WHERE TO INVADE NEXT

WHERE TO INVADE NEXT is Michael Moore’s new leftist diatribe against the United States where an unhealthy looking Michael visits many countries in Europe to promote the lie that European socialism has the best ideas and America is just a right-wing, racist, sexist garbage dump. As usual, Michael mostly gives an incredibly superficial, simplistic, factually false, irrational view of alleged social problems and the socialist solutions he claims work better, with little real evidence or logic to support his arguments.

Michael begins by contending that the United States hasn’t won a war since World War II, the first of many big fat lies. Contrary to what Michael contends, the United States won the Korean War and was winning the Vietnam War under Nixon and the Iraq War under Bush Two when Democrats pulled the plug from these two hard-won victories achieved by America’s brave troops. America also was able to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in the early 1990s, just as President Bush promised to do at the time. Whether these wars were prudent or morally justified wars is another question, but lose them we certainly did not!

So, after mocking the generals at the Pentagon (who serve, by the way, at the pleasure of the President, including leftist Democrats like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), Michael travels to Italy. There, he shows all the “benefits” Italian workers receive but which American workers are denied, such as three months of paid vacation and shorter hours. He then tries to show that the Italian economy is still pretty successful despite all these extra benefits and all the interruptions in people’s working lives that Italy’s socialist government forces on the country.

Next, Michael goes to a school cafeteria in France, where the children are fed gourmet meals at lunch. Why can’t American schools serve better food? Moore asks.

Other places on Michael’s tour of socialism overseas include Slovenia, where young people (including people from overseas) are offered “free” college tuition; Tunisia, which now offers “free” healthcare to its citizens; Norway, whose prison cells are more like small individual condos and where the harshest sentence (including for murderers) is only 21 years in prison; Portugal, where all drugs have been “legalized”; Finland, whose schoolchildren have the highest test scores in the world; and, Iceland, which, in the wake of the 2007-08 financial crisis, put some bankers in jails. In each case, Michael touts the socialist policies he discusses. While visiting Norway, he attacks the death penalty, but while visiting Tunisia, he praises that country’s policy to provide “free” abortions to any woman who wants them.

WHERE TO INVADE NEXT is full of falsehoods, irrational arguments and one-sided propaganda.

In the first place, Italy’s economy has been going downhill for the last 20 years. The situation is even worse in Greece, where socialist policies have bankrupted the entire country. Were it not for Germany bankrolling some of these failing socialist states, their situations would be even worse.

In the second place, there is no such thing as free anything. Somebody somewhere pays for “free” college tuition, “free” healthcare and “free” school lunches. That’s why taxes are generally higher in Europe’s socialist states than they are in the United States. Also, one of the ways socialist governments pay for things is by high property taxes and high death taxes, which cause inflation and race the prices on all goods and services. The average person (especially those who only rent a place to live) doesn’t always see the accumulative effects of such taxes because they are deliberately and conveniently hidden.

In the third place, one major reason Europe can afford all these better benefits is because the United States military has been protecting Europe since 1941, when the Japanese socialist government bombed Pearl Harbor and Germany’s socialist government under Adolf Hitler declared war against the United States. Thus, European countries like Italy, which also received massive amounts of foreign aid from the United States after World War II, can afford to pay for all these socialist benefits because they don’t have to build large armies anymore. Thus, European socialists can leave the military necessities to America and its taxpayers.

In the fourth place, because of its socialist programs, and the high taxes that come with them, Europe generally has had a worse unemployment rate and lower economic growth than the United States. Also, since Pres. Obama began increasing America’s socialist programs, including Obamacare, many more people have left the American workforce, many more people are on the public dole, many more people can no longer afford private healthcare (much less college tuition), and family income has been stagnant.

