An art show in the cafeteria of California's state Department of Justice in Sacramento is causing controversy because one painting shows an image of the United States, overlaid with an American flag, sinking into a toilet. Republicans find the piece unpatriotic and insist that such views shouldn't be tolerated.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The artist, Stephen Pearcy, a Berkeley lawyer with a house in Sacramento, won earlier notoriety for hanging an effigy of an American soldier on the outside of his home here with a sign saying "Bush lied, I died." Angry residents tore the effigies down.

Yes, that's a good way to respond to ideas you don't like: destroy private property and attempt to prevent the ideas from being seen by the public. What better way to represent American values? Well, American values as conservative Republicans envision them, I suppose. Consider:

"I don't know why we need to tolerate the cheap artwork of a gadfly with a world view that is so offensive to a majority of the people," said Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party.

One Web log, Conservative Schooler, had collected 55 signatures by late Tuesday afternoon for a petition calling on Lockyer to remove the painting because it desecrates the flag, and "material that is offensive to most people does not belong in a government office."

Oh, indeed: ideas that offend people shouldn't be tolerated in public; ideas that offend people don't belong in government office. What if the ideas of Karen Hanretty offend me — can we have her removed from government offices?

The sponsor of the show is California Lawyers for the Arts, a nonprofit group founded in the Bay Area in 1974 to aid artists with their legal issues. "You may disagree with what is being expressed by one particular painting in the exhibition, but we can't censor the artist for his right to express his own opinion," said Ellen Taylor who heads the Sacramento office of lawyers for the arts. "We have freedom of speech and freedom of expression and art is speech according to every law in the land."

No government funds were spent on the display and government officials played no role in designing it; thus, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer is refusing to intervene and censor certain pieces that conservatives don't like while leaving up those pieces that conservatives are comfortable with. Apparently, Lockyer doesn't believe that the only things displayed in public should be those that don't upset conservatives.

The exhibit's curator, Chuck Miller, said the Pearcy piece was not included in the collection to antagonize any, including the Republican Party.

At the same time, antagonizing the would-be censors in the Republican Party is certainly a worthy achievement. More people should be doing that.

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