Thursday, March 13, 2008

David Mamet Purges 40 Years of Liberal Kool-Aid

Another marquee contributor within the arts has publicly confessed to a re-evaluation of the tenets of liberalism that he held for decades. David Mamet, author of Glengarry Glen Ross and over two dozen plays, films, and books, has an essay in the Village Voice about his catharsis. Below I've pasted a couple teaser quotes torn from his essay, but invite you to read his full article: David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

I'm not going to offer a response here since I've posted a few key points in the comments to his article, under the byline FreeUlysses. But I do encourage you to read his article and respond here or there with thoughts on political theory, philosophy, David's views and/or the response he's received.

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I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

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And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

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I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

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