions can be largely accounted for by his artistic sensibility. Lee Rosenbaum weighs in today in the Wall Street Journal. In today’s art world, deconstructing the political follies of curators and artists could be a full-time job, and it is probably a mistake to attribute much significance to the Williams exhibit or what has been said about it by reporters and critics. Still, it is one more example of the foolishness of much of America’s intellectual culture. As the reality of World War II fades from memory, its people and events will increasingly become a canvas onto which intellectuals of various stripes project their own preoccupations. Consider the extent to which this has already happened to the Revolution and the Founding Fathers. It seems to me that one of the chief tasks of conservatives is to be conservators of the historical record–to insist on accuracy in history and to retell the vital historical narratives of our nation and our culture over and over again to each new generation.
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