386. Cultural Appropriation

Cultural appropriation is "the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture" but some call it  "cultural misappropriation" and see it as "a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating culture" (Wikipedia).   Those who see it that way are now in power, moral power, enough to get defenders of appropriation in Canada fired from their jobs as editors (Malik, NYT 6-15-17). 

They have the kind of power liberals generally claim, and generally have had, and generally have not noticed how it's been leaking away as they extend their domain.  That they are now overextended is clear, at least to me, in the beating they have been taking on the frontiers of political correctness. Kenan Malik (an Indian now writing in Britain) administers one of them on yesterday's NYT Op-Ed page, where, as a defender of civilization, he puts up a formidable defense of appropriation.  I think that until those who call it "misappropriation" can distinguish what they're complaining about from what advances civilization they are going to take beatings like this.

Malik and the others don't need my help, and just quoting those who say you shouldn't paint a picture of a murdered black unless you're black may be enough, but they may appreciate Thomas Jefferson's help.  Here's something I found once while looking through arguments against broad readings of patent and copyright laws.  The arguments, mostly by judges, show great reluctance to interfere with the general expansion of anything found good — new ways of painting, or singing, or dancing, but especially new ways of thinking.  Claims of intellectual property rights had to be adjudicated within the strict limits of harm to the general good, which cultural advancement was taken to be.

Here's Jefferson , in a letter (those were the days) to Isaac McPherson on August 13, 1813:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.  Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.