The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture : David Mamet

Big Hollywood ^

[djone]

"Liberalism is a religion," he writes. "It affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost. "College, while it may theoretically teach skills, also serves to delay the matriculation of the adolescent into society." "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." "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.""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."

"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."

[djone]

See Also Reviews at

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Knowledge-Dismantling-American-Culture/dp/B007F7QPKU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342876225&sr=1-1&keywords=The+secret+knowledge

[Mamzelle]

Agh! You crushed me with disappointment!

This is an old article, one I loved.

I thought, for a moment, that Mamet had another superb book released.

Anyway, folks--Secret Knowledge by Memet is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Excellent!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Sometimes I wonder how I got through life without a consultant, a councilor or feng shui expert.

[Carlucci]

This is an excellent book. Highly recommend.

As a lad becoming politically aware in the 80’s, I often needed to defend my Ronald Reagan Conservatism to my Liberal chums. I would boil my position down to a single phrase — Liberalism is the triumph of emotion over reason. In “The Secret Knowledge”, David Mamet has come to the exact same conclusion, only much later in life, and with a bit more eloquence.

This book feels like a treatise written, presciently, to help one understand the tortured logic and childish ideals of the Occupy Wall Street infants, who, as Mamet descibes a similar generation of perpetual dependents, “think that crying harder makes the breast appear.”

The book is a bit disjointed, mainly because it reads like a collection of essays rather than a carefully planned journey, but nevertheless, his well researched (he quotes heavily from my economic hero Thomas Sowell) and exquisite prose on the folly that is Liberalism raises my hopes in these trying times.

[bcsco]

I had feng shui last night. Oh, wait, that was chop suey...

[the invisib1e hand]

Converts rock!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

A Viet Namese restaurant owners in the Twin Cities told me his business nearly doubled after he consulted a feng shui expert who suggested a different doorway into his business.

[bcsco]

Thanks for the heads up. I just downloaded it to my Kindle.

[corkoman]

Did they serve dog?

[miss marmelstein]

I wonder when there will be a downward revision of his brilliant work by critics. Something like:

“Now that I look back on it, I can see the fascistic tendencies in ‘A Life in the Theatre’ and ‘Keep Your Pantheons’”

[bcsco]

So, feng shui is now used by business consultants? Phooey on that feng shui. I’ll stick with the chop suey...it’s more gooey.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The Viet restaurateur hired a Chinese feng shui guy...

[RedMDer]

Click.

Set it right. Donate to Free Republic.

[cradle of freedom]

This secret knowlege goes back a long, long time, back to the days of the French Revolution. There was the *left* and the *right* back them, that is when it started. The left referred to the radicals who sat on the left side of the assembly and the right referred to the moderates who sat on the right side of the assembly.

The left were the crazies who wanted to *bring it all down, man*, as Michael Savage says. The Jacobin leftists were responsible for the Reign of Terror that killed thousands of people. They wanted to change societies’ values especially religion and family. The same pattern has been followed many times including the Russian Revolution and the sixties leftist radicals. It is the same old song but each time they gain more power. And of course this had to be well financed.