David Mamet: The Secret Knowledge

16

The Liberal child, unexposed to the concept of self-support, is discouraged from, and indeed will not anticipate, the day of its necessity. And see the assumption underlying the Liberal’s consignment of his child to a wash in the gentle pool of doctrine: What is it? That “something will turn up”—he, as an adult participant in a sick economy, knows it will not—or that Society will take care of his child. Putting aside the question of “Why should it?” or “Who will pay?” let us ask “With what monies?” The third, unexamined, and, I fear, more prevalent method of dealing with the child’s economic future is not to. “Rabbi Judah said, ‘He who does not teach his son a craft teaches him brigandage.’ ” (Gemara Kiddushin 29A, with thanks to Rabbi Mordecai Finley.)

17

Note that these endeavors are easily mastered, in a short intensive course of study or of laying-on-of-hands. They are, in this, much like, and indeed are the progeny of, those leisure activities once known as Adult Education, and tagged generically, by wits at the time of its emergence just post-war, as “underwater basket weaving.” They are not learned but imbibed , either through the short-course indoctrination or through the individual’s magical discovery of his “gift.”

18

So much for the family.

19

“The wealthy and the powerful no longer have the monopoly of violence they had in the past, and it’s driving them up the wall.” (Noam Chomsky, A Hated Political Enemy .)

20

In the opinion of Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor.

21

The problem, at the end, is that there must be governments, as Moyo says, to pay for things everyone uses but no one wants to fund, like her lamppost. But governments, as they grow, grow corrupt, and aid, as it has corrupted Africa, has corrupted America. We call it taxes.

To make government responsible to the citizens it was originally designed to serve, its size must be reduced, for the invitation to corruption and waste, for personal gain, or from “good intentions” is so great as to be evidently insurmountable. Government must be reduced, not abolished , which is the all-purpose canard of the Left. “Do you then vote for anarchy or laissez faire?” But reduced to the point at which the harm it inevitably does can be controlled or reversed. This potentiality is the true worth of the system of free enterprise—the alternative being periodic revolution, where governments are overthrown; which is, as Moyo says, the problem with Africa. We elect the worst, on both sides, and then marvel that they steal, subvert, waffle, and do every last thing but obey their oath to defend the Constitution. They are not elected to “do well, “ or to “transform” but to serve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And we will only stand a chance of finding those actually dedicated to doing so when we take the money out of it—both theirs to spend and squander, and that accruing to them, on their golden retirement, for all the favors they have done.

22

“Our thinking and our behavior are always in anticipation of a response. It [ sic ] is therefore fear-based.” (Deepak Chopra) Is it too much to suggest that this quote contains the most basic prescription of Liberalism, “Stop thinking”?

23

In a conversation with a Liberal Friend, The International Committee on Climate Control had been found to be cooking the books on Global Warming, and its much vaunted “hockey stick” graph showing a marked abrupt increase in the world’s temperature incident with the consumption of fossil fuels was revealed as a sham. The Liberal said, yes, perhaps this was true, but would we want to scrap our efforts to control a situation as Serious as Global Warming simply because the phenomenon was proved to be an invention? His argument recalled to me Al Sharpton’s championship of Tawana Brawley, whose false accusations and perjury led to the persecution of innocent police officers and the disruption of their lives. When she recanted, and admitted perjury, Reverend Sharpton suggested that though perhaps the testimony was not all it could be in this case , nevertheless, he still supported her because of the systematic history, in similar cases, of supportable claims of abuse. He was, that is, not interested in the Truth.

24

“Of the thirteen populations of polar bears in Canada, eleven are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present. It is noteworthy that the neighbouring population of southern Hudson Bay does not appear to have declined, and another southern population (Davis Strait) may actually be over-abundant.” (Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist, Dept. of the Environment, Government of Nanavut, Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada.)

25

It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman’s right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the most important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to the ultimate right of a postreligious Paganism.

26

“Aristotle established a general principle of scientific enquiry: ‘First we must seek the fact, then seek to explain.’ The scientific method is now popularly conceptualised that the science on global warming is settled as a process where authorities balance volumes of opinions. That’s it. A phenomenon is now scientifically proven because various authorities and some scientists say so. Evidence now no longer matters.” (Ian Plimer, Heaven and Earth )

27

And funded by the Marshall Plan, which is to say, by a surplus of American industrial wealth.

28

“The causes are the increased polarization of the society that’s been going on for the past twenty-five years . . . larger and larger segments of the population have no form of organization, and no constructive way of reacting, so they pursue the available options, which are often violent.” (Noam Chomsky, Secrets, Lies, and Democracy , 1994)

29

The poor man is poor because of “structural oppression”; the rich man rich because of “greed.”

30

“But there must be Laws,” the Liberal says. Who would deny it? But the alternative to Statism is not the Left’s scareword of anarchy but Democracy.

31

As per Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom , 1944.

32

Most Victorian novels featured the stock character of the profligate son. He was a gambler, and, having run through his inheritance, was constantly appealing to his father to pay his ever renewed gambling debts.

The father inevitably paid, “for the honor of the family.” And he paid wringing his hands and cursing his fate. And the son thanked the father, wept, swore to reform, and continued gambling.

Why not, as there was, to him, no cost?

He had been taught, by his father, that there was no penalty for losing.

What worse lesson for a gambler?

For, if losing is cost free, why bother either to (a) learn to gamble or (b) quit?

The serious gambler learns young, and painfully, that he must control his impulses, that he must not pursue fantasy, neither wish for the cards to turn, but learn the odds and husband his resources for those times when the cards or dice do favor him.

There is a technical term for the gambler who can neither learn nor quit: he is called a sucker.

Our politicians, left and right, are, to belabor the metaphor, the wastrel son: they are free to spend, to chase fantasies, and to squander resources, for the resources are not theirs, and there is no penalty for their misuse or loss.