George Leef’s latest Forbes column offers another reason why one particular federal agency should get the ax.

The National Endowment for the Humanities is one of the remnants of Lyndon Johnson’s foolish “Great Society” idea that the federal government should meddle in almost everything. Signed into law in 1965, the law creating this federal agency (along with the National Endowment for the Arts) declares, “The encouragements and support of national progress and scholarship in the humanities and the arts, while primarily matters of private and local initiative, are also appropriate matters of concern to the Federal Government.”

That was and still is nonsense. The arts and humanities are not matters of federal concern because the Constitution does not authorize any spending on them. All of the proper “concerns” of the federal government are clearly set forth in the Constitution and you look in vain for anything saying that it may subsidize “scholarship in the humanities and the arts.”

Back then, opponents argued that this unconstitutional move would inevitably lead to the politicization of arts and humanities funding, and they’ve been proven correct year in and year out. …

… The reason why I say that the case for abolishing the NEH, as proposed in President Trump’s budget, just got stronger is that it funded an egregiously political hatchet job of a book that was recently published, namely Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Duke University history professor Nancy MacLean.

Using phrases like “radical right” and “stealth” are sure to get accolades from leftists who love a good horror story about their supposed enemies. Never mind that any fair account would have to say that there is nothing stealthy in what the “radical right” wants. Conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians want a return to limited government under the Constitution and have never hidden that. If that’s “radical,” so was the American Revolution, which also sought to secure individual liberty against an overreaching state. And as for putting democracy “in chains,” that was exactly what the Constitution’s drafters intended.