Mamet on Becoming a Conservative

[daveman]

OK, let's do it. Let's see why Mamet started believing he was a conservative:

Exhibit A (from the essay)

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Alright, so Mamet begins to doubt his liberalism because he realizes (eureka) that many of Bush's evil deeds (and yes Mamet makes clear he despises Bush and Bush's actions, which separates him from about 3/4's of America's self-identified conservatives)

were comparably committed by the liberal Kennedy.

THAT is why you suddenly abandon your belief system? Because you've found someone who's supposed to be a liberal who in certain instances didn't act like one? Didn't adhere to the principles and ideas that liberalism is meant to stand for?

THAT?

That's about as daft as if I were to become a conservative because Clinton signed NAFTA, or because Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan.

DAFT

Y'know, I haven't read the essay, but I'll bet that's not the only reason he gives.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Hey! Who cares what a conservative entertainment figure says? We should only listen to liberal entertainment figures!

/USMB Lefty

Do you care what Mamet's political views are?

I got the impression he became a conservative because he got sick of being around too many assholes who happened to be liberal.

If that's the case, that's not a very good way to decide on your political beliefs. If you reject every belief that might also be held by some assholes,

you'll end up not believing in anything.

btw, Oleanna is hard shot at political correctness, he can't have been too far to the left when he wrote that.

No, I don't care what Mamet's politics are. I believe entertainers should stick to entertaining.

However, your comment about political beliefs versus peer pressure are interesting. How many college liberals are liberal due to peer pressure?

Probably about as many as there conservatives who are conservatives because of what church their parents sent them to.

What people may not like to admit is that what makes civilization civilized is almost all about various forms of peer pressure. Or pressure in general. We even judge your behaviour by juries of your peers.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Cut and Paste PC invoking the name of one of the most creative writers in modern history.

That is pure irony.

whats your objection? you do have one?

and the irony shot escapes me, what is ironic here

I was merely taunting the Taunt Queen.

 

[daveman]

Do you care what Mamet's political views are?

I got the impression he became a conservative because he got sick of being around too many assholes who happened to be liberal.

If that's the case, that's not a very good way to decide on your political beliefs. If you reject every belief that might also be held by some assholes,

you'll end up not believing in anything.

btw, Oleanna is hard shot at political correctness, he can't have been too far to the left when he wrote that.

No, I don't care what Mamet's politics are. I believe entertainers should stick to entertaining.

However, your comment about political beliefs versus peer pressure are interesting. How many college liberals are liberal due to peer pressure?

Probably about as many as there conservatives who are conservatives because of what church their parents sent them to.

What people may not like to admit is that what makes civilization civilized is almost all about various forms of peer pressure. Or pressure in general. We even judge your behaviour by juries of your peers.

On that, we agree.

Although it can be argued that liberals, with their emphasis on the collective over the individual, fall prey to peer pressure more so than conservatives.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Hey! Who cares what a conservative entertainment figure says? We should only listen to liberal entertainment figures!

/USMB Lefty

Do you care what Mamet's political views are?

I got the impression he became a conservative because he got sick of being around too many assholes who happened to be liberal.

If that's the case, that's not a very good way to decide on your political beliefs. If you reject every belief that might also be held by some assholes,

you'll end up not believing in anything.

btw, Oleanna is hard shot at political correctness, he can't have been too far to the left when he wrote that.

Did you feel it absolutely necessary to prove that I was correct in stating that Mamet's essay was beyond your ability to understand???

"I got the impression ...."
You got the impression?
The last 'impression' that you received was from the brick that Ignatz bounced off your noggin.

Mamet explains the steps that resulted in his epiphany.
Explains.
States....tells....sketches out...
So that folks who can read don't have to rely on 'impressions.'

And, in a related thought, did you know that psittacine species, parrots, have a brain to body ration equal to that of chimpanzees.
As such, parrots are the smartest of all birds with the cognitive capacity of a five-year-old child.

So, how does it make you feel, being compared less than favorably to parrots?

It makes me feel like I'm sitting in a Boston bar...

...across from Cliff Clavin.

 

[NYcarbineer]

OK, let's do it. Let's see why Mamet started believing he was a conservative:

Exhibit A (from the essay)

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Alright, so Mamet begins to doubt his liberalism because he realizes (eureka) that many of Bush's evil deeds (and yes Mamet makes clear he despises Bush and Bush's actions, which separates him from about 3/4's of America's self-identified conservatives)

were comparably committed by the liberal Kennedy.

