Just a little reminder today that there is a kind of hope which is justified: that misguided people can change their minds. In the old days, it was called repentance:
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.
If you haven't read the rest of David Mamet's 2008 essay, "Why I Am No Longer A 'Brain-Dead Liberal'" in The Village Voice, you owe it to yourself to do so. Here it is.
h/t Terry Teachout@commentarymagazine.com