In the fifth place, contrary to what Moore claims in his movie, the biggest factor in the 2008 fiscal crisis was big government, not bankers. First, the government forced banks to give generous housing loans to low-income people under Presidents Carter and President Clinton. Then, when some conservatives tried under President George W. Bush to pull back these programs, or institute better oversight, they were stymied by Democratic Party leaders in Congress, especially Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Senator Barney Frank (see pages 172 and 350 of HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT by Peter J. Wallison, Encounter Books, New York: 2015). This government corruption hit the government-sponsored financial groups Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pretty hard, resulting in the huge financial collapse that, sadly, swept Barack Obama into power. Thus, if anyone should really go to jail, it’s the leftist government leaders and bureaucrats who helped create the housing bubble, especially President Clinton, Senator Barney Frank and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, not the bankers!

Of course, Moore’s laudatory depiction of Finland schools is unfairly and deceptively biased, because America is a far more diverse country than Finland is, with pockets of urban poverty and crime that greatly reduce America’s average test scores. Thus, if we account for this diversity, and use statistics that compare like to like, the test scores of American schoolchildren are actually fairly equivalent to Finland’s test scores. Also, because of its homogeneous culture, Finland is much more pro-education than some parts of America, another factor causing the alleged disparity between Finland and America’s test scores. Furthermore, here’s an article from a mother who immigrated to America from Finland after going through the Finnish school system – http://www.skimbacolifestyle.com/2011/09/finnish-education-system.html. As she points out, there are benefits American schools give children that are lacking in Finland’s system. For instance, she likes the fact that children in the United States are exposed to more cultural diversity and are also taught to be more independent minded and more entrepreneurial than children in Finland. Also, unlike Finland, America has an emphasis on team sports that Finland lacks, and she loves the “team spirit” that American sports education teaches, a spirit that still allows for individual effort and recognition. Finally, Katja Presnal notes in another article, which can be found at http://www.skimbacolifestyle.com/2008/03/finnish-school-system.html, that children in Finland don’t watch as much TV and, when they do, it’s often subtitled programs from other countries, including America. These subtitles help improve the children’s reading abilities, she adds.

Perhaps the most egregious, abhorrent and contradictory moments in Moore’s new documentary involve his opposition to capital punishment for murderers coupled with a scene where Moore praises the new government of Tunisia for providing “free” abortion services to women. Moore praises a 21-year jail sentence for a mass murderer who killed more than 70 people in Norway! Then, while interviewing some police officers in Portugal, Moore asks them what’s the one thing they want to say to America. All the officers urge America to do away with its death penalty for murderers. Adding insult to injury, they say that “human dignity” demands America and all other counties abolish the death penalty. Of course, Moore wholeheartedly agrees with the officers and tells them he will present their suggestion to his fellow Americans, which (of course) he has now done with this documentary. Then, in the scene where he reports on Tunisia’s healthcare system, Moore praises that country’s “free” abortion “services” while condemning the murder of a notorious partial birth abortion surgeon in America several years ago.

Moore’s self-righteous proposals on capital punishment and abortion in these scenes are thoroughly evil. First, it can be argued that “human dignity” actually demands that society institute a death penalty for people who deliberately, with premeditation and “malice aforethought,” take the life of another person. By taking the life of another person in this way, such a criminal has rightly forfeited his own right to live. Second, despite his obvious compassion for the lives of mass murderers, Moore’s plea for “human dignity” apparently doesn’t include innocent preborn babies. What a hypocrite!!! Moore’s positions on capital punishment and abortion in this movie are not only morally reprehensible and offensive, they are also logically contradictory, and, therefore, irrational and false. Concern for human life and human dignity requires the death penalty for first-degree murder. It also requires that abortion be banned outright.

These facts show that WHERE TO INVADE NEXT is just another Anti-American, socialist, humanist diatribe from Michael Moore. Moore’s movie is full of lies, invalid comparisons, false history, and extremely poor economic and political analysis. From beginning to end, it’s just false, irrational, politically correct, leftist propaganda. Sadly, many people will be duped by Michael Moore’s one-sided, extremely biased presentation in WHERE TO INVADE NEXT. Ironically, one of the reasons behind this is the fact that America’s educational system, including its colleges, has been taken over by overpaid leftist bureaucrats who not only indoctrinate America’s schoolchildren with leftist and even Anti-Christian, atheist propaganda, but who also indoctrinate its teachers. WHERE TO INVADE NEXT also contains some “f” words and images of full frontal nudity at a spa.

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