Moore “World of We” - Michael Moore is practically the Leni Riefenstahl of socialism.

National Review Online ^ | July 13, 2007 | Rich Lowry

[neverdem]

July 13, 2007, 0:00 a.m.

Moore “World of We”
Michael Moore is practically the Leni Riefenstahl of socialism.

By Rich Lowry

Michael Moore set out to make a movie attacking the American insurance industry and ended up attacking the American character. By the end of his movie SiCKO, his plaint is less about American resistance to government-run health care than its overarching rejection of collectivism. As Moore puts it, everywhere else it’s “a world of we,” but here a “world of me.”

His voice thus joins a vast, age-old chorus of left-wing bafflement and disillusion at American exceptionalism — our national traits that have prevented the development of a statist politics along continental European lines. Moore’s explanation for this phenomenon is typically twisted: Americans are saddled with debt from college loans and health care, and that keeps us from demanding French-style pampering from our government for fear of foreclosure by The Man.

Tellingly, Moore picks up this theory in an interview with Tony Benn, an old-school British socialist of the sort who simply doesn’t exist in the U.S. Here, our left-wing politicians vote for war funding before they vote against it, always trimming to keep from rubbing too strongly against the American grain. Moore fervently wishes that grain were different, and he celebrates all countries where government has a vaster reach and tighter grip — from Cuba to France.

He is practically the Leni Riefenstahl of socialism. Anyone in a country with government-provided health insurance is portrayed as tripping through daisies to the hospital, where everything is free and the care is perfect. America, in contrast, is a vista of unrelieved gloom. Moore is adept at the propagandist’s art — keep it simple and keep it dishonest.

You would never know that America ranks highest in the world in patient satisfaction, or that only about half of emergency-room patients in Canada get timely treatment. This is not to say that Moore doesn’t highlight real problems in the American insurance system — which is badly distorted by the fact that most people get their insurance through their employers — but his complaint goes much deeper: Americans don’t have the “free” things of the French, who not only get lots of paid vacation, but have government nannies come to their homes to do their laundry for them after they have children.

Moore hints at — of course — a conspiracy to try to keep us from liking the French for fear that we too will develop a taste for the good life on the government’s dime. Unfortunately for Moore, it’s worse than that. America has a deep-seated individualistic value system that, coupled with the lack of European-style class conflict, inhibited the rise of social democracy here. As one historian has put it, if you were to set out to design a society hostile to collectivism, “one could not have done much better than to implement the social development that has, mostly unplanned, constituted America.”

This exceptionalism has its downsides — our high rates of violence, for one — but it also has created a extraordinarily dynamic and open society that can adjust to and thrive in the globalized economy in a way that sclerotic social democracies can’t. Just as Moore is apotheosizing France, its people took to the polls in near-record numbers to elect a reformist president devoted to making them work harder and weaning them from cushy benefits. In this sense, Michael Moore is more French than the French.

He hails the street protests that engulf France every time the government threatens to take away some benefit. We don’t match the French in demonstrations, but once established, our government programs are just as fiercely defended. Liberals agitate for more government programs knowing that they create their own self-perpetuating constituencies and chip away at our culture of self-reliance. For now, that culture is still robust, as American exceptionalism remains stubbornly exceptional.

If you really want sweeping French-style social-welfare programs and repressive tax rates, your only alternative is to, like the American expats Moore glorifies in his movie, move to France.

© 2007 by King Features Syndicate

[facedown]

What an insult. Riefenstahl was talented.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Practically ?

[Malesherbes]

Yes, talented - and good looking in her youth, and also into physical fitness. Michael Moore: ugly, fat, and slobbish in both mind and body.

[Billthedrill]

Riefenstahl was talented.

Aw, you beat me to it. Moore is a one-trick pony way past his prime, and his prime was nothing to write home about. It's fairly clear what he has in mind with this particular little stinker - set the issue up as pivotal in the 2008 elections. That's what he tried with Fahrenheit 9/11 - it didn't take, and it was better timed. The most precious thing to this bloated ego is the notion that his public hangs on his every word. Probably both of them do.

