Great book, written in short but very accurate biting essays. I highly recommend it.
Posted on 07/13/2011 4:42:06 AM PDT by Kaslin
Hollywood mocks capitalism, which seems odd because the people who make movies are such aggressive capitalists -- competing hard to make money. But Hollywood's message is that capitalism is shallow and cruel.
Take the 1992 movie "Glengarry Glen Ross" (based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play). It's about cutthroat real estate salesmen who work for a heartless company. It was written by the celebrated playwright David Mamet, author of "American Buffalo," "Spanish Prisoner," and more than 50 other plays and movies.
I assumed that Mamet was another garden-variety Hollywood lefty, but then a few years ago, I was surprised to see an article he wrote titled, "Why I'm No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal." Now he's followed up with a book, "The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture."
I asked Mamet what turned a "Hollywood liberal" into a conservative.
Was he a brain-dead liberal? The newspaper, not Mamet, put that headline on his article.
"I referred to myself as one," Mamet told me. "Political decisions I made were foolish."
Foolish because he wasn't really thinking, he said. Since everybody around him was liberal, he just went along.
What changed?
"I met a couple conservatives, and I realized I never met any conservatives in my life. ... (O)ne started sending me books. His books ... made more sense than my books."
Mamet was suddenly exposed to ideas he had never encountered before.
"Shelby Steele's 'White Guilt,'" he said, "led me to the works of Tom Sowell and through them (F.A.) Hayek and Milton Friedman."
Two things hit him especially hard: the benefits of economic competition and the limits of leaders' ability to plan society.
"If you stop licensing taxi cabs, tomorrow you will see guys and women on every street corner saying, 'Who wants to go to XYZ address?' (The cabbie) will put five people in the car and drive them to that address. ... When the guy drops them off, if he's smart, he'll say: 'Tomorrow -- same thing, right? What do you guys want to drink for breakfast?' There will be cappuccino and ice tea and glass of milk. After X months, he will have three cars; after X months, he will have a fleet. And everyone will be competing to meet the needs of the commuters, which also is going to reduce traffic. Why are they allowed to compete? Because the government got the hell out of the business."
Mamet also read Hayek's last book, "The Fatal Conceit."
"What Hayek is talking about is that we have to have a constrained vision of the universe. The unconstrained vision, the liberal vision, is that everything can be done, everything is accomplishable," he said. "We don't have the knowledge. ... There is only so much that government can do. ... It would be nice if giving all of our money to the government could cure poverty. Maybe, but giving money to the government causes slavery."
For Hayek, the "fatal conceit" is the premise that politicians and bureaucrats can make the world better -- not by leaving people free to coordinate their private individual plans in the marketplace -- but by overall social and economic planning.
Imagine trying to plan an economy, Mamet said, when we barely know enough to raise our kids. "(T)he guy in government can't know everything."
As you can imagine, when Mamet went public, he bewildered many of his showbiz peers. A Los Angeles Times critic called his book "a children's crusade with no understanding of real politics." The Nation called Mamet a "great playwright, (but a) moronic political observer."
Mamet said to his wife: 'Isn't it funny? ... The New York Times, the supposed newspaper of record that has been reviewing my plays for 40 years, isn't even going to review this book.'
"She says: 'Dave, grow up. The purpose of all newspapers is political."
Maybe the Times thinks it's insignificant that a celebrated cultural "liberal" now questions his faith in the supposed healing power of government. But as we sit mired in this endless jobless "recovery," with the wreckage of government failure all around, we should ask ourselves which one is out of touch with reality.
Great book, written in short but very accurate biting essays. I highly recommend it.
Once knowledgeable about freedom most can never go back to the slavery of the left...
“A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.” Friedrich August von Hayek
What a guy!!
Terrific book...read it last week. I thought about sending a copy to all my liberal relatives but, like the NYT, they would never read it because they fear anything outside their comfort zone.
I saw his interview with Stossel..Fascinating guy..I will read his book.
Mamet was suddenly exposed to ideas he had never encountered before.
And the corroborating detail:
Mamet said to his wife: 'Isn't it funny? ... The New York Times, the supposed newspaper of record that has been reviewing my plays for 40 years, isn't even going to review this book.'
In dealing with liberals, one does grow weary of the sheer, gobsmacking ignorance of the lot. They are so deep in their bubble that they seem unable to comprehend contrary ideas. And their conditioned reflex when confronted by non-party line ideas is anger and an immediate leap to ad hominem attack.
What is truly evil is that leaders on the left, who know better, systematically lie to sustain this mentality among their followers.
"everything is possible but nothing is real..." (Living Colour, "Type")
Is it an easy read? I listened to Mamet on Wilcow he seemed a little highbrow.
Easily the best conservative book in a decade. It says things that have insight going beyond Sowell, Coulter, Levin Limbaugh (either one). Standing on their shoulders, but an intelligent new perspective.
Sometimes, you can spend ten minutes on one page, absorbing the important insights it contains.
The footnotes alone are better than most conservative books.
I purchased two books for summer reading, finished both his and Coulters, couldn’t put them down, two all-nighters and both great reads...
“Mamet said to his wife: ‘Isn’t it funny? ... The New York Times, the supposed newspaper of record that has been reviewing my plays for 40 years, isn’t even going to review this book.”
No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in the NY Times.
"Easy"??? I think "intense" would be a more descriptive word, both for the content and also the author. It's a series of short, rapid-fire chapters filled with barbs and zingers aimed at the full spectrum of liberal thought and practice. One of my personal favorites is part of a screed against the anti-male bias in our current schools.
"Boys are different.....After three daughters a son is a revelation. Watching him and his friends one both sees and remembers, boys want only to explore, to fight, to test, to climb,break, and rearrange everything they see. They will find a way to ruin a featureless, titanium chamber.....That there is no difference (between boys and girls) can be asserted only by those who have not raised children. Boys are born to contest with the world, and if we are going to breed out of them that ability, the land is going to lie fallow"
“If we all work together, we can do anything!” - Barney
Really cool.
I like his movies and I like his wife too...
He has come around though probably not quite as far as most here....who has lol...it's a huge turnaround.
He was born into a lefty household and trained into progressivism as a way of life.
Not sure what caused his epiphany...I plan to buy his book.
Maybe the Cohen Brothers will be next...they make similar interesting and textured but at times zanier movies and don't seem to be associated with Hollywood Streisandesque kneejerk leftism....although I believe I read somewhere even Babs is put out with Pres Bro. Some of this will come from Bro's Israel insensitivity..he is biting hand that feeds him...dumb. But with Mamet, it's more than that and a more comprehensive and fundamental change...lol...it would take more than just worries about Israel to get Babs waxing over Sarah Palin like Mamet does.
I hope this does not affect his opportunities to get studios to redlight his projects....some are so good...I don't know what the name is for what he does but his movies flow scene and plotwise rather than characterwise...it's different
Well, apparently it's true because Barney got himself elected president of the US.
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