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 | Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 6:27:33 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Tim Peck
E-mail: timothypeck(at)yahoo.com
URL: http://timpeck.blogspot.com/
Capitalism: The Movie
Michael Moore unveils title of new doc
'Capitalism: A Love Story' to be released Oct. 2
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikeinthenews/index.php?id=14178
Michael Moore's opting to spoof romantic conventions in titling his upcoming documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story," which addresses the causes of the global economic meltdown. "It will be the perfect date movie," Moore said in an announcement Wednesday. "It's got it all -- lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It's a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let's just say it: It's capitalism."
Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story
http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/07/08/michael-moores-capitalism-a-lov ...
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has finally announced the title of his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. I have to admit, I like it a lot more than the previously proposed “Save The CEOs”, which came from the clever and nontraditional teaser trailer Moore released in June. Others had speculated that the doc would be titled “Bailout,” which I also liked. But Capitalism: A Love Story hits the perfect note. In the announcement, Moore calls the film “the perfect date movie.” Moore recently joked that people could call the film “A Michael Moore Comedy About the End of the World as We Know It.” |
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| Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 6:42:09 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: brian0918
E-mail: my handle, through gmail
URL: http://reality.ohio.newintellectuals.org
It was great meeting everyone at OCON. I'm left with this empty feeling now, wanting more - can't wait till next year! |
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| Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 6:47:46 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
The irony of Michael Moore is that he has achieved so much success precisely because of capitalism. I sometimes wonder whether he really believes the nonsense that he publishes, or if he is a modern-day Gail Wynand (a left-wing Rush Limbaugh, as it were). |
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| Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 7:59:03 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Santiago Valenzuela
E-mail: sanjavalen(at)gmail.com
Michael Moore would actually be great study material, I think. Specifically, on the importance of philosophy in a culture or, alternatively, the impracticability of pragmatism. Life has a million different facets to and without a solid philosophical base, even fairly honest people are vulnerable to people like Moore, who can skillfully present a picture of "dysfunctional" capitalism and lead an otherwise reasonable person to believe that government intervention is the only solution.
I always thought that the present day's mishmash of bad philosophy, combined with the technology to preserve things that would be forgotten in a couple years time, even just 100 years ago, would lead this era to be one of a goldmine for philosophy professors wishing to get concrete examples of bad philosophy and its effects on a very personal level. |
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| Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 8:09:17 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: rrlv_frsh
There may be a parallel between Michael Moore's fundamental outlook and the judicial philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes (Jr.). I just finished reading Thomas Bowden's excellent, eye-opening article on Holmes in the Summer 2009 issue of The_Objective_Standard, and I highly recommend it. I was particularly struck by the complete contempt for individual rights expressed by Holmes. Bowden quotes Holmes as confiding to a friend, "All my life I have sneered at the natural rights of man." [p. 30]
What underlies Holmes' outlook, however, is pragmatism (and, under that, altruism-collectivism, the subordination of the individual to "society"). There was a book published by Louis Menand in 2002 titled, The_Metaphysical_Club, describing the origins of pragmatism in America and the role of Holmes, William James, and Charles Pierce in pragmatism's early history (1872). I found an apparently helpful entry about it on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metaphysical_Club
The Wikipedia entry begins:
"The Metaphysical Club was a conversational philosophical club that future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., psychologist William James, and polymath Charles Sanders Peirce formed in January 1872 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and dissolved in December 1872. Upon Peirce's arrival at Johns Hopkins University in 1879, he founded a new Metaphysical Club there. Despite the name, these academic philosophical discussion groups pursued critical thinking of a pragmatist and positivist nature and rejected traditional European metaphysics. [1] In fact, it was within these philosophical discussions that pragmatism is said to have been birthed."
As far as I have been able to discern, the view of Holmes (and Michael Moore) appears to be that there is no possible objective basis for "belief" in capitalism or individual rights -- no objective reality that would warrant it. Hence, all "belief" in individual rights and capitalism can be no more than an act of faith, like any other, and governmental policy comes down to a matter of collective "will" asserting itself over recalcitrant individuals. Moore is merely a more modern, more emotionally open and unabashed, specimen of this view. Moore apparently also highlights the emotional side of man's "love affair" with capitalism and liberty, alleged to be emotions having no basis in "reality" (since "reality" doesn't actually exist at all, according to pragmatism).
The attack on objective reality, in turn, dates back to a whole line of philosophers preceding and especially following the most highly influential of them all, Immanual Kant.
