“There’s a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.”

-Michael Moore, Dude Where’s My Country? pg 258

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you may have caught my reaction to Michael Moore’s latest movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, last Friday. Since then, I’ve seen about a dozen interviews with Moore where people try to pin him down on his solution to problems outlined in the flick. Watch this video of his chat with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and you’ll have a better idea of what I’m talking about.

Now, try to erase the ludicrous comparison to the Founding Fathers from your mind.

The moment you should focus on happens around 4:28 into the clip. Wolf Blitzer asks, “What do you want to replace [capitalism] with?” After an audible gasp, Moore responds, “I want to replace it with Democracy.” Fast forward to 5:58, after Michael Moore’s first use of religion as a defense mechanism, Blitzer pounces with “which country has an economic system you like?” Seems like an easy enough question to answer, right? Moore struggles and finally settles on “I don’t think that exists yet.” The interview continues along this same line of questioning for a while.

Michael Moore’s intentions are clear: he wants to avoid being labeled as a ‘Socialist’ in these interviews. So to avoid alienating the millions of possible movie ticket purchasers who are watching this clip, he hides behind the word ‘democracy’ as applied to an economic model and, perhaps most importantly, he hides behind religion as a justification for his overall point. He uses this same tactic ad nauseum in ‘Capitalism.’ If the film wasn’t so boring, it might be effective.

In essence, Michael Moore is using an anti-corporatism argument, bolstered by religious ideology and the word ‘democracy’ to push for embracing a socialist economic system in the United States. How could you argue against it? Moore even uses religious figures, including his own pastor, to prove his point. So let’s take this apart, one piece at a time. I’ll let this college student from George Washington University prove the ‘anti-corporatism’ side of my argument.

Did you catch that? Michael Moore agrees, “we don’t really have a free-market.”

Moore follows this up by struggling to explain the theory of economic democracy. The overall goal of this loose theory is to achieve 100% employment, to get 100% of the population insured and to push it a step further with free houses for everyone. His message is ‘give the power to the workers, then push for pay based on work output.’ Which, to me, sounds a whole heckuva lot like Socialism.

In fact, Moore suggests we enact FDR’s failed ‘Second Bill of Rights’ proposal:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

That just about puts a fork in the ‘democracy’ portion of his argument. But what about religion?

Time after time, Moore argues that to disagree with him is to disagree with god. Take a look at the quote that started this post: “There’s a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.” Moore has told you, along with Bill Maher and others, on countless occasions, how stupid he thinks you are. Now Moore is using this perceived ‘gullibility’ to hammer down on a partisan argument that “nobody should make 500 times what anyone else is making in this country” (Read that last sentence again and consider Moore’s income as compared to one of the freelance videographers that work on his films.) because Jesus Christ wouldn’t approve it. This from the man who mainstreamed the Jesus Land graphic.

But this faulty logic isn’t the biggest issue to complain about after watching Capitalism: A Love Story. Michael Moore seems to be obsessed with making all of his movies almost exactly two hours long. Bowling for Columbine was 120 minutes long, Fahrenheit 9/11 clocked in at 122 minutes, Sicko was 123 minutes long and Capitalism: A Love Story is 120 minutes front-to-back — the guy seems obsessed with hitting the two hour mark. There’s at least 25 minutes of fluff in this flick that could have easily have been filled by a heated debate with a single voice of opposition. That’s right, not a single Adam Smith-touting free marketeer in the entire movie. I could spend a dozen more paragraphs debunking Moore’s claims one-by-one (or pointing out other stupid things he’s said on his press tour) but I think it’s best to reveal the flaws in the deepest foundation of his argument.

At the end of the day, Moore wants the U.S. to look a whole lot more like France. He wants everyone (except him) to believe that they aren’t special, that they can’t make it in this world. He wants you to believe that greed is a bad tool of incentive. Moore wants you to buy into this bullshit thought process that suggests somehow the government can better handle your cash than you can. Once your tax dollars make their way up the chain, something magical happens and all is well and fair. A man who has amassed a Scrooge McDuck-sized pile of cash and benefited from the freest (however flawed it may be) economy on this planet, wants you to spend $10 a ticket to hear how terrible we all are and how if we just march in step with him everything will be perfect. It’s a common flaw of socialist thought — that there’s always some perfection to be had, some pinnacle to reach. In these people’s minds, there’s a perfect temperature for the planet, a perfect health care system, a culture to be reached that is free of poverty and full of happiness, health and shiny things.

But don’t go throwing away your Prozac just yet, it’s all a fairytale. And following people like Moore politically will lead you to a more unfair, more destitute, less impressive society. This has been proven time and time again. The fact that the film ended up in a disappointing 8th place suggests Americans aren’t quite ready to acquiesce and give up this system. In short, Capitalism may not be perfect, but it’s the best damn thing we’ve got going for us. Save your $10 for something better…

Please direct your hate mail to: ShawnWasson -AT- Gmail.com

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