A revealing article in the Village Voice on David Mamet's political conversion.

Revealing in that it illustrates that this is what our political categories come down to:

1. If you are a liberal and upset about things, you call yourself a liberal.

2. If you are a liberal but pretty happy about things (as indeed you should be if you are a liberal, as Mamet points out), you call yourself a conservative.

Now, mightn't there be a couple of categories left out of this beautiful analysis?

Jeremy,

I can see what you are saying, but consider this passage:

But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?

I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.

The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.

I think he's getting at one of the core realities of conservatism here.

ajk

quote:

Now, mightn't there be a couple of categories left out of this beautiful analysis?

Yeah, if you're a conservative who's unhappy about the way things are going (as indeed you should be if you are conservative), you call yourself and Authentic Conservative and threaten to vote for Obama!

quote:

Originally posted by Andrew Kern:
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to.

I'm not sure we need to be quite so vague, Andrew. Having faith that people will be able to somehow work things out without government intervention is neither the beginning nor end of conservatism. Nor is it even an act of faith to believe this: Most basic human conflicts, most of the time in most places, have resolved themselves without great bloodshed without involving governments. On the contrary, if you want some serious bloodshed (or other tantamount evil), you really DO need to involve governments... the bigger, the better. Medieval princes slayed their hundreds, no doubt. But Hitler (or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot) slew their millions.

But is it a traditionally liberal view (i.e., enlightenment rationalist) to see government, like dress, as a badge of lost innocence... i.e., an ideological, or principled distrust of government per se'. The conservative may distrust government, but it is an impulse or tendency, and emphatically not an iron-clad ideological tenet.

In fact, I'd say the conservative view is very much in line with what Mamet recorded of his "brain-dead liberal" ruminations: a distrust of government and corporations and basic sense that people are more or less good (or at least capable of self-regulation most of the time). Conservative impulses, all! So now he has come to think of people as evil, but no longer DIStrusts gov'ts and corporations? That not only not conservative, that's not even coherent. (But hey, I seriously doubt that more than 1 in 100 VV readers has ever even met an actual conservative.)

Things "work out", usually without gov't intervention, because man hasn't totally, everywhere, and at every time, totally squashed the grace with which, and in which, he was created. (I hope here NOT to start any internecine wars with any devout Calvinists; the principle seems rather self-evident to me.) And of course, sometimes gov't needs to intervene, not least when there arise threats to persons or property. And it isn't at all "liberal" to suggest that government needs to intervene in such cases. It is, of course, properly conservative (and rational) to be skeptical of the power of government (or corporations) to solve problems, or to solve more problems than it creates by attempting solve others (cf. Law of Unintended Consequences.)

So now Manet doesn't think gov't is the solution to every problem? Bully for him. Every road out of Jerusalem is also one into it I suppose. But I think it is a false dichotomy: Less government/Conservative <--> More government/Liberal. If true, that would make Libertarians the most conservative of all; and Libertarianism (the ideological kind, at any rate) is the worst kind of liberalism.