THAT is why you suddenly abandon your belief system? Because you've found someone who's supposed to be a liberal who in certain instances didn't act like one? Didn't adhere to the principles and ideas that liberalism is meant to stand for?

THAT?

That's about as daft as if I were to become a conservative because Clinton signed NAFTA, or because Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan.

DAFT

Y'know, I haven't read the essay, but I'll bet that's not the only reason he gives.

I was breaking it down into smaller pieces, point by point. Forum reality check #1, nobody really ever reads really really really long posts. Ok, almost nobody.

 

[PoliticalChic]

OK, let's do it. Let's see why Mamet started believing he was a conservative:

Exhibit A (from the essay)

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Alright, so Mamet begins to doubt his liberalism because he realizes (eureka) that many of Bush's evil deeds (and yes Mamet makes clear he despises Bush and Bush's actions, which separates him from about 3/4's of America's self-identified conservatives)

were comparably committed by the liberal Kennedy.

THAT is why you suddenly abandon your belief system? Because you've found someone who's supposed to be a liberal who in certain instances didn't act like one? Didn't adhere to the principles and ideas that liberalism is meant to stand for?

THAT?

That's about as daft as if I were to become a conservative because Clinton signed NAFTA, or because Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan.

DAFT

Actually, had you been looking for the fulcrum, this would be the better point:

"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'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."

Still, based on your ability...or lack thereof, this was one of your better attempts.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Do you care what Mamet's political views are?

I got the impression he became a conservative because he got sick of being around too many assholes who happened to be liberal.

If that's the case, that's not a very good way to decide on your political beliefs. If you reject every belief that might also be held by some assholes,

you'll end up not believing in anything.

btw, Oleanna is hard shot at political correctness, he can't have been too far to the left when he wrote that.

Did you feel it absolutely necessary to prove that I was correct in stating that Mamet's essay was beyond your ability to understand???

"I got the impression ...."
You got the impression?
The last 'impression' that you received was from the brick that Ignatz bounced off your noggin.

Mamet explains the steps that resulted in his epiphany.
Explains.
States....tells....sketches out...
So that folks who can read don't have to rely on 'impressions.'

And, in a related thought, did you know that psittacine species, parrots, have a brain to body ration equal to that of chimpanzees.
As such, parrots are the smartest of all birds with the cognitive capacity of a five-year-old child.

So, how does it make you feel, being compared less than favorably to parrots?

You know, until you get good at ad hominem attacks, you should probably refrain from including them in your act.

You are the kind of low personage who would have seventeen items and be in the express line.

or

Your opinions are more out of left field than Nick Swisher.

or

The more I converse with you, the more I develop a particular liking for metallic objects with serrated edges.

or

You poor thing, living under the constant duress of trying to keep up with intellectual superiors.

or

You are a biological anomaly: your brain has become your new appendix: no real function, and it could blow up and kill you.


Any better?

 

[NoNukes]

Just re-read playwright David Mamet's essay in the Village Voice, and found it to reflect what many, in the light of this abysmal administration, probably could have written. And with the 2012 election just around the corner, it's worth considering.
Here's part of his essay.


David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'An election-season essay


1. I wrote a play about politics ("November")
…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.

2. 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.

3. I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: 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."

4. 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'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.

5. The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

6. And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live…. [C]lasses in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice

I do not believe that liberals think that people are basically good at heart, just the opposite.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Just re-read playwright David Mamet's essay in the Village Voice, and found it to reflect what many, in the light of this abysmal administration, probably could have written. And with the 2012 election just around the corner, it's worth considering.
Here's part of his essay.


David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'An election-season essay


1. I wrote a play about politics ("November")
…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.

2. 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.

3. I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: 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."

4. 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'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.

5. The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

6. And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live…. [C]lasses in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice

I do not believe that liberals think that people are basically good at heart, just the opposite.

A very interesting topic...and one that defies one sentence explanations.
Probably, it would be better to characterize the view of the left by stating that people are perfectible, given the right government and the right set of laws.

This differs from the conservative view, that, as Madison stated in Federalist #51, people are not angels, and thus checks and balances are always necessary.

