A few months ago the charming and totally hunky Xavier Onassis posted another Rambling and Utterly Pointless® (his words, not mine) rant about
The Fallacy of Borders.
Of course I let it angry up my blood. I posted a few responses in his comments trying to get across that bigger governments are worse not better and the government is best that governs least (up to a point anyway) and that one of the big fallacies of so-called Liberals (or Progressives as they now like to call themselves) is that they ignore basic human nature.
I actually had planned on doing an entire post in rebuttal -- pointing out that the genius of our constitution is that it assumed politicians would be douchey and try to grab power (which, by the way, our current Legislative branch has allowed our Executive to do in recent decades, but that's a different post).
I thought it important that people accept themselves for the animals they are, holistic of all the greatness (creativity, compassion) and jerkiness (lust and greed) that entails.
Unfortunately, in the midst of formulating thoughts on this I became distracted by more urgent issues such as
college basketball and
Magnum PI's birthday. So the aforementioned post never materialized.
Fortunately, I read a really good essay today by New York author/playwright
David Mamet titled
Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'.
Mamet touches on a lot of the same points I would have made, except as a professional writer, he does it much more eloquently.
I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
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.
The essay is lengthy, but so well written that is absolutely worth your lunchtime reading. You liberals should consider it an inspirational testimony to your own recovery.
Your welcome, XO.
tagged: politics, Liberal, Progressive, David Mamet, brain dead, constitution, human nature
