It's not unusual for people's views to transform, but the playwright's Newsweek cover shows he could learn a lot from a late nuclear negotiator.
Political evolutions are commonplace. The liberal college student becomes a conservative adult. The conservative adult grows more liberal on gay rights. The French orator Francois Guizot said of the anti-monarchists of his day, "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head." It's a quote that's been reworked a gazillion times since. It's one dear to the heart of neoconservatives many of whom began as devotees of Trotsky and ended up embracing Reagan.
There are conversions that we may not like -- Arianna Huffington from right to left or Norman Podhoretz from left to right -- but which are considered and understandable. And then there are conversions that seem harder to fathom. See the cover of Newsweek where the much lauded playwright, author, and producer David Mamet challenges gun control.
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There are any number of coherent, intellectual, and constitutional arguments to be made against the president's proposals to limit magazine size and ban certain types of weapons as well as to expand the background-check program. Mamet foregoes any reasonable argument for a piece that likens Obama to Marx and his proposals to totalitarianism. "For it is, again, only the Marxists who assert that the government, which is to say the busy, corrupted, and hypocritical fools most elected officials are (have you ever had lunch with one?) should regulate gun ownership based on its assessment of needs." Apparently the Marxists now include Joe Scarborough and Joe Manchin, if not Reagan and the Bushes.