1. The Communist Revolution is based on the idea of transforming human nature. “The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: новый советский челове&#1082, as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. Leon Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training... Man will make it his goal...to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will"
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a. “Culture is a stubborn opponent. The Soviet Union attempted to create the New Soviet Man with gulags, psychiatric hospitals, and firing squads for seventy years and succeeded only in producing a more corrupt culture.” Bork, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” p. 198

b. Progressives have a similar view: human nature is plastic; politics is a means of perfecting man!

c. In 1969, Hillary Rodham gave the student commencement address at Wellesley in which she said that “ for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible….We’re not interested in social reconstruction; it’s human reconstruction.”
-http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/1969/053169hillary.html

 

[daveman]

OK, let's do it. Let's see why Mamet started believing he was a conservative:

Exhibit A (from the essay)

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Alright, so Mamet begins to doubt his liberalism because he realizes (eureka) that many of Bush's evil deeds (and yes Mamet makes clear he despises Bush and Bush's actions, which separates him from about 3/4's of America's self-identified conservatives)

were comparably committed by the liberal Kennedy.

THAT is why you suddenly abandon your belief system? Because you've found someone who's supposed to be a liberal who in certain instances didn't act like one? Didn't adhere to the principles and ideas that liberalism is meant to stand for?

THAT?

That's about as daft as if I were to become a conservative because Clinton signed NAFTA, or because Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan.

DAFT

Y'know, I haven't read the essay, but I'll bet that's not the only reason he gives.

I was breaking it down into smaller pieces, point by point. Forum reality check #1, nobody really ever reads really really really long posts. Ok, almost nobody.

Uh huh. Well, good thing we have you here to tell us what our opinions should be. You report, you decide.

 

[daveman]

Just re-read playwright David Mamet's essay in the Village Voice, and found it to reflect what many, in the light of this abysmal administration, probably could have written. And with the 2012 election just around the corner, it's worth considering.
Here's part of his essay.


David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'An election-season essay


1. I wrote a play about politics ("November")
…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.

2. 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.

3. I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: 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."

4. 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'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.

5. The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

6. And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live…. [C]lasses in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice

I do not believe that liberals think that people are basically good at heart, just the opposite.

A very interesting topic...and one that defies one sentence explanations.
Probably, it would be better to characterize the view of the left by stating that people are perfectible, given the right government and the right set of laws.

This differs from the conservative view, that, as Madison stated in Federalist #51, people are not angels, and thus checks and balances are always necessary.

1. The Communist Revolution is based on the idea of transforming human nature. “The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: новый советский челове&#1082, as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. Leon Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training... Man will make it his goal...to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will"
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a. “Culture is a stubborn opponent. The Soviet Union attempted to create the New Soviet Man with gulags, psychiatric hospitals, and firing squads for seventy years and succeeded only in producing a more corrupt culture.” Bork, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” p. 198

b. Progressives have a similar view: human nature is plastic; politics is a means of perfecting man!

c. In 1969, Hillary Rodham gave the student commencement address at Wellesley in which she said that “ for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible….We’re not interested in social reconstruction; it’s human reconstruction.”
-http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/1969/053169hillary.html

And that's why progressives are doomed to failure. Human nature can't be remade through force of law.

 

[Sunni Man]

And that's why progressives are doomed to failure. Human nature can't be remade through force of law.

The communists found that to be truth.

After the 70 year failure of the USSR

 

[NYcarbineer]

OK, let's do it. Let's see why Mamet started believing he was a conservative:

Exhibit A (from the essay)

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Alright, so Mamet begins to doubt his liberalism because he realizes (eureka) that many of Bush's evil deeds (and yes Mamet makes clear he despises Bush and Bush's actions, which separates him from about 3/4's of America's self-identified conservatives)

were comparably committed by the liberal Kennedy.

THAT is why you suddenly abandon your belief system? Because you've found someone who's supposed to be a liberal who in certain instances didn't act like one? Didn't adhere to the principles and ideas that liberalism is meant to stand for?

THAT?

That's about as daft as if I were to become a conservative because Clinton signed NAFTA, or because Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan.

DAFT

Actually, had you been looking for the fulcrum, this would be the better point:

"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'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."

Still, based on your ability...or lack thereof, this was one of your better attempts.

Try to be civil.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Exhibit B

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

This is Mamet knocking down strawmen, implying that unless you hate 'the corporations' and the military, you can't be a liberal. He sounds like he learned what liberalism is from listening to Rush Limbaugh.

 

[NYcarbineer]

I do not believe that liberals think that people are basically good at heart, just the opposite.

A very interesting topic...and one that defies one sentence explanations.
Probably, it would be better to characterize the view of the left by stating that people are perfectible, given the right government and the right set of laws.

This differs from the conservative view, that, as Madison stated in Federalist #51, people are not angels, and thus checks and balances are always necessary.

