I asked Mamet what turned a “Hollywood liberal” into a conservative. Was he a brain-dead liberal? The newspaper, not Mamet, put that headline on his article. “I referred to myself as one,” Mamet told me. “Political decisions I made were foolish.” Foolish because he wasn’t really thinking, he said. Since everybody around him was liberal, he just went along. What changed? “I met a couple conservatives, and I realized I never met any conservatives in my life. ... (O)ne started sending me books. His books ... made more sense than my books.” Mamet was suddenly exposed to ideas he had never encountered before. Two things hit him especially hard: the benefits of economic competition and the limits of leaders’ ability to plan society.