The conversion of David Mamet

David Mamet, playwright, scriptwriter and director, [and writer/director]* is a recent defector from political liberalism. Peter Robinson is reading Mamet's recent The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture and taking notes. Two of the quotations he chose:

"My revelation came upon reading Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. It was that there is a cost to everything, that nothing is without cost, and that energy spent on A cannot be spent on B, and that this is the meaning of cost—it represents the renunciation of other employments of the money....[M]oney spent on more crossing guards cannot be spent on books. Both are necessary, a choice must be made, and...this is the Tragic view of life."

"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."

And quoted elsewhere from the book:

“Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.”

Is he a rigorous or original thinker? I doubt it. But he does entertain and I'll enjoy him more knowing that he dissents from Hollywood's political culture.

* For instance, among his films I have enjoyed: The Verdict, The Untouchables, Black Widow, Ronin, The Winslow Boy, Heist, Spartan

David Mamet and the Tragic View of Life - Ricochet.com