Another Reason to like David Mamet

It's always reassuring to hear such a public, respected figure talk about their awakening to conservatism. I think of it as a public turning that illustrates that exact moment that Churchill was referring to when a person loses their heart and picks up a brain (in other words, grows out of childish bleeding-heart liberalism into mature conservatism). The latest example coming in the form of Pulitzer-winning playwright, director, and producer David Mamet, the man responsible for Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, and the CBS series The Unit.

Mamet published a lengthy, thoughtful essay in the Village Voice titled Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'. Rather than proclaiming a switch to the Republican Party, or a newfound love for President Bush, Mamet looks at the subject more on a personal, social level. Modern liberalism, he describes, is the pursuit of perfection in society (a utopia, if you will); but because that is essentially impossible, liberals see everything negatively, broken, and in need of fixing no matter the cost. Conservatism, rather, doesn't attempt to think of every person as inherently good and moral, nor does it see the government as the solution to every issue in society. Rather, the idea behind conservatism is liberty, individuality, and the belief that people will solve their own problems in order to have a better life. He recounts his revelation saying:

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.

His ultimate conclusion is that we are best fitted to work things out for ourselves. In the free market. He doesn't deny the fact that governments, corporations, and armed forces are imperfect and open to corruption, but that's because they are run by imperfect humans. Everything we do is imperfect, but that's alright so long as we're not merely settling. Mamet asks how we will be able to work out our problems without the intervention of the government, and his answer is quite brilliant: we just seem to. His reasoning for abandoning the liberal-utopian thinking of the '60s wasn't brought about by watching FOX News or getting yelled at by talk radio, it came from common sense and pragmatism.

I write this not because I'm tallying conservatives in Hollywood or entertainment versus liberals, because obviously we'll forever lose that count, but rather because Mamet presents an argument for conservatism not often addressed. Nice one.

Posted by MikeRubino at March 12, 2008 8:24 AM | TrackBack