Does the "average American" agree with Michael Moore?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Thriller

Shawnmmcc, I presume you're now in the US. Where are you from originally?

As I said, I don't have an extensive understanding of the US system, so I hesitate to make comparisons. But I will make some observations and am happy to stand corrected, in the right spirit of course!

I gather that the US system was originally set up by the "founding fathers" to protect the rights of the individual, as a response to the puritanical movement in England that originally motivated the disaffected to escape establish their own settlements in the New World. This principle of the importance of the rights of the individual seems to me to be the overriding theoretical difference between the 2 systems, although in practice things are not necessarily as they seem.

The constitution reflects in large part the heterogeneous aspect of the U.S. population at the end of the 18th century along with the prevailing enlightenment philosophies popular at that time. It was an attempt to respect the rights and aspirations not only of Puritans in New England, but the Catholics in Maryland and the decendents of the cavaliers in Virginia. It harkens back in part to the "democratic" character of the Anglo-Saxons. The most salient difference between it and the system it replaced is the elimination of rigid class hierarchies still common in England. Of course it had to also reflect a countervailing reality in the southern states, slavery. We paid a very high price for that in blood during the civil war and no small amount of violence and social disruption in the century plus since.

Originally posted by Thriller
My personal viewpoint, biased as it obviously is, is that Americans probably place too much emphasis on this supposed right of individual freedom. This seems to me to lead to the undesirable attitude that "I can do what I bloody-well feel like and screw the rest of you" - such as carry a semi-automatic weapon around in my car and claim that I just want to shoot deer with it, or keep a loaded pistol next to my bed so I can shoot the first bugger who breaks into my home.

I consider people who shoot burglars to be a positive aspect of American society. I have personally avoided a knife attack because my assailant was scared off by my pretending to pull a gun on him, something that would have been impossible in most societies. It is in fact the burglar or the robber who has the attitude that you ascribe to Americans generally, and I don't like it any better than you do.

Also, do you know what a semi-automatic weapon is? It is effectively the same thing as a double action revolver, you pull the trigger and it fires one time. As such there isn't normally much of a point in writing out semi-automatic, as a fairly high percentage of modern firearms have this same capability, assuming that you aren't specifically describing the action of the weapon for some technical reason.

Originally posted by Thriller

I think this attitude goes hand in hand with the decision made by the US government (or is it the people?) to not provide a realistic social security "safety net" that seems to be common in the parliamentary democracy, and even more common in the European socialist-leaning democracies. I believe that the combination of these factors have led to the higher crime rates experienced by the US.

I don't think the "safety net" or lack thereof has much of an impact on the rates of violent crime in the U.S. IMO a much more plausible explanation is the heterogeneous character of the U.S. population and our frontier history. Simply stated the U.S. could never afford to spend the sort of money on law enforcement in the vast majority of the country that would have been required for the population to forego the need to defend themselves against criminals, Indians, Cattlemen, Negroes, Copperheads, Irishmen, Mexicans, Anarchists, KKK members, sheepmen, sodbusters, freelance marauders etc. ad nauseum and vice versa. The weapon of choice on all sides was the gun.

Add to this general era of self-defense and non-governmental collective defense is your only defense the various wars between different economic classes and economic interests, cultures, languages and races (again in a vacuum as far as effective law enforcement was concerned), and you end up with a population which is armed and very reluctant (to say the least) to disarming. Of course this describes less and less of the area of the U.S. as time goes by. One didn't necessarily have to go about armed in many places in the U.S. even hundreds of years ago. Cities tended to have the population densities required for effective law enforcement to keep the peace in whatever era (though the slums in many cities have been very dangerous off and on for at least 200 years). Homogeneous rural areas tended to be pretty safe in the northern states where racial violence wasn't an issue and the Indian "menace" had long been a thing of the past.

The civil war in many ways didn't solve anything at all vis a vis violence. By many measures things got a lot worse afterward, as groups of racist but puissant southern whites first undermined the integrated local and state governments and finally supplanted them with the acquiesence of the federal government. Southern states were run with a dual power structure from this point until the federal government got serious about upholding the constitution again in the 1960s. On the one hand you had the official state government, which was seperate and unequal passing racist laws and upholding the two-tiered power structure in almost every function. Behind these state and local governments the terrorists of the KKK still loomed and operated. They didn't only kill blacks either, but anyone who stood up against the status quo. We tend to forget that part of the reason that the south remained as it was for so long was that everyone was terrified of challenging those who would come and murder the opposition in the night.

