I heard on NPR that Michael Moore's new film is about how capitalism is all bad, i.e., to borrow the phrase applied by Chris Hitchins to religion, it "poisons everything." I've never seen one of his films and intend to skip this one, but the NPR reviewer explicitly said that this time his focus is not so narrow as to attack GM, George W. Bush, or health insurance. He's literally assailing capitalism as a bad thing. In the understatement of the year, the NPR reviewer said, "a weakness of this film is that Moore has abanded the narrow focous of prior works. . . ."
Michael Moore has officially gone the way of Bill O'Reilly, Chris Hitchins, etc. If ever he was a reputable professional, in his declining years he's sold himself to the World Wrestling Federation of discourse, the talking head shows. He's now a freaky circus act that no one who matters will take seriously again.
I am on record here excoriating investment bankers and other Wall Street fat cats. But for me, the choice is easy: Given the choice, I'd reather have capitalism than not. A simple truth: Liberty, representative government, is inseparable from capitalism. You can't have civil liberties absent economic liberty. Moreover, captialism, which disolves boundaries and racial barriers in the interest of filthy lucre, ineluctably serves to secularize and humanize populations, psychologically orienting them toward a predisposition toward civil liberties. Finally, capitalism generates the bounty that defeats the nihilistic zero sum game menatality that was the rationaliztion for the Holocaust. (Just look at the differing paths taken by the UK and Holland and Germany until 1945. Which of these nations were world traders?)
So, taking the dimest view possible of human nature, here's the choice: Occasional period of excess, e.g., S&L failures, junk bond oversupply, Wall Street hedonism vs. 100 million+ murdered in the 20th century alone, untold tens of millions silenced and imprisoned. Which is worse?
The problem that professional trolls like Hitchins and Moore have in making such extravagant claims is that they, needless to say, live pretty good lives, as most people who consume their works do. They are attacking as a bad thing soemthing that has been stuffing thier mouths with goodies. Like condemning all religion as poisonous, outright rejecting capitalism as a bad thing is a form of self-loathing. Religious history is our history. Likewise, the history of capitalism is the history of freedom and free societies. It begs the question, what kind of a world would we live in without it? A fair minded person must acknowledge that these phonomena are but for causes of the world we live in, for better or worse.
Michael Moore has officially gone the way of Bill O'Reilly, Chris Hitchins, etc. If ever he was a reputable professional, in his declining years he's sold himself to the World Wrestling Federation of discourse, the talking head shows. He's now a freaky circus act that no one who matters will take seriously again.
I am on record here excoriating investment bankers and other Wall Street fat cats. But for me, the choice is easy: Given the choice, I'd reather have capitalism than not. A simple truth: Liberty, representative government, is inseparable from capitalism. You can't have civil liberties absent economic liberty. Moreover, captialism, which disolves boundaries and racial barriers in the interest of filthy lucre, ineluctably serves to secularize and humanize populations, psychologically orienting them toward a predisposition toward civil liberties. Finally, capitalism generates the bounty that defeats the nihilistic zero sum game menatality that was the rationaliztion for the Holocaust. (Just look at the differing paths taken by the UK and Holland and Germany until 1945. Which of these nations were world traders?)
So, taking the dimest view possible of human nature, here's the choice: Occasional period of excess, e.g., S&L failures, junk bond oversupply, Wall Street hedonism vs. 100 million+ murdered in the 20th century alone, untold tens of millions silenced and imprisoned. Which is worse?
The problem that professional trolls like Hitchins and Moore have in making such extravagant claims is that they, needless to say, live pretty good lives, as most people who consume their works do. They are attacking as a bad thing soemthing that has been stuffing thier mouths with goodies. Like condemning all religion as poisonous, outright rejecting capitalism as a bad thing is a form of self-loathing. Religious history is our history. Likewise, the history of capitalism is the history of freedom and free societies. It begs the question, what kind of a world would we live in without it? A fair minded person must acknowledge that these phonomena are but for causes of the world we live in, for better or worse.
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