No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal

A rich man is heading for the train station when he passes a homeless man who asks for some money to buy food. The rich man replies: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” William Shakespeare. The homeless man replies: “Fuck you” David Mamet.

I am a tremendous fan of the films and plays of David Mamet. One of my favorite episodes of one of my favorite shows (The Shield) was directed by Mamet. As a Conservative and a fan of films and television, I accepted a long time ago that most of Hollywood has different political beliefs than I do. But I just read a really interesting piece in of all places The Village Voice, that should be required reading for everyone that cares about politics, whether on the right, left, or middle. It is entitled David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'. I highly recommend it.

He begins by talking about his new play, November, currently starring Nathan Lane as a president running for reelection.

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention. I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

He later writes:

I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio." This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong. But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.

He talks about how his rabbi taught that “Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.” Mamet began listening and reading to conservatives.

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

I have heard it said that liberals see the world as it ought to be and conservatives see the world as it is. I think that is largely true, but conservatives sometimes fail to see reality for their idealistic visions as well. The free market, for instance, cannot solve all social ills, but government intervention alone often makes things worse.

Mamet concludes:

The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.

Again, I highly recommend that you read Mamet’s entire article. Perhaps if enough do, this years political debate can involve people actually listening to each other and making arguments instead of hurling insults back and forth.