[lowbridge]

To quote myself:

He has found his niche in life which financialy rewards him very handsomely. Before these documentaries, he was a newsletter writer, worked for Mother Jones magazine, was on his local school board, among other positions. All of which paid little to nothing. Then he took a gamble on himself making the documentary Roger & Me. The gamble paid off very well. Roger & Me was a critical and financial success and Moore became a celeb on the left and a millionaire.

Powerful people in the Hollywood industry were lining up to offer him deals. He no longer had to scrounge for funding his projects. If the Roger & Me movie had failed, he probably would have went back to writing for Newsletters that nobody reads, earning mere pennies if that. But Roger & Me was a wake up call to him. He could make documentaries that would appeal to those left of center. Didnt matter if these documentaries were filled with lies, he gets millions of bucks in return, be a celebrity, and a hero to his fellow leftists.

For him to stop telling lies, and start telling the truth means that he would have to go back to a near poverty existence as well as anonymity. And there’s no way he’s voluntarilly going back to that.

[Oztrich Boy]

rubbish. Moore's films only appeal to those who agree with him politically.

But today, with all we know about Hitler and the Nazi regime, Triumph of the Will is still visually awesome.

[Corporate Law]

Lumpy Riefenstahl

[Misterioso]

This exceptionalism has its downsides — our high rates of violence, for one —

When did this "violence" begin increasing in our history? And why? I think the crime rate began rising with the New Deal--the beginning of our descent into Marxist/Socialist government policy and the collectivist mindset that has taken over our society. Lowry tries to blame Anerican exceptionalism for the lawlessness instead of laying it at the feet of frauds like Moore.

[Steely Tom]

Walter Winchell called Leni Riefenstahl “as pretty as a swastika.” I wonder how he’d describe Moore.

[jmcenanly]

What an insult. Riefenstahl was talented.

She is probably also one of the most visually quoted directors of all time. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg borrowed from her liberally.

[neverdem]

Lumpy Riefenstahl

LOL!

[mjp]

everywhere else it’s “a world of we,” but here a “world of me.”

The United States is the nation of the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment. This is what makes us unique and better than any other country. We are a country founded on ideas such as reason, individualism,egoism, independence, freedom, rights,capitalism, limited government,and no monarch.

Michael Moore can take his ideas back to Germany, which is where his world view comes from, with its altruism, collectivism, statism, socialism, and irrationality.

[ronnie raygun]

I can’t wait until Moore comes down with a disease so we can deny him medical assistance and send his fat ass to Cuba for help! Keep eating at Mickey dee’s fat boy your on your way to sickoville

[shankbear]

MM should just go hug up to another giant bag of Double Stuff Oreos and Rosie O’Donnel and STFU. He is a witless punk communist. He will be Hillary’s Director of Propaganda if she is elected. OMG!!!!

[Arkady]

Great analogy. Except Leni had to wait a decent interval of 50 years to be ressurected and reinstated by the always American-hating liberal left.
Now it’s instant, all the decency has gone out of it...no time to waste..on with the revolution!!!!!

[elcid1970]

Leni Riefenstahl, the absolutely morally worthless unrepentant Hitler-loving Nazi to the very end of her entire century of life upon this war-blighted Earth, even she was better than the fat fascist dictator-loving Michael Moore.

At least Hitler is dead. Castro and Chavez are not.

):^(

[Cacique]

bfl

[pray4liberty]

Michael Moore: ugly, fat, and slobbish in both mind and body.

It's a shame that one so young can be so fat. His corpulence can reduce his lifespan 20+ years.

[SteveMcKing]

Moore is also driven by his subject matter, not by the art of film-making. Riefenstahl, in contrast, was purportedly repentant about her early years.

"Being sorry isn't nearly enough, but I can't tear myself apart or destroy myself. It's so terrible. I've suffered anyway for over half a century and it will never end, until I die. It's such an incredible burden, that to say 'sorry'... it's inadequate, it expresses too little."

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0726166/bio