The former brain dead liberal speaks but to only a conservative audience

It’s interesting that if you look up David Mamet at Wikipedia, there is no mention of his new book The Secret Knowledge on the Dismantling of American Culture. There’s no mention of his 2008 op-ed piece in the Village Voice where he ‘comes out’ as a former “brain dead liberal” and says:

I’d observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

It’s interesting and telling that the liberal Wikipedia, as well as other liberal outlets, is trying to ignore Mamet’s conservative epiphany. I hope that conservative media jump on this opportunity to showcase another David Horowitz or Andrew Breitbart conservative convert.

Mamet’s a practicing Jew who sees the world through different eyes now than he did 10 or even 5 years ago. He’s the Pulitzer Prize winning author of GlenGarry Glen Ross and his screenplays for movies such as The Untouchables, The Verdict and Wag the Dog have been nominated for Academy Awards.

He’s one of the few (now former) liberals who chose to look at other sides and read other ideas. His new heros are now conservative giants like Milton Freidman, Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele. In the process, his eyes have been opened.

I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette. Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws. The roulette addict, when he inevitably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new system, and to scheme for more funds.
The great wickedness of Liberalism, I saw, was that those who devise the ever new State Utopias, whether crooks or fools, set out to bankrupt not themselves but others.*

*President Obama said, “The individual at some point must be able to say, ‘I have enough money.'” But will Mr. Obama out of office, say this to himself, and the vast riches he will enjoy? One must doubt it.

I started reading his new book yesterday. It’s only 223 pages long (minus his acknowledgments, bibliography and index) but every page, every paragraph is quotable. It’s an amazingly interesting, entertaining and educational book written in a playwright’s lyrical style.

I highly recommend it.

Loosing our rights and freedom of choice

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of a what a particular group thinks it ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.  Milton Friedman

And this is the problem in our country now. We have a ruling class that thinks we “ought to want” toxic, curly fry light bulbs, for instance. (I wish I’d thought of that mercury light bulb description first, but credit goes to Mark Steyn.)  How dare we want to buy what we want? How could we possibly know what’s best for us or what we can afford or what we want to afford? We aren’t smart enough to choose for ourselves. All options are taken away for the greater good, because they know what the greater good is. Only they know what’s best for you and me.

They are attempting to take away our freedom of choice – unless it’s the life of an unborn baby, and then everyone has that right to choose death over life. Isn’t it amazing how important choice is to these statists until it comes to the type of shower head in your bathroom or the kind of car you drive?

It’s nothing more than a total disdain for everyone’s freedom but their own. And the only individuals they respect are themselves.

 

 

Milton Friedman – The Pencil. Simply Complex

A caller to the Mark Levin show mentioned this video today:

This is amazingly simple and should explain to anyone who doesn’t understand why the central government has no place in the building of cars, pencils or the production of any goods.

Friedman: Government has no responsibility, People do

The government has produced the poor and continues to keep them that way. I heard an author on talk radio call Sharpton and Jackson “poverty pimps” which is what all liberals/marxists are. The goal is to keep them poor and keep their votes by continuing to handle all their needs.

Here’s a great Milton Friedman flashback on the role of society and the poor: