The Secret Knowledge (2 page)

It made sense to me. Now, like the Fibonacci sequence, I began to see it everywhere. Milton Friedman pointed out that the cavil, “It would seem that a country that could put a man on the moon could provide free lunches for its schoolchildren,” missed the point: the country could not supply the free lunches
because
it put the man on the moon—there is only so much money. I understood this because I have a checkbook, and my reading inspired me to realize the equation did not differ at the National Level—there was only so much money, and choices must be made.

Money, I further learned, was just an efficient way of keeping track of the production of individuals—of their work and the capacity of that work to benefit their fellows. The more the money moved around, the more the mass benefited. The Government could do little with this product save waste it: it did not produce. It could tax or confiscate, but it could not allocate with greater justice than the Free Market;
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it could and should, then, provide only those services of which the Free Market was incapable: the roads, the sewers, the Judiciary, the streetlights, the Legislature, and the Common Defense—the notion that it could do more was an illusion and nowhere demonstrable.
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The Government could only profess to do more, its bureaucrats and politicians playing on our human need for guidance and certainty, and, indeed, our desire for Justice. But these members of Government, Right and Left, were as likely to exploit their position as you or I; and, like Brecht, as likely to mine human credulity as to alleviate human need.

Politics, then, seemed to me, like business, a delightful panoply of deceit and error and strife—a brand-new tide pool for the naturalist.

I wrote a political play.

Writers are asked, “How could you know so much about [fill in the profession]?” The answer, if the writing satisfies, is that one makes it up. And the job, my job, as a dramatist, was not to write accurately, but to write
persuasively.
If and when I do my job well, subsequent cowboys, as it were, will talk like
me.

In order to write well, however, the good dramatist must absolutely identify with his subject. This does not mean to be in “sympathy with,” but “to become the same as.”

In writing my political play I realized, then, that I was in no way immune from the folly of partisanship, of muddle-headedness, and of rancor in political thought; that I enjoyed the righteous indignation and the licensed spectacle as much as anyone, for the feeling of superiority it gave me. That I was, in short, a fool.

That, for a writer, is an excellent place to begin.

A friend came to our house for Thanksgiving. She'd flown from D.C. to Los Angeles, and the first-class cabin of her plane had been occupied by two turkeys “pardoned” by President Bush, and sold or lent to the Disney Corporation, to lead its Thanksgiving parade down the Main Street of Disneyland.

This intersection of these two hucksterisms drew me irresistibly to a fantasy.

All people being venal by nature, and politicians doubly so by profession, was it not clear that a President would not pardon turkeys save for some consideration? My fantasy had a despised incumbent, scant weeks from Election Day with no hope of reelection. His party has stopped advertising his hopeless run. He is asked to pardon a couple of turkeys in return for a small campaign contribution. He becomes inspired and tells the turkey manufacturers he wants two hundred million dollars or he will pardon every turkey in America.

So far so good, and here's the kicker—in order to convince the American People to endorse his ban on turkey, he enlists the genius of his treasured speechwriter. She, a Lesbian, has just returned from China, whither she and her partner had gone to purchase a baby. She says she will write the speech only if the President, in return, will marry her and her partner on National TV. Pretty funny play. And its theme, I believe, is not only that we are “all human,” but, better, that we are all Americans.

Here is Clarice Bernstein (the Speechwriter) reading a draft of her speech to Charles Smith, the President:

There is a final reconciliation of Right and Left, straight and gay, and everything is made right by the
deus ex machina
, Chief Dwight Grackle of the Micmac Nation, who has come to assassinate the President, and the curtain line is “Jesus, I love this country.” As do I. And my love increased the more I thought about it. I considered the play a love letter to America.

A local New York paper tried to close the play. Their fellow was outraged, finding it politically incorrect, in which he was, astonishingly, acute.

Now, the plot thickening, the
Village Voice
asked me to write an article on the play's politics. I wrote them an essay titled “Political Civility,” which laid out my views as above. I knew, however, that the
Voice
(a) has always been the voice of the Left; and (b) that they, over the years, had generally accepted my work only kicking and screaming. So I schemed to ensnare them. I began my essay on civility and consideration with an anecdote about the
Village Voice
.

Norman Mailer reviewed the first production in America of
Waiting for Godot
in the
Village Voice
. He called it trash. He went home though, and thought about it and returned to see the play again. He recognized it now as a work of genius, and bought a page in the
Voice
renouncing his review, and praising the play. I began my essay with this anecdote.

Aha. The
Voice
took the bait and published the article. They, however, retitled it “Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal.” The New York paper, enraged,
rereviewed
my play, giving it a worse notice than the first time around, and I was embraced by the Right.

Then I was asked to write a book on politics. And, in the words of Gertrude Stein, so I did, and this is it.

It was observed, and I cannot remember by whom, that “like all prolific writers, he was very lazy.” This is certainly true of me. I am prolific, and look upon my lengthy and various credits as must an inveterate debtor look upon the completed list of his obligations: it fills me with shame. Why? Perhaps because none of it felt like work, but like escape. What sort of sick fool would need to still so many terrifying thoughts by so much production?

In any case, I have been granted the dispensation to spend my days making the unpleasant pleasant.

By whom was I granted this right? By the society in which I live, which found my works sufficiently diverting to pay me to sit alone all day and continue as I had begun.

Leisure for reflection, somewhere near the end of a long career, leads me to thank God for allowing me to live in a society sufficiently free of Governmental control to allow the citizenry expression of its
true
diversity, which is to say, diversity of thought.

For, certainly, my works do not please everyone. But I, discovering that which does not please, am free to chase the market, to persist as before, or to desist entirely. I am, in short, free to fail, which means I am free to succeed, and, if successful, to enjoy any particularities which such success might confer upon me.

This is not only the American Dream—but the American reality, my growing realization of which prompted me to write this book.

I spoke with my first conservatives at age sixty. My rabbi, Mordecai Finley, a centrist, and a founding member of his temple, Endre Balogh, took the time to talk to me. I was impressed not by their politics, which, at the time, made to me no sense, but by their politeness and patience. They gave me a book, and the book was
White Guilt
, by Shelby Steele.

It brought to mind an old Providence, Rhode Island, answer to a difficult question, “What do you want, the truth, or a lie . . . ?”

Having spent my life in the theatre, I knew that people could be formed into an audience, that is, a group which surrenders for two hours, part of its rationality, in order to enjoy an illusion.

As I began reading and thinking about politics I saw, to my horror, how easily people could also assemble themselves into a mob, which would either attract or be called into being by those who profited from the surrender of reason and liberty—and that these people are called politicians. My question, then, was, that as we cannot live without Government, how must we deal with those who will be inclined to abuse it—the politicians and their manipulators? The answer to that question, I realized, was attempted in the U.S. Constitution—a document based not upon the philosophic assumption that people are basically good, but on the tragic confession of the opposite view.

I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette. Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws. The roulette addict, when he inevitably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette, or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new system, and to scheme for more funds.

The great wickedness of Liberalism, I saw, was that those who devise the ever new State Utopias, whether crooks or fools, set out to bankrupt and restrict not themselves, but others.
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