By now you might've seen David Mamet's pro-gun screed in Newsweek in which he basically assembled every NRA bumper sticker into essay form. It's just as wingnutty as everything else he's written since he strangely transformed from a far-left liberal to a far-right conservative. TNC called attention to this particularly nonsensical paragraph:
The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. 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.
No. The founding fathers were absolutely politicians. They were members of state houses and, of course, they were delegates to the Continental Congress, and subsequently many went on to be presidents, senators and so forth. They were all professional politicians. All of them. Does Mamet think they were a gaggle of yokels frantically studying copies of "Constitutions for Dummies?"
Mamet also noted the "struggle to draft" the Constitution. Exactly. They had to engage in politics and compromise in order to draft and ratify it -- just as they did with the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation. Therefore they were politicians. And this only covers a few examples. Sheesh. And this drivel was worthy of Newsweek?