ABSTRACT
In the eyes of intellectuals and artists, Washington has been not the symbol or the home of artists and intellectuals. The perceived relationship of Congress to the USA was merely problematic during the years of its greatest activity and influence: ultimately, after the 1966 disclosures established the fact of CIA funding, it was to be fatal. But whilst the Congress for Cultural Freedom's (CCF's) enemies saw it confirmed as an arm of the CIA, one strategy open to supporters was to acknowledge that, whilst it may have been acting on behalf of, and in the interests of, the US government, it should more accurately be seen as an American Ministry of Culture. Shils calls special attention to the Puritan legacy of hostility against 'self-indulgent' artistic expression, and a certain 'provincial' distrust of (high) culture as inherently suspect because of its associations with an anglophile upper class.
