During my catch-up reading blitz yesterday I skimmed a post that lamented the use of the term "protectionist" to describe those who wish to erect or maintain trade barriers. [Perhaps I will recall where I read that and add a link later.] The argument was that "protectionist" is too kind a term since it masks a destructive behavior less about protection of anything than preservation and enhancement of monopolies. I suppose it is protecting monopolies - and so is accurate, strictly speaking - but it conceals more than it reveals.

One of the darker aspects of the impulse to restrict trade can be seen in the attempts of various autocratic regimes to censor cultural products and the ideas they encapsulate. Last year there was concern about attempts to censor the net, especially by China, yet the chief villain in this drama is the UN. UNESCO sought an international agreement allowing trade protectionism for cultural goods . . . which is new-speak for censorship to preserve the perquisites of elites in autocratic regimes. UNESCO is a French bailiwick infamous for its bloated corruption. Britain and the US withdrew from UNESCO decades ago in protest, and only recently rejoined after a round of cut backs and a feeble attempt to reduce bloat and corruption.

It may be that the feeble attempts to reform autocratic impulses to censor cultural goods are gaining strength. They are in conflict with reality in ways that are difficult to ignore in these times as the movement of people across old borders makes it ever more difficult to suppress cultural diversity within borders. Immigrants bring their cultures with them.

This is a growing problem even in the most hide bound of autocratic regimes: France. The riots that began last year in the slums where France has quarantined its immigrants - while denying them work and a secure place in society - have made it slightly easier for reformers to publicly question current institutions and practices.

In "Culture in America," a 622-page tome weighty with information, he [Frédéric Martel, a former French cultural attaché] challenges the conventional view in Paris that (French) culture financed and organized by the government is entirely good and that (American) culture shaped by market forces is necessarily bad. . .

"The idea is to see how a 'countermodel' works," he explained over tea in a Paris hotel. "If the aim is to fight American cultural 'imperialism,' we need to know it from the inside. If we want to modernize our own system, which needs new resources, it is useful to see how things can function without huge public investment." . . .

Yet, Martel noted, the same country that embraces this extraordinary cultural diversity is itself accused of imposing cultural uniformity on the world. The United States was almost alone last year in voting against a French-sponsored international convention on cultural diversity that was adopted overwhelmingly by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is based in Paris.

This apparent contradiction had a simple explanation at Unesco: Washington was bending to pressure from Hollywood studios, which claimed that the convention threatened their movie and television exports. But Martel also sees inconsistencies — actually, he prefers the word hypocrisy — in the French position.

"Americans defend cultural diversity at home and deny it abroad," he said, "while France defends cultural diversity around the world and refuses it at home."

And it is here that he most wants France to learn from the United States.

A little better perhaps, but still profoundly confused. It's interesting to note the strange inversion in which UNESCO defends trade barriers by accusing the US of protecting companies that freely trade in cultural goods. It is true that the vast majority of products emanating from Hollywood stink, but it also seems that people like this stinky stuff. Go figure. Still, it is difficult to show that the cultural goods emanating from other point sources smell any better. Quality is rare. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince in any culture.

Martel launches a parting zinger.

"What really annoys me is the way our cultural elite uses ideology to protect its privileges," he said. "It says that our culture defines a certain idea of France, that the alternative is Americanization. But it's really only defending itself against the popular classes. We cannot have 10 percent of our population stemming from immigration and deny them their culture."

To promote grass-roots culture, then, he wants decision making to be deconcentrated. "The government will still finance the arts, but we don't need a minister defining culture," he said. "We need thousands of people defining culture. Power should flow bottom-up, not top-down. That's the debate I want to provoke in the new year."

The ideas of liberty and democracy, though first championed in modern times in Europe, have never flourished in that infertile soil. Fortunately, the ideas were exported to more congenial locations before they withered, and so continue to worry the autocratic elites who have always oppressed Europe. A last gasp attempt to deny liberty is seen in this strange perversion of the idea of subsidiarity. There is no rational reason for government to finance the arts.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

The US model clearly demonstrates that culture is amply financed and hugely diverse without government involvement. There is token financing in the US but it is irrelevant.

today the endowment's [National Endowment for the Arts] budget is far below mid-1980s levels and, at just under $125 million for 2006, is roughly what the French government gave the Paris National Opera this year.

This token financing by a nation that spans a continent is less than France spends on a single constituent.

Nations are becoming obsolete as borders dissolve. Diversity will flourish rather than diminish since people still seek to differentiate themselves and associate with like-minded groups. They just won't be bounded by physical geography much longer. In a sense nothing will change. The virtual equivalents of "culture ministers" will emerge, perhaps have already done so, and people will still be people. This is merely a struggle between the old bosses and the new bosses. We will be fooled again.