"I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind."
David Mamet, esteemed Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, announced in the Village Voice that he is no longer a "brain-dead liberal." He adds his name to the ever-growing list of progressive apostates, many of whom are icons of conservatism and libertarianism.
His essay touches on one of what I think are the several broad hypocrisies of the Progressive Movement: How can a person revile government actions and personalities with such enthusiasm and then, three breaths later, declaim the need for vastly more government intervention in our individual lives? Everybody should have the "freedom to choose" but then can't be trusted to make their own decisions? David says:
"What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming
from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but
tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those
things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the
intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.
But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and
here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred
to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you
get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a
better production.
Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what
do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact.
Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each
wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what
gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status
in the new-formed community. And so they work it out."
Another hypocrisy is the Left's apparent confusion about the word "morality." They insist on the "separation of church and state" - a sentence that appears nowhere in any official document of the United States by the bye - based on vehement objections to churches and other religious groups "imposing their morality" on people who may not share the same viewpoint, at the very same time imposing their own morality on the country in the form of social programs designed to take care of "those who can't take care of themselves."
I agree with the Constitution about the establishment of religion. I also agree with the idea that an advanced and civilized nation has the moral obligation to protect and aid those who would otherwise fall through the cracks. However, my small-government paradigm does not support the idea that nativity scenes and kids praying over their lunch at a public school establish a state religion nor that the government is the best tool to administer the social safety net. Ours is not so much a "net" than a "featherbed"; and these days our cracks are getting pretty small.
I digress.
"Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack.
The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described
independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild.
Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the
quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law
teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow
out.
And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth
grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I
held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations,
the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong
and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world
in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most
of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting
along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury
room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).
And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my
participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that
country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.
"Aha," you will say, and you are right. 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."
Our individual lives are much better than the evening news and politicians would have us believe and it's NOT because of anything the government has done. David gets it and joins the growing ranks of conservatives and libertarians who have all come to the conclusion that government is just not the answer. A few of my favorites:
David Horowitz
John Stossel
Dennis Miller
Michael Medved
