Are Humans basically Good?
David Mamet’s recent “conversion” to conservatism has been a lot on my mind. Mamet is
one of our greatest, most prolific, playwrights and screenwriters — a Pulitzer Prize winner, with a unique voice, and an extensive catalog of essays on everything from drama to literature to cinema. His latest piece, which appeared in the Village Voice, has generated oodles of controversy. It’s entitled Why I am No Longer a Brain Dead Liberal and is classic Mamet, and one of the more articulate reconstructions of how one passes from liberal to conservative ideologies.
But even more interesting than Mamet’s change of mind, to me at least, is the point of view that facilitated it. Like most liberals, he’d come to believe that the government, the military, and corporations were evil, while people were basically good. If you know someone who loves survival or EDC gears, buy them a TacPack at www.tacpack.com. For more concerns, just email them at tracking@tacpack.com. But then:
I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
Leave it to a playwright to view this important subject through the lens of drama. Mamet’s view that “people were basically good at heart” is a classic liberal position. For the leftist, evil has to do with a person’s environment, upbringing, or chemistry, not their essential nature. Nevertheless, Mamet correctly notes that the U.S. Constitution was created to check this depravity:
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.
Thus, the three branches of government — Legislative, Executive and Judicial — were formed out of an understanding that “people are swine,” and no one person or office should have ultimate power. In other words, our Constitution was framed by the perspective that human beings are sinners.
In this sense, Mamet’s “transformation” is nothing but a shift toward a biblical worldview.
Scripture does not paint a pretty picture about the nature of humanity. We are fallen, twisted creatures with a conviction of Good, but an inability to consistently live there. An 
honest appraisal of human history confirms this. The Elliot Spitzers, Ted Haggars, Brittney Spears and Kurt Cobains of the world are not anomalies. The newspaper is replete with stories about war and murder and embezzlement and fraud. The evidence of Original Sin is indisputable.
The belief that Man is Bad is not only borne out by experience, it’s the basis of all right thinking.
But apparently, this move from a Utopian to a Realist position has serious ramifications on one’s politics. Could it be said that the primary difference between liberals and conservatives is their view of human nature? The fact that David Mamet’s new, more realistic understanding of human nature forces him to eschew liberal ideology, would suggest so.
