Michael Marxist: A Love Story

Michael Moore’s publicist contacted me to set up an interview about his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, but then Moore canceled at the last minute. I wasn’t surprised. It’s unlikely that he would have been able to hold up to hard questions about this patently dishonest film.

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore describes America has having been founded on genocide and having gotten rich on the backs of slaves. This is egregiously false. Ayn Rand explained the truth: “Capitalism cannot work with slave labor. It was the agrarian, feudal South that maintained slavery. It was the industrial, capitalistic North that wiped it out–as capitalism wiped out slavery and serfdom in the whole civilized world of the nineteenth century.”

Moore kicks off his movie equating America to ancient Rome, running stock footage of Rome from bad B-movies, and draws all the wrong conclusions. Rome grew its greatest in its period of freedom as a republic, and collapsed after it morphed into an empire with the uncontrolled growth of government controls, including welfare state measures – bread and circuses.

The growth of taxation and government control destroyed the Roman economy and caused the collapse of Rome – yet more taxes and government control are the very things that this fat bastard is advocating. He mocks America’s predominance in the auto industry by saying that we eliminated our competition, Germany and Japan, when in fact we saved the world from Germany and Japan not in order to destroy their auto industry but to protect the world from the tyranny and darkness they represented. Moore mentions that we destroyed Japan and Germany and claims that that’s why our auto industry became number one, but he neglects to explain why we destroyed Japan and Germany. And he says nothing about how we rebuilt Japan and Germany. In fact, we made it safe for Germany and Japan to dominate the auto industry.

He holds Jimmy Carter up as the ideal president and holds Ronald Reagan responsible for our economic woes. Yes, the Jimmy Carter era of runaway inflation, 21% interest rates (up from the decades-long standard of low single-digit rates) is Moore’s idea of heaven. Worse still, he runs footage of Carter admonishing the American people for being too materialistic. I kid you not.

It’s obvious that Michael Moore believes he is talking to idiots who have absolutely no concept of history or of reality. His entire movie is so fundamentally flawed that I actually thought that perhaps it was one big satirical piece, an outrageous parody.

Moore devotes a large portion of the film to a group of protesters that won’t leave a factory that was closed. He has the audacity to bark about people power, and about how people power is all that really counts, while simultaneously millions (literally) are taking to the streets in the form of tea parties and town hall meetings in protest against big government, but about that he says nothing at all. He praises a member of Congress for encouraging open rebellion on the floor of the House against the Bush bailout. Would he encourage the same under Obama?

There is absolutely nothing about individual responsibility in Capitalism: A Love Story. Moore tells tale after tale about this fellow being evicted from his home – a sad story, no doubt, but who put the gun to this man’s head to sign the adjustable rate mortgage? When I was mortgage shopping, I refused to sign an adjustable rate mortgage. They scared me. And while I agree with Moore that the banks are wielding an enormous amount of corrupt power hand-in-hand with the feds, the answer isn’t more government. The answer is complete deregulation. Period. No Fed. Just free men, free trade. Of course, the government regulatory apparatus that is currently in place would take years and years to disassemble. You can’t do it overnight, because everything would spin out of control.

But ultimately, that’s the answer. The problem is government, not the rich. The answer is not more government, the answer is the individual.

Michael Moore, who has gotten rich in America attacking capitalism and America, is not only a liar; he’s also a hypocrite. Peter Schweizer, author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, said this about Moore in National Review Online: “Moore professes to hate capitalism (‘the last evil empire’), but practices it in spades. Moore condemns people for their racism and claims to support and practice affirmative action, but has a lousy record of hiring minorities. He outsources post-production film work to Canada so he can pay non-union wages. I could go on and on. I would ask his fans: is this really a sincere person?”

Moore isn’t. And he isn’t the first. Ayn Rand said it decades ago: “The flood of misinformation, misrepresentation, distortion, and outright falsehood about capitalism is such that the young people of today have no idea (and virtually no way of discovering any idea) of its actual nature.” And she explained: “Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin, North Korea and South Korea is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man’s well-being is not their goal.”

Nor is man’s well-being the goal of Michael Moore.

It seems fitting, poetic justice if you will, that Capitalism: A Love Story grossed a measly $14 million at the box office. You have to love the invisible hand of those pesky free markets.