by David Mamet
Macaulay suggests that the Puritans were expelled from England not because of their religion, but because everyone had sickened of their kvetching.
My daughter comes home from her high school music class and reports that the teacher has announced that the mnemonic for the lines in the treble clef will no longer be “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” which would be sexist, but “Every Good Baby Does Fine.”
Bruno Bettelheim, a holocaust survivor, wrote that the genius of the Nazi salute was that it prescribed the constant repetition of an action. It did not ask for belief, it inculcated belief, as one, perhaps opposed to the Nazis, but forced to give the salute some hundreds of times a day, eventually tired of the unuttered proviso “but I don’t believe it.” He tired of feeling like a hypocrite, and came to take out the anger this feeling produced not on his oppressors, but on those who did not salute wholeheartedly—who, that is, preserved a measure of autonomy.
The puritan has become, of late, the totalitarian, where every last thing, thought, and utterance in the Liberal Day must be an assertion of some Liberal Value; One-Worldness, Compassion, Conservation, Equality, the dread of giving offense, and guilt.
What is the actual human mechanism devoted to the dread of giving offense? It is called culture. It, in its entirety, consists of rules worked out through human interactions sufficiently successful to have been relegated to unconscious habit.
When all human interactions are brought to conscious consideration, the result is anxiety and fear. Consider any first meeting or ceremony where the forms are unknown: a dinner party, for example, of such formality that one was unsure which fork to use, and how and when to address one’s tablemates; a meeting with a head of state, or a celebrity. Human beings, in such circumstances, may be brought to a literal state of immobility through fear of violating a norm and of behaving in a, thus, shameful fashion.
This is the state of the contemporary Liberal world—the fear of giving offense has been self-inculcated in a group which must, now, consider literally every word and action, for potential violation of the New Norms. To further compound the dilemma, the norms themselves are inchoate: consider a high school teacher coming upon two students kissing in the hallway, in violation of school rules. Suppose the two students are gay. Can you imagine a teacher who would not at the very least hesitate in or mitigate her caution or censure in fear of offending the students? Consider the Black Power agitation and vandalism of the sixties, and the school administrators who allowed it on campus—not out of fear for their person, but out of fear that to defend the actual university culture of civility would be to give offense. It is not the absence of government, but the rejection of culture which leads to anarchy.
18
THE NOBLE SAVAGE
There is a curious disconnection between the Left’s worship of the tribal and its religious belief in the power of Government. It may be that its mythology runs like this: The Noble Savage acts in a manner more in tune with Nature. He is uncorrupted, save by the advent of the Whites, who took his land (Israel, the American West, the British Empire). Prior to their coming, he dwelt in peace, tilling the soil according to immemorial principles, and ruled chiefly by his love of the plants and seasons and their influence upon all things. If he had a religion it was that of God as Nature. And we, Westerners, killed and kill him, through greed for his possessions (natural resources).
But the so-believing, the adorers of Third World music, native crafts, and the disheveled dress of their notional American Native Tribe (the poor, the homeless), these, nonetheless, continue to enshrine Big Government as the only tool capable of returning Man from Hell to Eden.
The same Democracy, then, which, in its nonelected quality (civilization) inexorably populated the world, ever widening the polity, and obliterating the Tribe and its supposed blessings, is held by the Left to be that tool capable of reversing the process and restoring us to the Tribe, its campfire, its wise elders, its superabundance of untouched wilderness and game. We’re going to vote on it, and when we have enough votes, we’re going to return to the campfire. There will be no more pollution, for we will vote to stop our polluting ways; there will be no more war, as all sovereign States will be subsumed into a large tribe of the mutually understanding (cf. the United Nations), there will be no more Poverty, because the Earth Holds Enough for All, and lacks only that Wise Leadership which will see to its Just Distribution (a dictator). And all that stands between this utopia and our present state of stupid error are the Conservatives, who believe only in Greed.
How did the Conservatives Get That Way? No one on the Left knows. The generous response was that they must have been dropped on their head as babies, lacking which excuse the Conservative point of view is (to the Left) incomprehensible indwelling Evil.43
For to the Left, Government is the water in which they swim, the underlying belief of their lives: Government is not merely one of the ways in which humanity may be convened to order its various affairs (the others being Religion and the Free Market), but the only way. Liberalism is that religion which has, for the Left, replaced Religion, for which the prime purpose of Government is to expand Equality, which may also be stated thus: to expand its own powers.
For if Government is not only good, but the only source of good, why should it not be elaborated and empowered to address any and all issues?
This is the vision of FDR, who elaborated a bad economic downturn into the worst depression in history. In an attempt to Do Good for All, he dismantled the free market, and, so, the economy44 and saddled our country not only with “social programs,” but with the deeper, unconscious legacy of belief in Social Programs, irrespective of their effectiveness. Roosevelt’s great domestic bequest was this syllogism: If anything called a Social Program fails, expand it.
