David Mamet - The Secret Knowledge

The rules of behavior on a movie set are largely the Unwritten Law: who shows deference to whom, when one should speak, when one should be silent, how to deal with unpleasantness, with an excess of zeal, with shoddy work; how to evaluate that which falls short of the perfect. The set is infused with a sense of commonality and dedication not only to the project at hand, but to training by example the new workers, by extending and protecting the precious lessons of the past.

This perception was the beginning of my love affair, or, let me say, my recognition of my love affair with America. We do things differently here. We were and are a country of workers and, as such, get along so well that we became the preeminent power in the world. This came about not through a “lust for power,” not through colonialism or “exploitation,” but as a result of our ethos and cohesion. It begins with the notion that all are created equal.

The definition of “all” has widened over time; and the history of our country, when finally written, will appreciate that this widening was the essence of our Republic; that we, in the process of devotion to the essentially religious goal, the “self-evident truth,” managed to shape, through our Industry and through our art, a new and better world.

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THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE

The Left is atheist, and, simply because it is atheist, its religious fanaticism is worse than any of the other fanaticisms of history. For the romantic of the past has sometimes, if all too rarely, been restrained by the memory that God is Truth. But the atheist fanatic has no reason for such restraint. There is no reason in principle why the revolutionary atheist should regard truth, and it does not seem that he does so in practice.

—Christopher Hollis, Foreigners Aren’t Fools, 1936

America is a Christian country. Its Constitution is the distillation of the wisdom and experience of Christian men, in a tradition whose codification is the Bible.

I will not say this Christian country has been good to the Jews, for this suggests an altruism or acceptance, neither of which exist. But America has been good for the Jews, as it has been, eventually, good for every immigrant group whether fleeing oppression, seeking prosperity, or, indeed, brought here in chains. The result of a 230-year-long experiment is the triumph of Judaeo-Christian values. We have created peace and plenty for more citizens over a greater period of time than that enjoyed by any other group in history.

This triumph is not due to altruism, nor to empathy, nor to compassion, but to adherence to those practicable, rational rules for successful human interaction set out in the Bible.

These rules and precepts amount, in their totality, as much to a legal philosophy as to a theology.

Practically, they assert the existence of God not as a magical force, making all men good (all men are not good), but as the a priori condition of human interaction: accountability. This irreducible understanding, which is the basis of Judaeo-Christian civilization, is that all human beings possess both a conscience and that free will necessary to allow them to either reject its dictates or to formulate them into habit. It is the codification of this conscience as Law, which allows us to adjudicate between both its conflicting claims, and its absence or presence in differing individuals.

The laws, derived from the Bible, and finding their most demonstrably perfect form in the Constitution, assert not man’s perfection, but his imperfectibility, and, thus, the inevitability of conflict.

Our Judaeo-Christian teachings acknowledge conflict (between individuals, between them and the State, between them and God) and proceed to suggest (through narrative in the Old and through parable in the New Testament) mechanisms for its most peaceful resolution.

This tradition does not refer, overtly or by implication, to any possible perfect state of Man or of his associations, but, rather, acknowledges his weakness both before his imperfections and before that Power, however named, which gave him both a conscience, and the desire for law.

This power may be understood as metaphysical, and called God, or as a mere cosmic accident, gifting the human species with a unique formation of intellect impelling them to create Law as the most obviously utilitarian path toward effective civilization.

The Bible is an acknowledgment of human individuality. Human society has thrived, historically, as we see in our diverse society, because of the liberty to exploit a random distribution of talents, flaws, and proclivities.

Those States which have, in the name of productivity, racial purity, or, indeed, equality, attempted to limit human individuality have reverted from the civilization of the Judaeo-Christian state to savagery; for they have rejected the teachings of the Bible. One need not even say they died because they rejected God; they died because they rejected reason.

There is no secret knowledge. The Federal Government is merely the zoning board writ large.

One may find, in either place, able and even dedicated public servants, but there are no beneficent “experts.” For such an expert must be, essentially, but a skilled manipulator of people (the electorate or the legislature). He must be, therefore, a politician (that is, a perpetual candidate), bureaucrat, or demagogue; or he may be a lobbyist or a theoretician, skilled in manipulating or conspiring with the other named groups.

Our jury trial admits the testimony of experts. But the jury, faced with each side’s expert but opposed opinion, usually discards both, judging the experts suborned or misled by either their stipend or their theories. They then retire to their deliberations, realizing that, though each side’s evidence is presented as beyond the power of the common individual’s understanding, they, the jury, are going to have to figure it out for themselves.

So it is with the rest of our self-government. The problems facing us, faced by all mankind engaged in Democracy, may seem complex, or indeed insolvable, and we, in despair, may revert to a state of wish-fulfillment—a state of “belief” in the power of the various experts presenting themselves as a cure for our indecision. But this is a sort of Stockholm syndrome. Here, the captives, unable to bear the anxiety occasioned by their powerlessness, suppress it by identifying with their captors.

This is the essence of Leftist thought. It is a devolution from reason to “belief,” in an effort to stave off a feeling of powerlessness. And if government is Good, it is a logical elaboration that more government power is Better. But the opposite is apparent both to anyone who has ever had to deal with Government, and, I think, to any dispassionate observer.

It is in sympathy with the first and in the hope of enlarging the second group that I have written this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My son asked me to explain the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal. I went on at some length. He thought for a while and said, “Then, basically, it’s the difference between the Heavenly Dream and the God-Awful Reality”—a succinct and accurate compression of those views which I have, at somewhat greater and, I hope, excusable length, endeavored to express here.

I had never knowingly talked with nor read the works of a Conservative before moving to Los Angeles, some eight years ago.

I am indebted to very patient friends and teachers I met here, who inspired me to seek some understanding of the political process.