Appearing
on The Glenn Beck Program Wednesday evening, award-winning author, producer
and director David Mamet discussed his latest book, “The
Secret Knowledge” with guest host Andrew Wilkow. The work chronicles
Mamet‘s transition from liberal to conservative and explains the reasons
for the famed writer’s awakening.
Mamet solidified his place in American film and theater with such
works as Glengarry Glen Ross, The Verdict, Wag the Dog, and The Untouchables
and
had frequently included typical liberal themes throughout his screenplays
— that is until he made the conversion.
In a now-infamous op-ed for The Village Voice in 2008, “Why
I am no Longer a Brain Dead Liberal,’” Mamet revealed that essentially,
he had been living a lie for most of his life, as the liberal beliefs he
held fast to in his mind were not actually reflected in his day-to-day
words and deeds. He wrote that after being prompted by his rabbi to engage
in dialogue with those who sit on the opposite side of the ideological
aisle, he recognized that he held two opposite views of America: One of
a state “where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected
at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day
to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize
their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace,
the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).” After
this revelation, Mamet realized that the time had come to acknowledge he
was in fact part of the latter version of America.
After reading the works of economists Thomas Sowell, who he called
“our greatest contemporary philosopher,” and Milton Friedman among others,
Mamet found that he “agreed with them.”
“…a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly
with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.”
In The Secret Knowledge, Mamet writes that when faced with
seemingly insurmountable challenges, people can succumb to a belief in
the power of the state and those who dub themselves “experts,” as means
of rectifying the nation’s ills. What results, according to the Pulitzer
Prize-winner, is a contingent besieged by Stockholm Syndrome.
He adds that the“essence of Leftist thought” is a “devolution from
reason to ‘belief,’ in an effort to stave off a feeling of powerlessness.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Bari
Weiss summed up the central theme‘s of Mamet’s “Knowledge” in the following
way:
College is nothing more than “Socialist Camp.” Liberalism
is like roulette addiction. Toyota’s Prius, he tells me, is an “anti-chick
magnet“ and ”ugly as a dogcatcher’s butt.” Hollywood liberals—his former
crowd—once embraced Communism “because they hadn’t invented Pilates yet.”
Oh, and good radio isn’t NPR (“National Palestinian Radio”) but Dennis
Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt.
During Wednesday’s program, Mamet told Wilkow that celebrities notorious
for their liberalism, like Jane Fonda, use their activism as a means to
merely feel good about themselves. “They gave themselves an award,” he
quipped.
He also considers the Obama administration an “incipient totalitarian
movement,” and decried the fact that those who criticize the president
are labeled racist, anti- feminist, anti-Muslim or other pejorative.
In terms of the Occupy movement, Mamet said they are mostly “good
meaning idiots” but that their more sinister element — like the ones who
plot to blow up bridges — are no different than the Nazi Brown Coats who
perpetrated Kristallnacht — or, the “night of broken glass.”
As the conversation veered to education, Mamet had few kind words
for liberal arts colleges and universities. As someone who has actually
taught at some of the nation’s most prestigious Ivy Leagues, Mamet said
what can be found there is nothing but liberal indoctrination, anti-Semitism
and “unpatriotic filth.”
When asked what prompted the conversion, Mamet explained that upon
examining the moral principles by which he lived, he started to investigate
conservatism and is now trying to impart that wisdom to younger generations,
including his daughter.
Noting that the press are “sycophants” that cannot be trusted to
report the facts, Mamet cautioned the only ones who can be trusted are
private citizens. .
“We have to judge according to the standards of the constitution,”
he said, because “the country is going down the drain.” |