Thursday, June 16, 2011

It's Simple!

A reviewer in the Economist doesn't think too highly of David Mamet's rejection of liberalism as articulated in his book The Secret Knowlege. The reviewer accuses him of the second-worst thing a person can be (numero uno being conservative and/or racist)--i.e. "simplistic":
For all Mr Mamet’s skill with words, this is a tedious and simplistic rant (government bad; unhampered individuals good, and so on). Economics and politics are reduced to caricatures, with no room for nuance (“the Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all”). Social policy is reduced to banalities (affirmative action is against the Constitution; “the Liberal Arts University has had it”). And, of course, global warming is a myth.
Of course, although the Left always claims to be more "nuanced," more adept as discerning those "grey areas" (the areas we on the Right see as being replete with moral relativism), the Left is just as given to "simplifications": Israel is bad, Palestinians are good; big government is swell (the bigger the better); global warming is seriously out of control and we'd better "fix" it post haste; and, oh yeah, hopenchange and for that matter changenhope.

As Mamet has learned--and what the reviewer obviously hasn't--is that which "simplifications" one chooses to embrace all depends on the lens through which one does the looking.

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