I’m going to link this with the caveat that you might not be able to get through, for whatever reason the site seems to be periodically down. Nevertheless:

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that an evil lib’rul like me occasionally peruses the Village Voice. Though in this case, I merely happened across a link to an interesting piece by David Mamet titled, “Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal.” I clicked, figuring it would be good for a laugh. It turned out to be good for a lot more:

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? 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.

This idea of taking a step back and reevaluating what you believe of think you believe is something that has haunted me on and off for about a year now. In large part, it’s because this administration is winding down. I’ve obviously been opposed, sometimes vehemently so, to what Our Leader has done to the country these past seven years. But more than that; I’ve been opposed to the shocking acquiescence with which we, the public, just sort of followed along. It was as if, shaken by September 11, we both shut down and embraced a sense of American exceptionalism. We’re different, special, better than the rest of the world - and that gives us license. This attitude has necessarily resulted in a lot of things done in our name that might otherwise have been avoided. But it was not because we were Americans that these things occurred, but because we are human; not “the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be,” writes Mamet, but rather a collection of normal people - “greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired” - who, like the rest of the world, are decidedly unexceptional - but for that compact which governs us:

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.

Yeppers.

Like Mamet, and like a lot of conservatives, I harbor no illusions about human nature. All of us are in the gutter; some, as Oscar Wilde noted, are looking at the stars.

Yet this then leads you then to questions about the nature and role of government.

Liberalism has long seen government as a stabilizing, even a moral force; but as noted in the threads here about progressivism, conservatives have come to embrace the concept of big government these past seven-plus years. They may not like the idea of the Department of Education, for example; but they really like the Department of Defense - for what is the military, really, but a branch of government?

So if I’ve been wary of this conservative embrace of big government, which I have been, how is it I can turn around and embrace big government from the other end? And I’ve found, increasingly, that I can’t; that I can’t justify what I see as an inherent hypocrisy. And that, the closer I look, the more I realize government can never really solve the problem, anyway. Both big-government liberals and conservatives might say that if people are swine (Mamet’s word), then government is required to either elevate them, keep them in line or punish them. But I tend to think people are going to do what they do regardless of what government does.

I’ve opposed the war in Iraq for many reasons, chief among them that this idea we were going to foster wonderful democracy in the heart of the sectarian Mideast amounted to nothing more than social engineering, and I think it’s doomed to fail. But if social engineering is going to fail there, isn’t it going to fail here at home? Hasn’t it failed? All these years, all these trillions of dollars; has poverty, for example, been eradicated in America? If it hasn’t, is it the fault of government? Government can mitigate the circumstances of poverty, maybe; can offer a hand up for those who want it and will take it. But not all will take it; and when that happens, government still bears a responsibility to its citizens. But government can never “save” them.

Government can never “save” any of us except in the strictly military sense, and even then - as we’ve seen these past few years - that “salvation,” fleeting and illusory though it may be, required an immense sacrifice. Liberals have talked a lot about warrantless wiretapping, the intrusiveness of a government that says, in effect, that this society can no longer tolerate the degree of privacy it once did. Liberals have screamed about how this encroaches upon freedom - and it does. But that means, then, that if a President Hillary or President Obama continues such a program, it is equally wrong, it must be opposed with equal ferocity. It doesn’t matter who’s pulling the strings; it’s a bad idea whichever party is in charge.

So, what do I support? How about a realization that the ideals we’ve set forth as a country, enunciated in the Constitution, are things that actually run counter to human nature, which is one of the reasons we have to strive so hard to attain those ideals? All men are created equal and as such, entitled to certain inalienable rights - the black and the Latino and yes, the queer? Free speech not just when it suits us but always, even - or especially - when it makes us most uncomfortable?

These impulses of the past few years - to separate the world into us and them; to be outraged and shout down those who would dare disagree with you - have been toxic. One caller last week wanted me to tell me that Thomas Jefferson considered homosexuality execrable. But Jefferson, of course, also kept slaves - which is exactly what I mean by saying even he couldn’t live up to the ideals he articulated. However great his stature, those ideals are bigger than he was, certainly bigger than you are or I am.

What I believe, then, is that Americans need to overcome what might be termed the worst angels of their nature. Tribalism, fear, hatred and the division it always sows - these are the things that will tear us apart, though we comfort ourselves in our rationale for them. We need to stop thinking that we can win - either global geo-political stability or domestic tranquility - via the gutter.

Our eyes, always, have to be trained upon the stars.