The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture [Kindle Edition]

The great irony that arrived on my iPad (via Kindle) with David Mamet's excellent book is that, as the dramatic authority of confidence games (e.g., House of Games, The Spanish Prisoner), for most of his life he was taken in by the confidence game of modern Liberalism. (Born and raised in Chicago, he still got conned.) Mamet is erudite, literary, and incisive in this set of linked essays. I rarely use the Kindle's highlight function, but I found myself highlighting more passages in the first third of his book than all 260 of the other books I have read on Kindle. His writing is that great. He resides in that specialized domain of an H. L. Mencken, or a Richard Mitchell (whose Underground Grammarian and several books are available free on the Web). He draws from Hayek and Sowell, among others, but is more fun to read. Here are some of my favorite highlights:

Chap. 1: "We cannot live without trade. A society can neither advance nor improve without excess of disposable income. This excess can only be amassed through the production of goods and services necessary or attractive to the mass. A financial system which allows this leads to inequality; one that does not leads to mass starvation."

Chap 2: "I will now quote two Chicago writers on the subject, the first, William Shakespeare, who wrote 'Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink'; the second, Ernest Hemingway, 'Call 'em like you see'em and to hell with it.'"

Chap 3: "The grave error of multiculturalism is the assumption that reason can modify a process which has taken place without reason, and with inputs astronomically greater than those reason might provide."

Chap 4: "College, while it may theoretically teach skills, also serves to delay the matriculation of the adolescent into society."

Chap 5: "No, the luckless product of our Liberal Universities, skill-less, will not touch that item his culture named taboo: work. So we see the proliferation, in the Liberal Communities, of counselors, advisors, life coaches, consultants, feng shui 'experts,' as the undereducated chickens come home to roost."

Chap 6: "A subjective system can never be shown to have failed. If its goals are indeterminate, general, and its progress incapable of measurement, how can its performance be faulted?"

Chap 7: "From the Left's point of view one need not work, and may not only Hope to be provided for, by this government, but may insist upon it."

Chap 8: "A Slave is not permitted to make these distinctions. Al of his behavior is circumscribed by the will of his master. The necessity of making distinctions is the essence of freedom, where one not only can but must choose...The essence of freedom was and is choice."

Chap 9: "...I was from Chicago. It was a rough city, ruled by Machine Politics, which ruled the state, and currently rules the country."

And that's just the first nine essays, in which I've highlighted many paragraphs. Mamet is essential reading for thoughtful conservatives and libertarians, and anyone else willing to stand the challenge of examining unchallenged assumptions. A tour de force. Thank you, David.

David Mamet made a stir in 2008 with his Village Voice essay, "Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal." This book is a fuller, wittier, and more scathing treatment of the same subject--a liberal screenwriter who has "seen the light."

Like other big media apostates, Andrew Breitbart, Tom Wolfe, John Stossel, Ben Stein, and Dennis Miller, Mamet realized the liberal assumptions that capitalism was evil and that Republicans were corporate lackeys had serious holes. When he began to investigate the logic behind free markets, he realized that it actually made sense. As Mamet puts it, modern liberalism is nothing more than a religion that its practitioners preach blindly on faith.

To examine the inanity of modern liberals, Mamet offers 39 entertaining essays that cover the gamut of modern living, including "Adventure Slumming," "Cabinet Spiritualism and the Car Czar," and, my favorite, "Oakton Manor and Camp Kawaga." Throughout the expose, Mamet makes use of his excellent perspective in the arts. With examples from his theater class, he shows exactly how absurd political correctness and the liberal agenda can be.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story and wants to peer into the ultra-liberal New York/L.A. big media mindset. Of course, the culture wars are just a symptom of the problem, and, for anyone who wants an examination of how we got into this situation, I recommend the brilliant Juggernaut: Why the System Crushes the Only People Who Can Save It.

I hope this book sells a billion copies and is read by everyone in America. (See? I'm in favor of hope & change, too!)

Well, that won't happen, but I suspect this book may be an effective converter of more than one leftie. Mamet's writing is crystal clear because his thinking is crystal clear. He is especially telling on the failure of our schools to teach anything useful, leaving us with a mass of liberal arts majors who hardly know how to spell, much less how to WORK. Mamet comes back to this again and again: the leftie dream is somehow to avoid doing work, just like Aristotle and his dream of the "contemplative life" --- The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford World's Classics) --- or James Hilton's fantasy Lost Horizon --- where the unpleasant reality emerges (sooner or later) that the man living the contemplative life can only do so because of his slaves, and ditto for the lamasery of Lost Horizon. In the end, both books can be justly accused of being guides for the independently wealthy.

Capitalism is evil!! Oh, really? Do you mean the capitalism which built your house and your car, the capitalism which founded public libraries all across America, and created Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and the American university system? The capitalism which encouraged and sustained your grandfathers and fathers, the capitalism which brings you food to eat every day? The capitalism which threw off so much wealth it was able to guarantee the European peace for fifty years FOR FREE, and enable the Europeans to grow into fat-cat America-haters??

If that is evil, could we please see an example of something which is good?

Mamet never met a conservative before he was 60, but he has surely been playing catch-up like the virtuoso he is. This is a superb, dazzling book.

Highest possible recommendation!!