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A Defensive Victory in the Senate The Fairness Doctrine Engine Starter

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Government is Force, Michael Moore

by Christopher Chantrill
July 09, 2007 at 12:46 am

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THE IMPORTANT thing to know about left-wing agitator Michael Moore is that he just doesn’t get it.

Recently John Stossel interviewed Michael Moore on the ABC program 20/20, and found that Moore has curious ideas on government and force.

"But government is force," I said to him. He was incredulous.

Michael Moore: Why do you see it as force?

Me: Because government takes money with force from people and gives it to others.

Moore: No, it doesn’t, actually. The government is of, by, and for the people. The people elect the government, and the people determine whether or not they’ll allow the government to collect taxes from them.

It takes one to know one, and the best-selling author of Stupid White Men would know.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. In his stage persona as a slacker schlub Michael Moore unwittingly tells the story of how the progressive movement of Peace and Justice has betrayed slacker schlubs like the one he plays on TV.

Michael Moore in Roger and Me faced the awful truth about union jobs and turned away. How could General Motors CEO Roger Smith close auto plants and put good working people out of work? FDR told folk like Moore’s parents and grandfather that they and theirs had lifetime jobs at General Motors with good union wages and benefits and had nothing to fear but fear itself. How could General Motors turn around and close plants and lay off union workers and teeter on the edge of bankruptcy?

Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine faced the awful truth about government education and turned away. How could middle-class kids shoot up their wonderful public school? It must be the level of violence in the United States, or aggressive US foreign policy—or maybe sport hunters, or defense contractors, or Michigan Militia members, or maybe the stultifying conformism in Littleton, Colorado, or maybe a “climate of fear.” It couldn’t be that public education had failed.

Now Michael Moore in SiCKO faces the awful truth about government-controlled health care and turns away. After half a century of government regulation and spending in health care he is shocked to encounter horror stories of for-profit insurance companies denying coverage to sick Americans. How could this be? It’s simple. Government doesn’t regulate enough. It should take over the whole system like single payer Britain and Canada. It could not be that in the land of single-payer the government health system is worse than evil HMOs, and denies not merely coverage but actual health care with waiting lists.

No wonder that Michael Moore really doesn’t know the difference between freedom and compulsion. Whether as slacker schlub or as gifted left-wing agitator, he cannot admit that his way of building a better world is with the clunking fist of force.

At least Michael Moore is good for something. He and his lefty friends have done a fine job over the years pointing out the hypocrisies of the United States government. Noam Chomsky has pointed out that the global superpower is indeed a wielder of power, and it uses propaganda and manipulation to “manufacture” consent. Howard Zinn has written a People’s History of the United States to remind us that the United States did not experience a virgin birth and committed outrages upon everyone from native Americans to African slaves and union workers. In Bowling for Columbine Michael Moore shows us that US foreign policy has resorted to force numerous times since World War II.

What our lefty friends cannot admit is how their progressive program of Peace and Justice is from first to last a program of force and compulsion.

That is why Michael Moore maintains that when “the people elect the government” the stain of force is washed away from government action. “The people” do not do force. Only imperialists and fascists are into force.

Sorry Michael. Government is force, even genuine democratic government. Everything government does involves compulsion.

When Democrats set up a government pension plan and force everyone to contribute, that is force, even though it achieves a noble aim of assisting people in their old age.

When Democrats set up a government health care program for seniors and force the workers to support it, that is force, even though it achieves a noble aim of relieving seniors of most health care costs in their old age.

When Democrats stand in the schooolhouse door at the bidding of government school workers and block all reform of a failing government school system, that is force.

And the question every Democrat must be forced to answer is: Why? Why is your vision for America always about force?

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism


Society and State

For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008


Socialism equals Animism

Imagining that all order is the result of design, socialists conclude that order must be improvable by better design of some superior mind.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit


Sacrifice

[Every] sacrifice is an act of impurity that pays for a prior act of greater impurity... without its participants having to suffer the full consequences incurred by its predecessor. The punishment is commuted in a process that strangely combines and finesses the deep contradiction between justice and mercy.
Frederick Turner, Beauty: The Value of Values


Responsibility

Seeckt: "to make of each individual member of the army a soldier who, in character, capability, and knowledge, is self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful in taking responsibility [verantwortungsfreudig] as a man and a soldier."
MacGregor Knox et. al., The dynamics of military revolution, 1300-2050


Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit


Racial Discrimination

[T]he way “to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis,” Brown II, 349 U. S., at 300—301, is to stop assigning students on a racial basis. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
Roberts, C.J., Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District


Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy


Physics, Religion, and Psychology

Paul Dirac: “When I was talking with Lemaître about [the expanding universe] and feeling stimulated by the grandeur of the picture that he has given us, I told him that I thought cosmology was the branch of science that lies closest to religion. However [Georges] Lemaître [Catholic priest, physicist, and inventor of the Big Bang Theory] did not agree with me. After thinking it over he suggested psychology as lying closest to religion.”
John Farrell, “The Creation Myth”


Pentecostalism

Within Pentecostalism the injurious hierarchies of the wider world are abrogated and replaced by a single hierarchy of faith, grace, and the empowerments of the spirit... where groups gather on rafts to take them through the turbulence of the great journey from extensive rural networks to the mega-city and the nuclear family...
David Martin, On Secularization


Never Trust Experts

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Lord Salisbury, “Letter to Lord Lytton”


Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society


presented by Christopher Chantrill

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