Great Speeches Heard on the Congressional Floor
Senator Lawrence Sherman, Illinois, 1919
“… a coterie of politicians gilded and plated by a group of theorizing, intolerant intellectuals as wildly impractical as ever beat high heaven with their phrase – making jargon. . . . They appeal to the iconoclast, the freak, the degenerate . . . essayists of incalculable horsepower who have essayed everything under the sun. . . . Psychologists with X-ray vision drop different colored handkerchiefs on a table, spill a half pint of navy beans, ask you in a sepulchral tone what disease Walter Raleigh died of, and demand the number of legumes without counting. Your memory, perceptive faculties, concentration, and other mental giblets are tagged and you are pigeonholed for future reference. I have seen those psychologists in my time and have dealt with them. If they were put out in a forest or in a potato patch, they have not sense enough to kill a rabbit or dig a potato to save themselves from the pangs of starvation. This is a government by professors and intellectuals. I repeat, intellectuals are good enough in their places, but a country run by professors is ultimately destined to Bolshevism and explosion.”
George Dondero, Congressman of Michigan, holding strong against expressionism, surrealism, dadaism, futurism… 1946, repeated in 1952
The art of the isms, the weapon of the Russian Revolution, is the art which has been transplanted to America, and today, having infiltrated and saturated many of our art centers, threatens to overawe and overpower the fine art of our tradidion and inheritance. So called modern or contemporary art in our own beloved country contains all the isms of depravity, decadence, and destruction. . . .
All these isms are of foreign origins, and truly should have no place in American art. . . All are instruments and weapons of destruction.