Dark Star

One of my favorite writer/directors (David Mamet, pictured here with wife, actress Rebecca Pidgeon) recently published a piece in the Village Voice titled: "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'."

It's a great example of a liberal suddenly realizing that America is a great place to live, and then being honest about it.

While Mamet's Play and Screenwriting, I believe, are second to none, (credits include: Spartan, The Spanish Prisoner, Wag the Dog, Glengarry Glenn Ross, etc.) his op-ed writing leaves something to be desired. There are, however, some truly brilliant moments in this 5 page article.

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.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bulls__t and go straight to firearms.

He goes on:

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.

If you have time, read the whole thing.