Now the Same as Ever

Back in early 2011 world famous writer David Mamet wrote a book titled “The Secret Knowledge”. Mr. Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize winner and up until the writing of a political play and then writing of Secret Knowledge to defend it, a darling of the Left.

I just today finished reading “the Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek and picked the next book off the pile. It was “The Secret Knowledge”. Within the first 4 pages I realized the two books were not separated by philosophy but only time hence style. Hayek wrote during WWII nearly 75 years ago.

The styles of course vary widely as well. Hayek was an economist and Mamet is a playwright. Right off the bat Mamet claims he had a change of political heart after reading “The Road to Serfdom”. The book Secret Knowledge is about his transformation. By political I don’t mean party affiliation but which side of the age old divide between Left and Right he wanted to be on.

By page four I came across this great line.
“But the fiction of top-down Government Control, of a Command Economy, is, at essence, like a Reality Show, which is to say, a fraud. The Good Causes of the Left may generally be compared to NASCAR; they offer the diversion of watching things go excitingly around in a circle, getting nowhere.”

I’m tempted to add that ultimately, inevitably the race will end in a crash.
Kind of reminds me of the “Budget Battle”; the eventual wreck being the economy.

Mamet has come to terms with the reality of the world as being made up of cause and effect, and that there is a cost to everything and that cost is to be born with limited coinage. I’m reminded of the saying Anthony Hopkins made in the movie “Hearts in Atlantis” about reality and wishing otherwise. He said “and wishing cannot make it so.”

I remember too the anger and vitriol which characterized the attacks upon David Mamet.

The same anger the Left uses on any who disagree with them, the full weight of which is especially reserved for those the Left feels they are fighting for. Women and minorities (think Palin and Judge Thomas); also in that mix are those who they decide are traitors such a Mamet.

I’m continually amazed as I read about past conservatives at the similarities of the past with the future. Milton Friedman in his forward to Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” reminds us that “Freedom has to be fought for over and over again”. These thoughts of Freedom and Capitalism vs Big Government have been with us since there was politics. Only the names of the jargon have changed. Milton Friedman wrote that 50 years ago.

He and Hayek are both now dead.

Ronald Reagan in more recent times reminded us that Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

The battles continue to be fought only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Now the Same as Ever.

Regards, Live Dangerously Be A Conservative.