My first reaction to word that playwright, David Mamet, was no longer a "brain-dead liberal," was alot like that of actor, Kevin Spacey:  "I didn't pay it much attention."

Don't get me wrong, I agree that he should no longer be a brain-dead liberal.  He is in good company, joining Ronald Reagan, Norman Podhoretz, Christopher Hitchens, David Horowitz, Ron Silver and a slew of other non-brain-dead-liberals.

And who have we lost?  Garry Wills, David Brock??  Lowell Wicker was never a conservative to begin with.  I think that there was one more but who cares?  The principles remain.

It is interesting how little attention the story has drawn in the United States.  As Daniel Henninger pointed out in The Wall Street Journal:

"That one of the language's greatest living playwrights would say this in our hyperventilated political times was news worth noting in most of the English-speaking world. Commentaries appeared the past week in England, Canada and Australia. But there's been nary a peep about Mr. Mamet going over the wall in what some call the Mainstream Media."

Of value, though, was how Mamet changed his mind:

"I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."

Now this, I highly recommend.

Jonah Goldberg's account is good as well.

Thanks, David.