"Capitalism: A Love Story": Michael Moore's newest piece of trash

Michael Moore has once again made a movie ignoring factual information and exploiting peoples personal tragedies to push his liberal agenda. The movie begins with images of police coming into houses to evict tenants from houses that have been foreclosed on. A common Democratic strategy of divide and conquer is then applied. A voice comments that "This is capitalism, a system of taking and giving, mostly taking". Apparently, Moore has once again gotten things mixed up. Pure capitalism has nothing to do with "taking and giving". Socialism would much better describe a society that redistributes wealth by taxing (taking) and using that money for various government projects and entitlement programs.

He moves on to review a company called Condo Vultures. This company is in the business of buying up foreclosed homes and selling them for a profit. It is portrayed as an evil company doing evil things. This is not evil at all. They are only taking houses that are no longer being lived in and re-establishing communities by making the houses habitable again. This is an example of how capitalism works and only hurts Moore's argument.

President Ronald Reagan is his next target. Moore makes it seem like this was the beginning of capitalism which is ridiculous. Moore states that "Banks and corporations had a simple plan to remake America to serve them. But to pull it off, it required a spokesperson (Reagan) to pull it off". He goes on to say that after elected "America would now be run like a corporation".

In an odd move, Moore interviews several priests about the "failure" of capitalism. First of all, these people are not economists or political scientists, and have no authority beyond their personal opinions on the topic. It is also suspicious that both the priests interviewed have close connections to Moore and his family. The first priest Father Dick Preston, who married Moore and his wife, says "Capitalism is an evil, it is contrary to all that is good, it is contrary to the common good, it is contrary to compassion, it is contrary to all the major religions".

The second priest interviewed is Father Peter Dougherty, who married Moore's sister and brother in-law, and states "The system has built into it what we call propaganda, the ability to convince people who are victimized by the system to support the system and see it as good". This once again sounds like he is talking about a communist society.

The claim that is often made about capitalism is that it does not provide for all people. This could not be further from the truth. Economic freedom is necessary in order to have personal freedom. Capitalism gives people the choice on how they want to spend their money instead of it being forcibly taken away from them. It is a bit ironic that Moore criticizes economic freedom when he has benefited from it so much. If Moore were living in a country like china and were forced to give up most of his money to the government; he would never have been able to become the entrepreneur he is today. He also wouldn't have the benefit of being able to speak out against the government and exercise his right to free speech.

He blames the housing crisis entirely on Bush, Capitalism, and the greedy companies which caused the whole mess. He completely ignores issues such as the government controlled creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the pressure put on them by Barney Frank and other members of congress to issue sub-prime mortgages. He also ignores the people who were living beyond their means and took out mortgages on houses that they could not afford. He is right to blame the companies as well, but when assessing the housing crisis you cannot cherry pick the pieces that support your argument and ignore the ones that don't.

The ending of the movie praises the election of Obama, who supposedly will bring on a whole new era of government. Obama has only brought more of the same. He staffed his administration with many of the same people, from the same companies, that Moore is condemning. Moore makes it clear, with pictures of the Katrina disaster playing on the screen, that this is not the capitalist world he wants to live in. Government inaction caused much of the devastation after the hurricane and I fail to see how capitalism had anything to do with it.

The final words are "Capitalism must be replaced with democracy". This is yet another perplexing statement since Democracy is a political system and Capitalism is an economic system. I hope that most people are able to see Capitalism: A Love Story for what it is, a piece of garbage.