Things I did not visualize reading this morning. 1) David Mamet wrote a piece in the Village Voice -- of all places -- disavowing his faith in government.
Money quote:
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.
I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president -- whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster -- were little different from those of a president whom I revered.
Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.
...
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. (Emphasis mine.)
Read the whole thing. It is an almost tragic story of the slow disenchantment with government that most of us go through eventually. I certainly did.
As an aside, Megan McArdle linked to this article with this headline: "David Mamet comes out as a quasi-libertarian."
I have always found it intriguing that the phrase that describes revealing oneself as a conservative or libertarian in polite society is the same one that you use to describe telling your parents you're gay. What does that say about polite society's tolerance of alternative views?
Hat-tip: Megan McArdle
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He looks at government with the wrong end of the telescope. The main function of government, other than to provide those services that we cannot (like roads, armies and health care), is not to do good, but to prevent the swine from doing even more harm.
But are there not swine in government? How do we prevent them from doing harm, given that they control roads, armies and (perhaps) healthcare?
But are there not swine in government? How do we prevent them from doing harm, given that they control roads, armies and (perhaps) healthcare?
At the fundamental level, any organization of people has the potential for corruption by unethical, malicious, or even psychopathic individuals. This is true of churches, businesses, charities, and of course, government.
To that end, strategies such as accountability, decentralization, transparency and independant oversight all become methods of providing a system of checks and balances on the use of unfettered power in government. The Federal government of the USA may have been based on those principals, but it's hardly a sterling example of them today, especially with the Bush administration.
When government is written off as fundamentally evil, it blinds people to the possibility that individual and legitimate problems of government might be addressed with actual functioning solutions.
What does that say about polite society's tolerance of alternative views?
I'd flip it. What does that say about an individual's concern for what their peers think of them? Libertarianism is hardly a persecuted view in America, especially compared to Communism or Fascism. That people see it as some sort of soul-bearing experience to admit to being more liberal on social issues than a Republican and more conservative on financial issues than a Democrat isn't exactly a huge step.
"To that end, strategies such as accountability, decentralization, transparency and independant oversight all become methods of providing a system of checks and balances on the use of unfettered power in government. The Federal government of the USA may have been based on those principals, but it's hardly a sterling example of them today, especially with the Bush administration."
yes - this is the reasonable libertarian position, which would add that the more complex and far-reaching governmental oversight powers become the less effective any control measures are. Furthermore government is nothing more than a collection of bureaucrats and elected officials that act according to their own sets of incentives which are frequently counter to the public's interests.
"When government is written off as fundamentally evil"
Which is the strawman / wingnut libertarian position
"Everything is always wrong"?
"Corporations and military are evil"?
We need to study this creature. He seems to be a rare specimen of a living straw man.
Given that governments are essentially giant corporations with the power to regulate all other corporations, I am always amazed that people who claim to be deeply skeptical of the motives and aims of corporations are so gung-ho about government power.
Shouldn't it concern those people even more? I suspect the reason it doesn't is that they think they can control the government in a way they recognize they can't control other corporate entities. And everyone is always enthusiastic about getting more power and more authority for themselves! (Unless they are very, very wise, which most of us are not.)