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| Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 11:24:50 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: RT
Michael Moore is intellectualism for the comic book crowd. I find it difficult to believe that anyone can watch his movies and honestly think they have absorbed any cognitive content. Instead, his movies give them slogans, catch-phrases, and anecdotes with which to feel that they are somehow morally superior because they are now 'inducted' into the world of ideas and 'kinda know something about important issues now'.
It still kills me how many people on the Left, including highly intelligent people, think "greed" is the primary motivation of businessmen. That's literally all they have to say about it -- this single asinine one-dimensional alleged psychological explanation (from people who criticize Ayn Rand's understanding of psychology and motivation!) that conjures up in their minds an image of Uncle Scrooge swimming in a huge vault of money, as his ultimate goal and pleasure. That's what all those Wall Street types are after, for example. Why do they want that? No answer. They just do -- because they're "greedy". QED. Nothing else need be said. Case closed. 100% explained! Done deal.
Oh yeah, and one more thing -- greed is evil! Because why should one person get to swim in a huge vault of money every day when there are people starving in the world, and that money could save their lives? That's just evil.
For all their complex intellectual nonsense, most on the Left really have never emerged from a comic-book level understanding of business and wealth-seeking. |
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| Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 17:51:04 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
Notwithstanding that the bailout of GM and Chrysler shouldn't have happened, now that both companies have emerged from bankruptcy, are we better off if they succeed or fail? My concern if they "fail" is that the $70 billion or so of taxpayer money that was pumped into these companies will be lost altogether. However, if they "succeed" then my concern is that there will be more pressure in the future to bail out enterprises and for government to take direct ownership stakes in "American" companies. What's the bigger risk? I'm going with the latter, since I view the precedent as the more significant risk. |
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| Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 18:27:51 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
KPO'M: the biggest risk is the third (and likeliest)option you didn't mention: that GM and Chrysler become zombies, like Amtrak -- they fail, but instead of cutting our losses at a paltry $70B, they continue pouring more money into them.
In Canada, these kinds of operations are called "crown" corporations. I wonder what they'll end up being named here... |
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| Monday, July 13, 2009 at 8:06:59 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Apollo
E-mail: gateway8507024(at)hotmail.com
Anyone want a DOLLHOUSE miniature of "The Fountainhead"?
http://www.amazon.com/DOLLHOUSE-MINIATURE-Fountainhead-Rand-1943/dp ... |
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| Monday, July 13, 2009 at 10:59:50 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: JT
E-mail: JT30014(at)hotmail.com
RT: "Michael Moore is intellectualism for the comic book crowd. I find it difficult to believe that anyone can watch his movies and honestly think they have absorbed any cognitive content."
I got into a brief discussion about socialized medicine with a coworker recently (he favors it and I'm against it). I quickly found out that his entire case was based on what he saw in Moore's movie "Sicko." My coworker seriously had never heard of the fact that hundreds of thousands of people in Britain and Canada die a year due to healthcare rationing under socialized medicine. Sadly, I'm sure he has a lot of company in that. That makes me feel pretty sicko. |
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| Monday, July 13, 2009 at 13:27:00 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: BrianS
I had the same experience with people and his much hyped 'Fahrenheit 9/11' |
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| Monday, July 13, 2009 at 14:06:37 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Andrew Dalton
E-mail: andrew.s.dalton(at)gmail.com
URL: http://witchdoctorrepellent.blogspot.com
I saw a small segment of "Bowling for Columbine" many years ago. It involved a glib, pseudo-psychological explanation of the American "culture of fear" or whatnot. I found it to be *epistemologically* offensive. It left me with no desire to watch anything else by Michael Moore ever again. |
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| Monday, July 13, 2009 at 19:04:08 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: KPO'M
E-mail: ka84796(at)comcast.net
Jim, you may be right.
That said, there is a slim chance that, if left otherwise unfettered, what's left of GM might emerge from this. They have managed to rid themselves of the union contracts and healthcare benefits, and do have a reasonably good portfolio of cars. It will be difficult for the government to resist, but if they truly are hands-off then it is possible they can extricate themselves from the situation and just chalk it up to an extraordinary measure for an extraordinary time. I have little confidence that they'll actually do that. GM can no longer oppose any new Washington mandate ("We saved you back in 2009..."), however ridiculous it is. Electric cars? Sure. 50MPG? No problem.
As much as I equivocated over my VW purchases (given Lower Saxony's 19% + Golden Share stake), I think I'll stay in the VW fold for a while. It's sad to say, but in this respect, the EU car market is more capitalist than the American market now. |
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