Free Republic

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice. Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot. Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage. When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the...

The presidential contest is not simply an election about who rules America; it is also an election about which set of principles defines American politics. For the past two and a half decades, conservatism has set the agenda. Is the left making a comeback? I don't think so. Notice that Democrats avoid terms like "the left" and even "liberalism" like the plague, while Republicans routinely associate themselves with the "right" and the "conservative" label. Also the left is now defined by shrieking demagogues like Michael Moore, while intelligent people are keeping their distance or moving out of this menagerie. In...

WHY the shock when a smart guy decides to think about issues and changes his politics? It is not just in Islam where apostasy is a capital offence. Judging from the reaction to David Mamet's self-proclaimed conversion from liberal to conservative politics, apostasy is also a mortal sin in the arts world. Declaring that he is no longer a "brain-dead liberal", the famed American playwright performed the ultimate act of treason. After turning his back on a lifetime of progressive beliefs, Mamet was flayed for staining his artistic credentials. Just one question: why does an artist - whether a playwright,...

.....I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed. But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president...

Playwright and screenwriter David Mamet has a confession to make: he doesn’t like NPR. He also has discovered that government solutions tend to make matters worse than better. Mamet has also discovered that America isn’t the root of all evil in the world. In fact, rather than see corporations and capitalism as evils, he now understands that life is a marketplace, and that the United States understands that better than any other nation.Uh-oh. Mamet has become — gasp! — a conservative! Or, at the least, he has dumped “brain-dead” liberalism: Do I speak as a member of the “privileged class”?...

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" . . . 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...

In the new production of "Boston Marriage," David Mamet hits the trifecta of theatrical disaster. Mamet has written, directed and, presumably, cast the play (one of the three actresses to appear is his wife, Rebecca Pidgeon), and on all three counts an evening in the theater doesn't get much worse than this. Mamet's high-octane testosterone has long been one of the premium fuels driving the American theater. In plays like "American Buffalo," "Glengarry Glen Ross," "Oleanna," "Edmond" and "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," Mamet's aggressive hormones and those of his usually scheming, lowlife characters have been a good match for each...

Plot Outline: The investigation into a kidnapping of the daughter of a President that has Bill and Hillary Clinton's MO... And that MO is 'tom catting around' for Bill and 'Never letting the law nor morals get in the way' of Hillary and her goals.