1. The Communist Revolution is based on the idea of transforming human nature. “The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: новый советский челове&#1082, as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. Leon Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training... Man will make it his goal...to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will"
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a. “Culture is a stubborn opponent. The Soviet Union attempted to create the New Soviet Man with gulags, psychiatric hospitals, and firing squads for seventy years and succeeded only in producing a more corrupt culture.” Bork, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” p. 198

b. Progressives have a similar view: human nature is plastic; politics is a means of perfecting man!

c. In 1969, Hillary Rodham gave the student commencement address at Wellesley in which she said that “ for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible….We’re not interested in social reconstruction; it’s human reconstruction.”
-http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/1969/053169hillary.html

And that's why progressives are doomed to failure. Human nature can't be remade through force of law.

It's human nature for humans to organize together and create a system of laws to deal with those aspects of human nature that are most harmful to the general welfare, common defense, and domestic tranquility.

 

[daveman]

A very interesting topic...and one that defies one sentence explanations.
Probably, it would be better to characterize the view of the left by stating that people are perfectible, given the right government and the right set of laws.

This differs from the conservative view, that, as Madison stated in Federalist #51, people are not angels, and thus checks and balances are always necessary.

1. The Communist Revolution is based on the idea of transforming human nature. “The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: новый советский челове&#1082, as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with certain qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's long-standing cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.[1]
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. Leon Trotsky wrote in his Literature and Revolution [2] :
"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial selection and psychophysical training... Man will make it his goal...to create a higher sociobiological type, a superman, if you will"
New Soviet man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

a. “Culture is a stubborn opponent. The Soviet Union attempted to create the New Soviet Man with gulags, psychiatric hospitals, and firing squads for seventy years and succeeded only in producing a more corrupt culture.” Bork, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” p. 198

b. Progressives have a similar view: human nature is plastic; politics is a means of perfecting man!

c. In 1969, Hillary Rodham gave the student commencement address at Wellesley in which she said that “ for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible….We’re not interested in social reconstruction; it’s human reconstruction.”
-http://www.wellesley.edu/PublicAffairs/Commencement/1969/053169hillary.html

And that's why progressives are doomed to failure. Human nature can't be remade through force of law.

It's human nature for humans to organize together and create a system of laws to deal with those aspects of human nature that are most harmful to the general welfare, common defense, and domestic tranquility.

So how'd that work out for the Soviet Union? How's it working out for the leftist paradises of North Korea, Cuba, China? Have they dealt with "those aspects of human nature that are most harmful to the general welfare, common defense, and domestic tranquility"?

I repeat: Progressivism is doomed to failure.

 

[daveman]

Exhibit B

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

This is Mamet knocking down strawmen, implying that unless you hate 'the corporations' and the military, you can't be a liberal. He sounds like he learned what liberalism is from listening to Rush Limbaugh.

...or USMB lefties.

 

[midcan5]

Deja vu all over again. I have to start dating my saved replies. Is it 2008 all over again? Hm, we can hope huh, Obama will win again as the likes of right wing whiners such as Mamet had their say then, and they will bore again today. But life and progress and change will still come and hopefully a little hope for all will happen and not just for the favored few. Conservatives never change seems neither do their posts.

My old reply still works.

====================

I am not a fan of city journal, I find it racist and way too biased.

Has Mamet really converted? It seems he has gone from brain dead to brain dead, I read nothing in his so called transformation except random musing that often contradict each other. Only one example: If people are sometimes swine don't we sometimes need the police?

I thought the complete comment telling. "Further: 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."" Really? I have listened to NPR on occasion and I don't hear that.

Another of his comments: "This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong." Or maybe everything on the other side is wrong and Mamet is too naive to recognize that in himself?

Comparing Bush and Kennedy forgets historic time and it ignores motivation and reason. Again naivety at its best.

His analogy on government and work is too weak. He assumes government as an isolated entity which is naive at best. Weak piece and since I've read him kinda bizarre, but creative authors often are bizarre.

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice

 

[NYcarbineer]

And that's why progressives are doomed to failure. Human nature can't be remade through force of law.

It's human nature for humans to organize together and create a system of laws to deal with those aspects of human nature that are most harmful to the general welfare, common defense, and domestic tranquility.

So how'd that work out for the Soviet Union? How's it working out for the leftist paradises of North Korea, Cuba, China? Have they dealt with "those aspects of human nature that are most harmful to the general welfare, common defense, and domestic tranquility"?

I repeat: Progressivism is doomed to failure.

You're rejecting the concept of humans organizing under systems of laws?

lol