H O OVE R DI GE S T RE S E AR CH AND OPI NI ON ON P UBL I C P OL I CY2 0 1 4 .N O .2
THE HOOVER INSTITUTION • STANFORD UNIVERSITY
RESEARCH AND OPINIONON PUBLIC POLICY2014 • NO. 2 • SPRING
THE HOOVER INSTITUTION
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
RESEARCH AND OPINION ON PUBLIC POLICY 2014 · NO.2 · SPRING
The
Hoover Digest
offers informative writing on politics, economics, and history by the scholars and researchers of the Hoover Institution, the public policy research center at Stanford University. The opinions expressed in the
Hoover Digest
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, or their supporters.The
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On the Cover
“For the first time in history a great civilized community has been bombarded from the sky in the darkness of night,” a correspondent wrote in 1914 as bombs fell on Antwerp from a terrible new weapon: the zeppelin. The cover image comes from a German postcard in the Hoover Archives. The huge airships helped usher in not only the age of aerial warfare—far above the trenches—but also an era in which ordinary citi-zens, not just soldiers, were subject to military attack. In Allied cities visited by zeppelins, terror mingled with fascination.
Turn to The Great War Centennial, beginning on page 169.
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2014 · No. 2
150
ent trend. We found that when voters were asked whether they preferred Brown or someone new come November, just one in four said the gover-nor should be re-elected, compared with 44 percent who wanted to replace him. Especially problematic for Brown is that 53 percent of independents in the survey want a new governor.
Half of Californians disagree with Brown’s claim that California is a model of good governance.
Brown’s problem is not a lack of ideas. His problem is that none of his proposals truly addresses the jobs and economic crisis.California has persistently high unemployment. Almost 18 percent of the state’s residents are unemployed, have stopped looking for work, or have part-time jobs but want full-time employment. Of the ten Ameri-can metropolitan areas with the highest unemployment rates, seven are in California.So, Brown’s sunny declarations aside, much work remains to be done to get the state’s economy back on track. And if he continues to ignore Cali-fornians’ interest in real plans to improve the jobs picture, Brown may find himself fighting for his political life later this year.
Reprinted by permission of Bloomberg. © 2014 Bloomberg LP. All rights reserved.
Available from the Hoover Press is
Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher
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To order, call 800.888.4741 or visit www.hooverpress.org.
Hoover Digest
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2014 · No. 2
151
INTERVIEW
“Are You Part of My Tribe?”
David Mamet is one of this generation’s most acclaimed play- wrights—and, as of an intellectual conversion just a few years ago, also one of its freshest political thinkers. An interview with Peter Robinson .
Peter Robinson,
Uncommon Knowledge
:
David Mamet has com-posed screenplays as disparate as
The Postman Always Rings Twice
and
Wag the Dog
; directed films ranging from
House of Games
to
Phil Spec-tor
; written books ranging from
The Old Religion
(a novel) to
The Hero Pony
(a collection of poems) to
Five Cities of Refuge
(a Torah commen-tary); and composed plays that rank among the highest achievements of the American theater, including
American Buffalo
,
Speed-the-Plow
, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning
Glengarry Glen Ross
. In 2008, Mamet published an essay for the
Village Voice
explaining that he had changed his political views. The title of that essay: “Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.” In 2011, Mamet expanded on his new political views in a book,
The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
. Mamet also has a new book called
Three War Stories
.David, I ordinarily thank guests for joining me, but this is your spot: Il Forno restaurant. So thanks for letting us join you here in Santa Monica.
David Mamet:
Thank you for joining me.
P
ETER
R
OBINSON
is the editor of the
Hoover Digest
, the host of
Uncommon Knowledge
, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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▫
2014 · No. 2
152
POLITICAL CONVERSION
Robinson:
The Secret Knowledge
: “My interest in politics began when I noticed that I acted differently than I spoke.” Explain that.
Mamet:
I’m very fortunate in my life as a Jew in having had two magnifi-cent teachers: Larry Kushner, who was then in Sudbury and now in San Francisco, and Mordecai Finley out here at Ohr HaTorah in Venice. They talk a lot about the underpinnings of the Torah and about the Talmudic teachings about how one should behave. And they say you have to behave in such a way that you can state your opponent’s views such that he says, yes, those are my views. And he has to be able to restate your views to you such that you can say, yes, those are my views. And then when you both are conversant with each other’s views, you have to induce facts upon which you agree. And now we’re going to reason from the facts upon which we agree to arrive at a conclusion. And that’s how an argument can take place, because of course all people argue. That’s what a democracy is. When people stop arguing, what you have is a dictatorship.So I started trying to apply that to my daily life, and realized that most of what I thought was political thought was just the reiteration of recogni-tion symbols. I don’t think it happens on the right, but when you look at the left, most of what passes for discourse is recognition symbols. Do we agree? Are you part of my tribe? There’s nothing wrong with that, but I realized it’s not the basis for a life lived according to political principles. It’s not going to get you anywhere.
Robinson:
So a recognition symbol, just to make sure I follow you: I drive a Prius, and what I’m doing is conveying what tribe I belong to by choosing that brand or by choosing an environmentally conscious vehicle. Is that the sort of thing you mean?
Mamet:
Sure, of course. But also, for example, I was talking to some-body about the movie I was going to do. I said that I was thinking of Jon