John Tavardian passed along this great article from David Mamet entitled, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’.” Mamet shares his thought processes as a staunch Liberal, and how he evolved into a different world-view. Some of the more interesting extractions:
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind… As a child of the ’60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.
We were riding along and listening to NPR… I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as “a brain-dead liberal,” and to NPR as “National Palestinian Radio.”…
I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow… a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.