As time passed blacks began to move to various regions of the country where they might get fairer treatment and a job in one of the rapidly growing industries. Amazingly both southern style racism and the KKK followed them into many northern and western states, though things were never as bad in New York as they were in Alabama. When I was a child in the 1960s I was shocked to find the inhabitants of Lansing Michigan (both black and white) to be far more racist than any of the people I knew in rural Arkansas where my mother's family was from. Part of the reason for that was the fairly recent arrival of larger numbers of blacks in the region and the competition between them and predominantly eastern european immigrants for the same jobs. Race riots were not uncommon when I was a child, and I was attacked by gangs of blacks for being white and attacked (and severely kicked and beaten) by whites for refusing to take their side in turn.

I'll throw one statistic your way and see if you agree that the terrorism of racists has had an enduring effect on the lives of Americans to this day. African Americans who comprise 12% of the U.S. population committed 48% of the homocides in the U.S. at least as recently as the late 1990s. Sure some cultures are violent, Americans are violent people in general. But there is a subculture within the African American population that is extraordinarily violent. This is one of our racial legacies, and hopefully one which will be relegated to the dustbin of history as soon as is possible.

Originally posted by Thriller

Of course, being a capitalist by nature I am not necessarily in favour of handing people money for nothing, and at a macro level this leads to higher taxes which in turn provides a disincentive for business and leads to tax avoidance and a reduction in investment. However, I do believe at the very least in good quality free education and healthcare and additional government support for those who genuinely need it. I don't know which country, if any, has been able to do this to the satisfaction of all its people - mine certainly hasn't. But the ideal is still a valid aspiration.

We do or attempt to do most of what you are saying. We spend more than any nation per capita on the education of our children from kindergarten through 12th grade. We also spend more per capita on healthcare than any other country, though our system is terribly inefficient for everyone but those who are both healthy and uninsured. Our problems in education are in part structural and in part cultural. It's much more difficult to hold to a European standard in education in a country where the population only in part holds European values toward education.

Originally posted by Thriller

Again, with my limited experience, it seems to me that one of the pitfalls of the US system is that it has developed a distinct 2-party system. In Australia we also have 2 major political parties, one of who is always in power. However, we have a number of smaller parties, 3 of which are usually represented at least in the senate and sometimes in the lower house. This at the very least helps to "keep the buggers honest", and I truly believe the US needs this. In Australia, this has led to a grumbling spirit of compromise that means no-one gets everything that they want, but at least more people get some of what they want. Of course, this opens up the possibilites for political opportunism and even a lighter form of blackmail, but evil-doers can be weeded out next election.

I agree that we could use another couple of strong parties in order to break the deadlock of the two "traditional" parties in our system. The two party system was not by design, parties are not mentioned anywhere in our constitution, and some of the founding fathers were hostile the the entire idea of formal political parties. As it stands neither party represents anyone all that well, they are far too general. Candidates must pick and choose which parts of their party's official agenda to subscribe to, which to downplay and which to challenge. Obviously the fewer parties one has the more general they will become to the point of absurdity. When one considers how varied our country is from state to state and how much members of the same part must in turn vary from one another, our parties really don't stand for all that much, or perhaps more accurately don't differ all that much from one another effectively.

Originally posted by Thriller
Which brings me to another point - election campaigning. I should be very careful here because I don't know enough.....but it's in this area that I personally see the greatest problems and potential for corruption in the US system. While in Australia we also have political donations, the amounts involved are dwarved by the amounts of money the US candidates raise and spend. This clearly creates an atmosphere of patronism (is that a word?), which almost certainly leads to nepotism, which is dangerously close to corruption.

As I am similarly unaware of the Australian political system any comparison between your system and ours is going to be somewhat suspect. I will say that we do have corruption, though it tends to be official / legal corruption through special legislation etc. This is better than the everyday / every transaction corruption common in other parts of the world, but we need to work on it nonetheless.

[Ned]

Thriller, you have a party in Australia that can be described as "pro-business?"

[Mr. Harley]

Thriller, I'm actually from the US, bu phrased my question poorly. I wanted your spin, on the parliamentary side, since I have no real experience living in one, I only have read about them. It still resulted in nice posts, and I enjoyed reading both your and Sikander's excellent posts.

Sikander's overview of American history is excellent. I would make two additions, one supporting his observations in the southern part of the US. During the last decade of 19th century, there was a Free Soil party that almost replaced the Democratic party. The Democrats engaged in a campaign of intimidation including ballot stuffing, beatings, and murder.