This is the meaning of Social Justice. It means actions by the State in the name of Justice, which is to say under complete protection and immunity from review. Its end is dictatorship. This progression, from Social Justice to Judicial Activism and control of means of production and distribution, can be seen in the history of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the USSR, North Korea, China, Cuba, wherever the Socialists took power and brought terror; and yet the Left, longing for the campfire, votes for collectivism, for bigger and more powerful and more “feeling” Government. Why?
It is not that the Superstate will return one to the campfire, but that the fantasy of the Superstate seems more elegant than the simple arithmetic of the Free Market.
The Free Market is not a fantasy. We see its efficiency when the power goes out, when we are stranded in an airport, when we throng to the new exciting business down the block—the desire to exchange goods and services in order to increase individual happiness also increases group and societal happiness. The curtailment of that freedom leads to shortages, famine, and oppression. But its operation, and the demonstrability of its superiority to top-down control, cannot be embraced without forgoing the fantasy of the Return to Nature and the Campfire.
Friedrich Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, called the view of the Free Market the Tragic View: that man is limited; that government is limited in its power to, justly, do more than take care of the infrastructure and adjudicate between conflicting claims according to a mutually agreed upon set of laws; that any may and many do misuse both the goodwill of their fellows and the laws themselves to gain immoral advantage; that elected officials are only human, and must be responsible first for their own election, with all that entails; that once elected they will look first to their reelection, which is to say to their own self-interest; that with residual time and energy and wisdom, they may address the social problems before them, but that even in so doing they are, being human, limited in wisdom and foresight. Laws, therefore, cannot be perfect, and all laws will of necessity discommode, anger, or in fact injure someone—that is what a law does. It takes two human behaviors, or wishes—two human approaches to the same problem—and chooses one.
Government is limited, a
s human foresight, wisdom, energy, time, and knowledge are limited. The Left holds as a path to Eden a large unfettered Government, a World Government, in fact. That any democracy is made of warring factions, each plumping for its own vision, does not escape the Left, but that any opposing faction may be a legitimate attempt to bring about the greater good, is, to them, a simple untruth. The Left insists on unity and indicts the Republicans, not one of whom in either house voted for the health care bill. How could they have increased this supposed good, “unity”—by ratifying a plan they found monstrous and destructive? The Left longs for the one-party state or dictatorship—this is of course not unity but slavery.
Does Man, then, desire slavery? This is the question Moses asked the Jews—the tragic answer being, time and again, “yes.” Can this desire be resisted? It can and it must. That’s why this country was founded.
Intelligent people may look at the excess of big corporations and be appalled by the lack of connection between the will of the shareholders and the operations of the business. They may be shocked by the out of control executive compensation. Why, they may ask, do the shareholders not take the control which is theirs? But these questioners, on the Left, will not ask the same question of that largest and most bloated of all corporations, the American Government. And well they might.
For our chief executive has just used his prerogatives to empty the treasury, and take on what may prove to be a level of debt lethal to the corporation he was hired to run.
What’s the difference?
There is no difference. We all know that though we may be unfit to manufacture a car, or plan a pharmaceutical campaign, we each feel capable of demanding an explanation of those in charge of businesses in which we have invested. But the Left does not feel this of our Government.
Why is the government different, in this regard? It is not magic, it cannot be other than an amalgamation of human beings just like you and me, some good, some bad, some smart, some not, and all liable to corruption or confusion by prerogative and power.
19
ADVENTURE SLUMMING
For Abbie Hoffman, as for the Mailer and Sartre, Castro’s appeal had much to do with the macho image, the condottiere on the white horse—or tank: “Fidel sits on the side of a tank rumbling into Havana on New Year’s Day . . . girls throw flowers at the tank and rush to tug playfully at his black beard. He laughs joyously and pinches a few rumps. . . . The tank stops in the city square. Fidel lets the gun drop to the ground, slaps his thigh and stands erect. He is like a mighty penis coming to life, and when he is tall and straight the crowd is immediately transformed.”
—Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to
the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, 1981
Let us squint for a moment, to see if we may blur the particulars and perceive a familiar outline in an unfamiliar act. A young wealthy woman puts on vaguely military garb and travels to a far-off, less-developed land to participate in adventure. She meets there the more primitive indigenous people, admires their hunting abilities, and, in fact, poses with one of their large guns, famous for having bagged many trophies.
Q. What is she doing? A. Going on Safari.
Essentially, yes. The woman, however, would be appalled had the big gun been used to kill an elephant. But it has not. It has been used to kill American fliers.
Jane Fonda’s Adventure Tourism is, then, incorrectly, identified not as a safari but as “Ending the War.”
This was a no-cost, exhilarating adventure, all the more attractive because it took place in the purlieus of danger, but contained no danger; and it could be described as “humanitarianism,” which is an edifying title, rather than “slumming,” which is perhaps less so.
Ms. Fonda did not choose to take her wish for adventure into the veldt, where, after all, the beasts might strike back, but to Hanoi in 1969. At the height of the Vietnam War—to pose with the enemy, secure in the knowledge that her (largely inherited) position would protect her from prosecution for what was, arguably, an act of treason.
