David Mamet's Babbling Incoherencey

It's rare that I run across something so astoundingly wrong on every level that it just sort of lays there, like a dead fish rotting in the sun. And yet David Mamet has written just such a rambling, incoherent column as a defense of current gun law.

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

...Actually he didn't. If you actually read the quote, in context, that is the end result of a very long series of other social actions. That's not summing up communism, but rather summing up what Marx viewed as the society that would naturally be created by communism. And that phrase predates Marx by over a century.

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia.

Except it did. That's not even the whole sentence, that's just the last bit at the end where Marx literally says he is making a banner slogan. The effective agency are all the economic and social programs Marx listed in the first part of the sentence.

The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.”

No. Marx is very, very clear on this point. To quote the sentence itself, "...after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" There's some magical thinking here that leads Marx to conclude people will be helpful and generous and willing to fully develop themselves, but he is incredibly clear on the point that this motto is the result of individuals cooperating for mutual good out of their own innate desire to cooperate for mutual good.

All of us have had dealings with the State, and have found, to our chagrin, or, indeed, terror, that we were not dealing with well-meaning public servants or even with ideologues but with overworked, harried bureaucrats. These, as all bureaucrats, obtain and hold their jobs by complying with directions and suppressing the desire to employ initiative, compassion, or indeed, common sense. ThThe government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences.ey are paid to follow orders.

 Which, of course, is no different from the private sector. It's actually better than the private sector, as the private sector adds "maintaining profit" on top of all those other things.

The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

Except it isn't. Mamet, in this piece, loves being vague because in being vague he could theoretically be talking about anything, therefore no one can fact check him. But let's just face the fact that he is talking about Affirmative Action. Most of the actual laws about Affirmative Action, are laws banning Affirmative Action. I'm not sure there actually are any Affirmative Action laws, virtually all Affirmative Action is merely institutional policy, policy designed to correct past injustices and disadvantages. And that's also why Mamet is wrong, Affirmative Action does not claim that black people have fewer abilities than white people, but rather that they have been systematically disadvantaged and redress to a level field.

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”?

It's all over the constitution. It's why there is a constitution. I don't understand how anyone could possibly read the enumerated powers clause in article I and actually ask "But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining 'needs'?" But then I don't suppose I should expect Mamet of reading the constitution any more closely than he read Marx.

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.

It is...

“One-size-fits-all,” and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is “slavery.”

No, David Mamet. Slavery is an actual thing. Slavery is when one person owns another person, not when the government treats everyone equal under the law.

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians.

As usual, this is false. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate knows there were plenty of ideologues, and virtually all the founding fathers were career politicians.

Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

Again, no. They made the assumption that the masses were a mob to be protected against, and that's why they created the Electoral College and had the states elect Senators. But they trusted the elite political and social class so much that they handed control over half the legislature and the presidency to them. They set up a representative democracy with many, many checks against representative democracy. All of which pretty much proves the next extremely long section about how the founders intended for the people to control the government to guard against the consolidation of power, (which I won't repost since it is quite dull) is wrong

This next part is so astounding I have to replicate it as is...

On a lower level of abstraction, there are more than 2 million instances a year of the armed citizen deterring or stopping armed criminals; a number four times that of all crimes involving firearms. 

The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime...

No, seriously. He throws out that "2 million" and then complains about "phantom statistic." Seriously. Anywho, that "2 million" line actually seems to come from a report done by the Carter administration, and wasn't anything resembling an actual statistic, more like an inference made from interviewing prisoners. The fact that Mamet uses it here is just proof that he hangs out at Free Republic. As for the "accidental damage" (which is just a nice way of saying "unintentional shootings"), those aren't "phantom statistics"  but rather the results of actual police reports. Unlike many examples of social studies, these aren't even the result of sampling, but rather are every single incident that happened.