David Mamet Is Right

Are you a Liberal struggling to get straight? If you're still taking suffredin for your neurological disorder, there is hope. After a reader read the piece by play write David Mamet recently, she wrote a critique of Mamet's thought process. She didn't like it. She said he was wrong. But she was wrong. Mamet's piece in the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal," tells how he went from Loony Left to Rational Right (my terms, not his). Mamet wrote, "What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow." But our dear reader, God bless her, is still struggling. I present her comments with respect and compassion. She has yet to enjoy the breakthrough that Mamet has. Her comments, paraphrased, with my responses. Our reader offered three "easy counterpoints" to Mamet's profoundly correct statement: Public education, says our reader, is "not great but has improved the economic prospects for individuals" not born into privilege. Dear reader, the current dropout rate in Chicago's public schools is about 50%. You call that improved economic prospects? Perhaps it is, if you consider the job opportunities for parole officers and rising numbers of prison employees. But half a century of an inverse relationship of money spent to quality education outcomes says that Mamet is correct here. Public education is Government education. That is, the public schools are owned and operated by the Government. Can you honestly look around today and say that kids are getting a better education K-12 than kids did 40 or 30 years ago? What was the dropout rate for high schools in 1970? Or 1960? How about 1950? Point to Mamet. Social Security, says our dear reader, is another panacea of wonders from the Government. "Old age used to mean bone crushing poverty," she wrote. She said that Social Security is "under funded," but that "the alternative is a horror IMO." Oh, dear. Social Security is not under-funded, it is over-abused by the Federal Government borrowing from it to pay for things that it shouldn't, which is a violation of President Roosevelt's promise to each of us. Furthermore, there is massive SS fraud, from citizens as well as from illegal immigrants. Sorry. Mamet scores here, too. Public Health, says our still-struggling reader, "eradicated disease and improved life expectancy." Not quite, friend. Health advances have been driven by Private Enterprise. The Govamint did not invent all those life saving drugs, the life saving medical equipment, the brilliant medical techniques, the quick ambulances that speed people to hospitals. That was - and is - doctors, researchers and private investors. Sure, Government has gotten involved, but screws things up at least as often as it helps. Want a working example of how your "Public Health" works? Ask Larry Suffredin, Todd Stroger, or any health industry employee along the US-Mexican border. Mamet is right here, too. Also: One in four teenage girls in the U.S. has a sexually transmitted disease. That is stunningly sad. How has your "public health" helped? Years now of the lunatic cry against abstinence and politically correct health programs have gotten us to this point. "Eradicated disease?" Don't make me laugh, I'm too busy crying. So, in general, what my friends to the Left fail to acknowledge is that the Government is a capital taker, and not a hell of a lot is given back. The Government does not facilitate opportunities for the masses. It hinders it in the balance. The best thing the Government can do to facilitate opportunity is to get out of the way. That's not to say some oversight isn't needed, but look at the way an alderman or state representative can stand in the way of a perfectly legitimate business opening. The Government does not protect individual rights. The People do, by being vigilant and shaping the Government to their will. The People have forced the Government, on occasion, to protect rights and so forth, but remember that it was the Government that allowed and reaffirmed slavery (through several Supreme Court rulings). It was Government, Federal and states, that allowed institutionalized segregation after the Civil War. The People forced the Government to change, and to subsequently criminalize segregation, not the other way around. Government does not encourage risk taking or investments; taxes stunt growth and discourage creation of new jobs and businesses. The new Heartland clinic in Rogers Park, for example, did not encourage "risk taking." It encouraged a small group of underemployed political hacks to demand free money from Auntie Jan Schakowsky, who then demanded the money from the Treasury. Were these guys "risk takers?" Hardly. They were pilferers, stealing from your purse and my wallet. Ask the hundreds of thousands of Cook County residents who will drive out of Chicago and/or Cook County this weekend to buy stuff so they can avoid the high taxes here. Ask them if they feel Government is looking out for their best interests. Then ask the hundreds of people in Chicago's Lawndale neighborhood, whose homes are about to be seized by eminent domain abuse, or the folks in Lincoln Square who nearly lost their businesses to the same. Over-regulation by the Government discourages or squelches opportunity. As for the predictability of the future, that's amusing. But you're right here: Look at the basket case called Michigan and we can accurately predict Illinois's future if the Daleys, Strogers and Blagojeviches continue with their policies. Pretty frightening, but yes, quite predictable. So, yes, Mr. Mamet is right. Right on all counts.