One other problem in the US is that businesses from the period spanning the late 1800's through the 1930's employed private armies and/or police forces. One of the worst cases occured in the coal fields of Appalachia, and was documented fairly accurately in the movie "Matewan". It was the only case where the military bombed our own citizens, and the coal companies were permitted to deploy machine guns against the strikers.

Law enforcement people in some counties stood up to the coal companies. In one case they were indicted by a tame grand jury/corrupt court, and when the honest sheriff showed up at the adjacent county, he was shot dead on the courthouse steps. Nobody was ever charged in the murder.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Sikander
Our problems in education are in part structural and in part cultural. It's much more difficult to hold to a European standard in education in a country where the population only in part holds European values toward education.

Sikander, what do you mean by this?

[Ned]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
One other problem in the US is that businesses from the period spanning the late 1800's through the 1930's employed private armies and/or police forces. One of the worst cases occured in the coal fields of Appalachia, and was documented fairly accurately in the movie "Matewan". It was the only case where the military bombed our own citizens, and the coal companies were permitted to deploy machine guns against the strikers.

Shawn, you make it sound like all businesses hired private armies armies the period. This cannot possibly be correct. What seems to be true today is that most businesses have private security forces. How are these private security forces of the day through a different from the private security forces of yesterday?

[Mr. Harley]

I'm curious too, because statistically the most involved families in education (United States only) are of Asian or Jewish extraction, though exposure to the latter community has convinced me that the community dedication to higher education in the Jewish community has probably diminished to second highest, between the general white population and the Asian population. I am defining involved as the level of performance expected by parents, and what the average grade where they express disapproval. The Wall Street Journal published an article on this, indicating THE study found that break point in A- with Asian families, B- with Caucasian, and C- with African American. Please note single source, and I trust the Wall Street Journal about as far as I could throw Rush for unbiased social issue reporting. However, I've seen some other work generally confirming this, if not in the details.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by debeest
The poll consisting of who chooses to buy his $25 book suggests that he has a pretty substantial constituency. Wasn't his last book the #1 bestseller of the year? Close, if not #1.

Michael Moore's entire career has been pandering to the Labor groups. He could write "Hi" on 650 pages, print it on toilet paper, and the Unions would go out and buy 400,00 copies to pump it on to the best seller list. 90% of the copies sold of his book will never be read by anyone, their sitting in some teamster leader's closet somewhere.

Personally, I can't stand Moron Moore, he's disgusting and rarely has anything intelligent to say. He is NEVER even close to being funny or entertaining.

Al Franken is the opposite, I disagree with most of Al's positions but I will watch or listen to him any time I get a chance because he is intelligent, funny, and VERY entertaining.

Don't necessary agree with Bush's attempts to force morality down America's throat. I agree with the positions but not forced Morality. HOWEVER, for quite some time the Democratic Party has been shoving anti-Morality down America's throat and pushing for making Christianity illegal in our country so its only fair for the pendulum to swing back to the right for awhile.

[Ned]

GF, my sentiments almost exactly.

[SpencerH]

ditto

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
HOWEVER, for quite some time the Democratic Party has been shoving anti-Morality down America's throat and pushing for making Christianity illegal in our country

Huh?

[Ben Kenobi]

Shawnmcc:

Those groups include the Catholic Church, moral majority, Southern Baptist Convention, certain other Baptist conventions, some Methodist groups, some Orthodox Jewish groups, conservative to moderate Islam, and that is just off the top of my head.

None of which I am a member of.

Therefor you are drawing a false conclusion and assuming guilt by association.

Can't just lump me in with 'them' without clarifying of whom 'them' consists.

ANY WHO WISH TO IMPOSE THEIR MORALITY ON ME VIA LEGISLATION.

And so do you. By allowing abortion, you are saying that a child, until birth, has no intrinsic worth and value. I see no difference in terms of forcing morality, between my position, or yours.

Are you willing to pay the expenses, and sit with that child born inside out, waiting for it to die in agony?

Interesting argument. Consider a comparison. What you have just said here is like a man who beats his wife. Suppose he said to me that unless you marry my wife, I will continue to beat her. Would he then be justified in continuing to beat his wife?

Secondly, for all your sanctimony, Japher let me know that he appreciated every single one of my posts in the thread.

You still don't mention your ministries. Moral cowardice.

Irrelevant to the point at hand. I suppose your experience automatically means you come to a correct moral decision on these matters.

Otherwise, like most (though I have met a very few who I do respect and HAVE those credentials) get off your moralizing high horse, and live your moral life while I attempt to live my ethical one.

