Art, Science and Postmodern Society. Arthur Pontynen, an art historian at the University of Wisconsin: “The tragedy is that American culture is increasingly Postmodernist, whether we identify ourselves as pragmatists or as persons of faith, as
defenders of tradition or as progressives. To ask about the practical value of the fine arts is to trivialize them as thoroughly as the rabid academic
deconstructionists who argue that standards and canons are simply tools of oppression and that all art is ultimately political. Both sides seek to
subsume art to base political purposes.

The Right wants to use art to “remoralize” the society, and the Left wants to use it for social therapy, to encourage “oppressed” groups. Moreover,
the assumption that sensible people called moderates avoid the extremes of both Left and Right offers no relief. The mean resulting from two
incoherent starting points is not golden; it has all the translucence of mud. …Whereas the Right and Left
both wish to censor art, moderate opponents of censorship trivialize art, by claiming that movies, books, and the like cannot harm people. If they
can do no harm, however, how can they do any good? Thus, opponents of censorship ironically trivialize the arts through the very arguments by
which they hope to protect them.

Postmodernism is so rampant a cultural contagion that it destroys not only our cultural health but our ability even to perceive our decline…By arguing that all statements are
political and therefore equally meaningful (and meaningless), Postmodernism undermines our ability to draw distinctions and, of particular note here,
to make value judgments.” American Outlook