"I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."
"I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
... These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the [expletive deleted] up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong."
-- David Mamet, writing in the Village Voice
***
It came to light this week that Eliot Spitzer, now former governor of New York, was engaging in liaisons dangereuses with high-priced call girls. He said this was a private and personal matter. Others have said, 'it's just sex." This same case was made when President Clinton was having fellatio performed on him by that woman -Monica Lewinsky.
Two points:
1. It is just sex, but it's not.
For Spitzer, it involved structuring, which is the manipulation of bank transactions with the intent to evade reporting requirements, the Mann Act, and, possibly, money laundering. As attorney general of New York, Spitzer made his name going after white collar crime and corruption in government and business, so it is rather ironic that he may face charges under the very laws that he often used in a heavy-handed way.
For Clinton, it was about much more than fellatio; it was about perjury. If perjury isn't a big deal, then why did Martha Stewart spend time in prison? Why is Barry Bonds facing trial for allegedly lying to a grand jury? Why is Migual Tejada and Roger Clemens being investigated for possibly perjuring themselves before a Congressional Committee?
So, you see, it is not just sex.
2. Even if it was 'just sex,' it would matter.
How one conducts himself in private matters will manifest the same way in public affairs. There is not a dichotomy that separates the public and the private. If one will lie, deceive and betray those closest to him, then he will also behave in the same way toward a nameless and faceless crowd (i.e. the public).
Remember that the next time you hear that it doesn't matter how our elected officials conduct themselves in their private lives.
***
T.S. Eliot...possibly my favorite poet.
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
-T. S. Eliot
Following is Part V of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men:"
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
