Been There, Done That

Stefan Kanfer writes about David Mamet's startling transformation--from Leftist stalwart to right-wing rejectionist of the liberal world view:

Unlike so many of his colleagues, however, Mamet began to question the shibboleths and doctrines he had long taken for granted. In four years, the 64-year-old moved inexorably from left to right, like the hour hand on a clock. In The Secret Knowledge, his latest collection of essays, he confesses that “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 time again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws.” But there was a profound difference; the gambler hurts primarily himself. “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 and restrict not themselves, but others.”

These are strong words, and Mamet is just warming up. The renegade defines liberalism as a secular religion. Its dogmas “cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost. Central to this religion is the assertion that evil does not exist, all conflict being attributed to a lack of understanding between the opposed.” Liberalism’s tenets include a number of familiar and fatuous bromides. Among them: college courses in Western Civilization push the products of irrelevant dead white males. The Third World is composed of victims, the First World of their victimizers. Free-market capitalism is carnivorous; European socialism offers a peaceful solution to the world’s economic problems. The U.S. private sector is characterized by unbridled greed, whereas the federal and state governments are driven by the wish to bring universal prosperity. If only Israel would relinquish a few miles of turf, peace would reign in the Middle East.

The Secret Knowledge was a bit too disjointed for my taste (Mamet makes a far better dramatist than polemicist, I think), but I admire the passion and intelligence that animates all his writing, and I'm delighted that he's finally seen the light.