Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore is a maker of documentary films for liberal values and anti-American causes, and his latest titled "Capitalism: A Love Story" is going to be no exception. In this film, slated to be released in early Fall, Moore will attempt to portray capitalism as the root cause of the American and global financial meltdowns over the past couple of years, calling it "the biggest swindle in American history."

Let's give credit where it is due, Moore is good at his craft. He knows how to push all the right buttons, slice all the right video clips, edit all the right sound bytes, and basically tell a story in the way that his political views and values want that story told. You need a propaganda documentary made? Michael Moore is your man.

This is all well and good as long as you understand going into the theatre that this is what you will be paying your money to see: propaganda. One side of a story, told from a slanted view, through a tinted lens. The fact is that greedy corporate tycoons and misguided politicians, flawed human beings, have been the problem, not our capitalist economic system.

Now if what you really want is the truth of the matter, explained in depth, with examples and in complete historical and political context, then what you want to do is pick up a copy of a book called "How Capitalism Saved America" by Thomas J. DiLorenzo and find out why he says "Free-market capitalism, based on private property and peaceful exchange, is the source of civilization and human progress."

In his book, DiLorenzo fully explains the overwhelming evidence which indicates that exactly what Barack Obama and his Democratic Party cohorts are doing right now: more regulations, taxes, government-run industries, controls, protectionism, and other forms of intervention, the poorer a country will be. These interventions will cause higher unemployment, higher prices, shortages of goods and services, and many other problems.

In his great work on capitalism titled "The Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith explained it's most important elements: the division of labor, social cooperation, and free exchange. The idea of serving one's fellow man is central to capitalism. As DiLorenzo puts it "In a capitalist economy the primary means of improving one's standard of living is giving others that which they want."

It is precisely because of capitalism that "the average American working person today lives better in many ways than kings did serveral hundred years ago." Capitalism is pure democracy. People decide how they wish to spend their hard-earned money, in effect voting with their dollars, and everyone's dollar vote counts the same.

Key to capitalism, and indeed the key to overall freedom and economic prosperity, is private property rights. The absence of such rights has been the major cause of poverty around the world. Since the 15th century creation of commercial property law and commercial law courts designed to enforce and protect property rights, capitalism has grown and flourished, along with every nation that has adhered closely to it's principles.

You see it already with attacks on the tobacco industry, the health industry, and many more to come. The Obama administration is clearly anti-capitalist, couching the control of money and power in public interest rhetoric. They will destroy jobs and economic freedom, all in an effort at socialist control. And now Moore will actually attack the very idea of capitalism itself.

Have there been those who have abused the capitalist system? Absolutely. As long as there are living, breathing human beings behind any form or system of government or economic power there will be greed, misuse, and corruption. That is what our justice and legal system is supposed to be for, to weed out criminals and make them pay for their crimes.

What America needed was a change to closer scrutiny in business practices and harsher public punishments for those who abused and manipulated the financial and economic system. It also needed a far more realistic home ownership policy. It needed to tweak capitalism, not trash it in favor of corporate bailouts, tax-payer funded stimulus plans, and socialism.

DiLorenzo states at the end of his book, that "capitalism has been America's great blessing." I might rather put it that our relationship with God since our very inception has been our actual great blessing. The intellectual ability to formulate and put into practice our system of capitalism has been one of His great gifts to us. The question before us now is, will Americans allow 2 1/2 centuries of greateness to be destroyed by one radical presidential term?

American Health System Not the Real Sicko

In the summer of 2007, ultra-liberal propagandist Michael Moore released his documentary film titled 'Sicko', which was intended to compare the U.S. health care system to other nations and to tell HMO horror stories. Moore's basic premise was that the American system was somehow broken, and that it just could not compare with the health care received in places such as communist Cuba. What Moore and his fellow liberal idealogues would have you believe is that if only the United States would adopt a national health care system such as the one implemented in Canada, and would guarantee everyone free health care, all would be well with the world. So many more regular folks would be healthy and whole, not just the wealthy patrons of the current health care model. Of course Moore weighs down his films with so many outright lies and distortions of truth that the majority of thinking Americans have come to recognize them for the far left, neo-socialism smear pieces that they are in actuality, and have stayed away from the theatres in droves. As Cato Institute medical expert Dr. Michael D. Tanner reports in the article "The Doctor Is In" from the July 2008 issue of Townhall magazine: "Moore cites a 2000 World Health Organization study that ranks the U.S. health care system as 37th in the world." Tanner goes on to explain that the W.H.O. measured highly subjective items such as 'fairness', 'not having a sufficiently progressive tax system', 'tobacco control', 'not providing all citizens health insurance', and not enough 'social welfare' programs. Bottom line, the W.H.O. takes a political position, not a medical one, in ranking the U.S. so low, playing right into Moore's socialist visions. When the W.H.O. does finally talk of the actual medical care here in the U.S., they rank us at the top for the truly important areas of 'provider choice', 'dignity', 'autonomy', 'confidentiality', and perhaps most importantly 'timely care'. You see, American health care is actually so good that large numbers of foreigners come here every year for their treatments, drugs, and surgeries. Want a perfect example? Belinda Stronach, a member of the Canadian Parliament, developed breast cancer and, as Tanner reported: "abandoned her country's national health care system", instead seeking treatment at a California hospital. Stronach could have received her treatment right there in Canada, but would have had to go through the red tape, referals, and waiting lists that the rest of her countrymen have to endure. But she didn't have time to wait, since over 800,000 Canadians are currently on waiting lists for various procedures, suffering what their highest court calls 'chronic pain' which many will endure until they die while still waiting their place on the lists to be reached. In his film, Moore further makes a point that Cuban babies have low infant mortality rates when compared with American babies, and yet fails to point out that Cuba has one of the world's highest abortion rates, meaning that many babies with potential health problems are never brought to term in the first place. And here in the U.S. our technology is so far advanced that low birth-weight babies who are automatically dead in Cuba can be born alive here. Some will make it, some will not, and those that do not contribute mightily to our infant mortality rate. As I said, in Cuba none of these types of babies would make it home alive. Whether it be cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, or even AIDS, patients of any disease, illness, or condition have a far better chance at survival and cure when treated at American health facilities under the current U.S. health care system. As long as our system continues to be free of national restrictions and buerocratic red tape, this will continue to be the case. Do we have problems? Sure, but a deficit in the quality of care here is not one of them. We need to figure out a way to keep prescription drugs at the lowest possible prices. But the way to reach that goal is not to restrict or regulate drug companies, but instead ensure they have incentives to lower those prices and keep them affordable. How we balance the need for greater care for some of our citizens against the need to maintain the availablity of the best health care in the world is one question. How we balance the desire to see our poorest citizens receive basic health care against the need to keep the incentives high for our best medical facilities to research and develop the best treatments into the future is another question. There are many questions. But the answer is not to scrap the system that we have in favor of some 'national' or 'universal' health care system. None of us need that nightmare of long lines, long waits, long periods of pain, and shorter lives.