Suppose I said I was a doctor. Why would it make my arguments better or worse? If my arguments are poor, please attack them rather than the person, as you have continued to do.

I could care less if you are trailer trash, living near the dump, or if you are a high priced lawyer living in a million dollar condominium near the centre of New York. If you have a good argument, your circumstances do not matter.

[Ben Kenobi]

You can be opposed to something and still recognize someone's right to choose for themselves.

Da Shi:

Not my point. Planned parenthood makes a tidy profit off of abortions, and have become the leading provider of abortions in the United States. If they are so opposed to providing abortions, then why do they choose to engage in the activity? There is a big difference between recognising someone's rights, and actively participating.

[Mr. Harley]

Ned, sorry about that, I was rushed because my break was almost over. It was only certain very large businesses in that time period that maintained private security forces of the type I was discussing. Many mining companies, not just coal, employed them, as did Ford. The difference between those security forces and the ones employed currently in the United States is that they were used for intimidation, including the beating and murder (usually as a result of beatings, though sometimes deliberate) of union activists, physical attacks on strikers, and other forms of mayhem that would qualify them as paras, or paramilitaries.

That is how they differ from today's security forces, they were largely extra-legal and their activity was ignored and at time condoned by local law enforcement. This is still done outside the US, and Walmart gets periously close to this domestically, and has lost numerous FLRA decisions about using company security or local police (via tresspass complaints) to intimidate/prevent the legal activity of union organizers.

[Mr. Harley]

Ben,

You arguements are fallacious, as you take my quote apart, putting in commentary that makes me sound unreasonable, and then turn around and use the contextual part of my quote that actually disproves your previous premise. Let's start again.

My comments were very clear.

By the way, you are a member of the pro-life faction, or anti-abortion, self-identified by your actions (you engage in the protests) and your rhetoric. I DID NOT state you were in fact a member of those groups, please do not quote out of context.

By the way, I've noticed a reference to Mennonites on one of your previsou posts. However, the group I am referencing, and I had thought I had made that clear, is the group of ANY WHO WISH TO IMPOSE THEIR MORALITY ON ME VIA LEGISLATION.

Now lets look at your exposition. The first is a confuser. I clearly state that you are not a member of the identified denominations - in fact I joke about two of them, since you are a self-identified Christian. You don't clearly identify which branch of Christianity you belong to, and I suspect that is about the only thing we agree on, that it's relatively unimportant. The group who you, by self-admission belong to, I clearly identify, IN CAPITALS hoping that you will get it.

I identify you along with those who wish to pass morality legislation, specifically anti-abortion legislation. That is a fair characterization and I lump you in "with those groups" because those groups have self-identified in wishing to make abotion illegal. Further, you wish to force me to abide by your MORAL, as in religious based, versus ethical, code. Even if I do not share your convictions.

Ben's exposition, chopping my quotes up - my commentary in bold:

Shawnmcc:
quote:
Those groups include the Catholic Church, moral majority, Southern Baptist Convention, certain other Baptist conventions, some Methodist groups, some Orthodox Jewish groups, conservative to moderate Islam, and that is just off the top of my head.

None of which I am a member of. No duh - I've stated that, and agreed a bunch of times. I am clearly, in the context of the quote, identifying other groups who clearly wish to pass some form or other of morality legislation, including banning abortion

quote:
Therefor you are drawing a false conclusion and assuming guilt by association.

Can't just lump me in with 'them' without clarifying of whom 'them' consists. You proceed to quote my clarification, in caps. Ben, what possible purpose could this silly statement have, both out of context and sequence, except as a cheap attempt to attack credibility. Quote me in total, or not at all.

quote:

ANY WHO WISH TO IMPOSE THEIR MORALITY ON ME VIA LEGISLATION.

And so do you. By allowing abortion, you are saying that a child, until birth, has no intrinsic worth and value. I see no difference in terms of forcing morality, between my position, or yours.

There is one critical difference. I do not attempt to force you to have an abortion. In fact, and I have noted this in the past, I consider it just as wrong to have an OB-GYN program that forces residents to train in providing abortions. That is the difference. If you wanted to train as a nurse, Ben, and I said you would have to have abortion training or you couldn't get certified, I would be no different. I oppose those who do that, and have voted against extreme liberal candidates for exactly that reason.

While Japher may have thanked you, because he is a polite and gracious individual, did you have the guts to mention how many of the fellow posters on that thread jumped down your throat? Oh, I forgot, you only post out of context, so you can conveniently neglect to mention the quotes, as follows, each quote from a different person:

quote:
Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Japher: Trust me on this one. For the sake of your sister, she should not have an abortion................