In her reliance upon this protection she was, of course, availing herself of that same privilege and culture whose destruction she was endorsing in posing by the gun.
Her pilgrimage, as Mr. Hollander points out, was not unique. Intellectuals through the twentieth century have traveled to see the Potemkin Villages of Stalin’s “Workers Miracle,” the happy children of China, and the grinning, sun-drenched Campesinos of the Island Paradise. They have believed what they were shown.45
From the Webbs, and Bertrand Russell, to Susan Sontag, Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and various movie stars of our day, these happy dupes reward themselves for feeling superior to their own country, from which country they were free to travel, and to which they were free to return, while the smiling folk they visited were locked in slave states.
See also the brave actors who endeavored to boycott, and so close, the 2009 Toronto Film Festival because it offended by showing films from Israel.
This “visiting” and political pilgrimage differs from safari in that one does not here toy with danger. It more closely resembles the Victorian practice of “going among the poor.”
It used to be called “passing out tracts.”
Actors, thriving on publicity, have historically claimed for themselves the right to champion “causes,” the term of art being “Their” disease. This hucksterism may, in fact, have done somebody good, and more probably, did harm to nothing save the actor’s understanding of his place in the world. But it is the nature and profession of the actor to see himself as the Hero. Without this capacity and inclination, the actor cannot act. His professional indulgence in fantasy is a boon to the community, its elaboration into do-gooderism is, perhaps, inevitable.
We writers, similarly, are professional fantasists. But, rather than imagining ourselves as heroes, we live through delineating the struggle between Good and Bad. We are, essentially, Zoroastrians—for, if we can’t adequately differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys, how will we know when to end the story?
Writers have traditionally been the dupes of totalitarian propaganda, as the visions we have been shown and the tales we have been told sound, to us, like the products of our own imagination.
And actors, as above, are easily manipulated, similarly, by the unconscious appeal of a universe resembling their own (in which they are the hero).
No wonder, then, that these two subgroups of my particular racket, show business, have been trotting the globe for a hundred years, petted by and championing the causes of Tyrants.
No wonder that the Hollywood enclaves of today coalesce around Good Causes, and that these Good Causes seem to be reducible to “saving the world.”
But I will note that the brave groups protecting the rights of the Palestinians to destroy the Jews, the rights of Iraqis and Cubans to live under dictatorship, and protesting the American military’s mission to protect their lives, that these disaffected are taken, in my business, in the main, from the ranks of actors and writers, and interestingly, contain only a very small number of directors.
Why? A director cannot deal in fantasy. His job is to take the delineation of a fantasy (a script) and transform it into film-in-the-can. He has a certain amount of time and money with which to do so, and no amount of fantasy will stop the sun going down on a day on which he has not completed his assigned filming.
More importantly, a director (I speak as one who has directed ten features, and quite a bit of television), is exposed to something of which the actors and writers may not have taken notice: the genius of America, and the American system of Free Enterprise.
The director sees, on the set, one or two hundred people of all walks of life, races, incomes, political persuasions and religions, and ages, men and women, involved, indeed dedicated to doing their jobs as well as possible (indeed the ethos of the film set could, without overstatement, be described as “doing it better that it’s ever been done”), in aid of
the mutual endeavor (the film). Each brings not only his or her particular expertise and craft, but an understanding of and dedication to the culture of filmmaking: work hard, pitch in, never complain, admire and reward accomplishment.
Travel posters of the postwar era proclaimed “See America First.” I would recommend this as an anodyne to the Adventure Tourist’s Weltschmerz: look around you.
20
CABINET SPIRITUALISM AND THE CAR CZAR
I am very willing to recognize the good in many men of these two classes, but a politician or a civil servant is still to me an arrogant fool’til he is proved otherwise.
—Nevil Shute, Slide Rule: Autobiography of an Engineer, 1954
A czar is an absolute ruler. The wish to appoint a bureaucrat and name him Czar is an example of magical thinking, for, if government is inefficient, how may it be improved by making it omnipotent?
But perhaps Government is unsatisfactory because it is made of bureaucrats. This “czar,” then, will be but another. He will have to deal not only with the bureaucracy he inherits, but with that which he creates—the attempts to amalgamate the two, resulting in an organization inevitably worse than either.
The new group dedicated to the streamlining of Government will be paced by a corresponding group of incumbents ensuring that this takes place within the existing rules (which is to say that its jobs are not threatened), and the net results will be an unavoidable increase in the infighting which is the main occupation of all bureaucrats, and a concomitant increase in the power of the State. The inefficiency of Government cannot be addressed through an elaboration of Government.
The delusion that it can calls to mind the Cabinet Spiritualists of the late nineteenth century. These assured the public that they possessed supernatural powers. Locked in a cabinet and bound, they could, for example, cause musical instruments to play, cause writing to appear upon slates, cause objects to fall from the sky, and so on.
