Friday, January 25, 2013

Mamet Warns: Beware Growing Power Of The State

The brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet has opined once again on President Obama and creeping statism. Here's an excerpt from a long piece by Mamet in The Daily Beast by way of Newsweek:
President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. “One-size-fits-all,” and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is “slavery.”
Click here to read the entire column.

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