Moore Me Me Me Me!
Which political side is really the selfish side?
JoeUser Forums
Michael Moore and I share two things in common. We're both from Michigan and we're both grew up in the midst of Big Three blue collar workers. But that's where the similarities end and the different readings on what the "majority" of Americans think about things.
Michael Moore seems to have two basic beliefs:
(1) The majority of Americans have liberal opinions.
(2) Conservatives are all about "me me me me".
To extrapolate on that, he essentially feels that most Americans are good honest folks but that a small minority of greedy bastards (called Republicans) get a big advantage over the majority of Americans because they put themselves first and everyone else second.
Unfortunately for Moore, reality doesn't work out very well. As a crude characterure of American beliefs, you can see what he's getting at. But the reality, expressed in the policies and results of the Republican and Democratic parties do not work out so well.
The Republican view could generally be expressed as "Just keep the government out of my way so that me and my family can live out our lives without interference." The Democratic view could generally be expressed as "We're all in this together!" Certainly the latter slogan is more eloquent than the former. And Moore latches on to that idealism without recognizing the actual result of policies. Many people, myself included, believe the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If good intentions determined the inherent value of a political ideal then sure, the liberals would be kicking butt. It's easier to be a liberal than a conservative because liberals have a monopoly on warm fuzzy thoughts while us bastardly conservatives are stuck having to live and work in the real world.
In social policy, the conservative adage could be "Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime." Self-determination, self-reliance are the go words of the conservative movement. Society is made up not of groups but of individuals and the best, strongest society is made up of healthy productive individuals. Social policy by a government, if any at all, should focus on allowing individuals to be all that they can be. It also recognizes that not all individuals are going to make the cut and is willing to the chips fall.
By contrast, liberal social policy, the other half of the adage "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day." Policies like Affirmative-Action, Welfare, Unemployment benefits, High minimum wage, Free health care, and so forth all fall into this trap. They worry about the "today" without recognizing that they aren't helping empower individuals so that they can take care of themselves over time. Their policies, given enough time, would turn us into a nation of dependents.
Conservatives recognize this and strongly oppose this. They also oppose this because it tends to be conservatives who foot the bill. So it's a double whammy. Conservatives are forced to pay for a misguided social policy that robs their fellow citizens of the incentive and ability to fend for themselves.
And for this, Moore and his ilk deride conservatives as "greedy" or "selfish" or more to the point about "me me me me me". But which group is really the selfish group? The one that objects to having money they earned confiscated so that it can wreck society with the slow poison of welfare or the one that demands that they get free money?"
Moore may indeed believe that most Americans have liberal views. But he's quite mistaken. It's understandable for him to believe that. He spent a lot of time in union towns. Unions exist (today) principally to extract more "Stuff" for Union members even if it has a long term cost (such as eventually causing manufacturing jobs overseas -- and then having the gall to blame the manufacturers for moving overseas when it was incessant union demands that made it a competitive necessity). To me, union attitudes are quite "greedy". But not to Moore. To him, it's a lot easier to point to a few fat cats at the top living it up than to recognize the thousands of union workers around him who use pressure tactics to get artificially high compensation. They destroy their futures to live in the now in other words. This is quite in line with liberal policy.
When Moore began to hang out with other liberal minded people, the environment changed from union people to the more stereotypical "intellectual" liberal who evaluates the value of an individual based on his or her intentions rather than deeds. And over in hollywood, the left dominates. And so, no doubt in Moore's world he can say "When I was with my poor friends in Flint Michigan, they had liberal views and when I hang out in Hollywood it's the same thing."
I'm working on a political strategy game called The Political Machine. It's based on actual census and polling data and I can assure Moore that the majority of Americans hold conservative social and political views. The only reason why elections are so close is that Republicans have failed to attract moderate or mildly conservative voters. Many Democrats ("Truman Democrats") are quite conservative in outlook but vote reliably for Democrats.
But Moore is right about one thing: The long term bodes well for Democrats. But only because he's dead wrong about which side is about "me me me me me". Democratic policies tend to focus now on giving free stuff to individuals. And so people vote for the party that's going to provide them (me me me me) with free stuff. Hence, even many conservative elderly voters now vote for Democrats. It's not conservatives demanding free stuff, it's the liberals. Conservatives just want to be left the hell alone.
