So, David Mamet had his moment on the Road to Damascus and is now, if not an actual conservative, at least what we used to call a Classical Liberal before the Progressives stretched the word “liberal” all out of shape like a sweater they just yanked over their ginormous totalitarian heads. Mamet’s a screenwriter and, some would say, a very good one. I suspect that his celebrity is the biggest reason that you’ll see this link, or hear about it on the radio. There’s a certain celebratory feeling beginning among right bloggers and I suspect that the fatted calf’s hours are numbered now that another prodigal has come home. If there’s a reason to celebrate, it’s not that a celebrity has decided write something about conservativism that doesn’t make us look like baby-eating, gramma-starving goons for a change. I don’t pay special attention to celebrities when they talk about politics, unless they say something so incandescently stupid that I just can’t let it pass. Celebrities are just like any of us when it comes to politics. They don’t have any special authority and we should pay them no special attention.
Still, it does feel good that the left has lost another footsoldier, especially a footsoldier that won’t be making yet another ridiculous polemic barely disguised as a play or movie or album.
I’m glad that we’ve added another conservative thinker to the fold. We can never have enough of them. I’ll just stand here behind the Anchoress as she welcomes Mamet into our merry gang of realists.
Welcome, Mr. Mamet! Some of us know precisely how it feels to suddenly realize that the jerking knees are not in sync with your life’s realities, and to take a wide step rightward.
Be careful not to step too widely; as with the stock-market and most industries, corrections easily become over-corrections (I’ve been there, done that) until one realizes that extremes no longer fit comfortably anymore because, as your rabbi pointed out, hearing out “the other guy” actually matters.
Enjoy all the havoc you’ve just created, sir, in your little world! You may find that you’ve just given others around you permission to free themselves, too. Maybe the word “liberal” can even be reclaimed, someday, to once again mean “broad minded, open and fair,” which is a far cry from what it means, these days.
After the jump, one of the best and briefest defenses of the Constitution you’re likely to read.
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 bullshit and go straight to firearms.