I dont think it's possible to express my disgust with these comments so I wont try.

BK, I've normally felt you were a pretty decent fellow, if misguided, but if you dare turn this into an abortion debate, I'll have to concede you're a right insensitive bastard.

That is absolutely disgusting, Ben. Have you ever been inside a NICU? Have you seen children born with their organs on the outside of their bodies? Have you ever seen a child with Trisomy 18? Not to mention the fact that your breast cancer statistic is complete and utter bull****. But worst of all, you drag your politics into Japher's suffering. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Ben, I had the courtesy to private message Japher when you posted your breast cancer lie, rather than putting it onto the thread. As in the link to breast cancer and abortion. Ben, if you only quote a minority study as gospel, without bothering to question it's truth, without indicating there is any doubt, that is called deceit. Last I heard, that's one way of lying. You present a controversial finding without making any mention of the dozens of studies that contradict it. That's called intellectual dishonesty.

For those of you not familiar with the statistial sleight of hand I mention, it seems some anti-abortion types decided to "scare" women with a link between abortion and breast cancer. BOGUS. They present the fact that a women who have an abortion have a higher rate of cancer than women who do not. Not true if the woman who has the child doesn't breast feed.

It turns out that a woman who has an abortion, and never has a child, has STATISTICALLY the same chance of breast cancer as any woman who doesn't breast feed. Period. The link is breast feeding, not the abortion. Ben, you had the unmitigated gall to try to use that factoid to pressure indirectly (via her brother) a woman who had a hideously deformed fetus into not having an abortion. That's low. As the other posters mentioned. I won't leave it alone if you are going to misquote me and take me out of context.

Ben, quick question if the issue is only abortion, and not morality laws. What is your spin of the "emergency contraception" or the morning-after pill. You do realize it works the same way as most birth control, preventing the implantation of a fertilized ovum. Do you consider it acceptable to attempt to pass legislation banning all treatments, including birth control, that interfere with the implantation of a fertilized ovum? The Catholic Church does, to stay consistant with it's definition of life. By your own statement you aren't Catholic, so what are your thoughts?

Oh, and on your beating the wife bit. I'll let the readers judge the credibility of your false analogy. Concerning the credentials I tallk about (not your "Suppose I said I was a doctor." confusor) are working with those children who are special needs, working with those families who choose not to abort and have those children. I'll stack my working with those special needs children up against your protests any day of the week. At the time I was anti-abortion, and that's what started me down a very difficult path of questioning those issues. Talk is cheap, Ben. Walk in those people's shoes, go adopt a special needs child if you feel so strongly. Or might having to care for that child 24-7 interfere with your precious protests?

[Ben Kenobi]

You don't clearly identify which branch of Christianity you belong to,

I'm a Mennonite.

I'm guilty in this instance of doing what Berz does to other people's posts, in posting comments before the entire point has been made.

I saw later on that you did acknowledge that I belong to the Mennonite church, and left the points in the beginning of the post.

I am sorry, but I do want to get to the meat and potatoes of your post.

That is the difference. If you wanted to train as a nurse, Ben, and I said you would have to have abortion training or you couldn't get certified, I would be no different.

Are you aware, that this is indeed the case in the state of New York?

I do not attempt to force you to have an abortion.

Ah, but there is a difference between forcing your morality on me, and forcing me to have an abortion. I could care less about whether you force your morality on me, as I will certainly reply in kind. I just find it curious why you are so shy to defend what you believe in, that convenience to a woman supercedes the right to life of an unborn child.

because he is a polite and gracious individual, did you have the guts to mention how many of the fellow posters on that thread jumped down your throat?

I could care less what they think. Japher and his sister are the important people in the thread, and not the shrinking violets.

Ben, if you only quote a minority study as gospel, without bothering to question it's truth, without indicating there is any doubt, that is called deceit. Last I heard, that's one way of lying. You present a controversial finding without making any mention of the dozens of studies that contradict it. That's called intellectual dishonesty.

Fine. Since you seem to know so much of what I told Japher, post the study that I gave him. How do you know that the study is a 'minority' study, without even bothering to ask me to post the evidence?

It turns out that a woman who has an abortion, and never has a child, has STATISTICALLY the same chance of breast cancer as any woman who doesn't breast feed. Period.

Well, you seem to know quite a bit about the subject. How do you know this to be true?

Ben, quick question if the issue is only abortion, and not morality laws. What is your spin of the "emergency contraception" or the morning-after pill. You do realize it works the same way as most birth control, preventing the implantation of a fertilized ovum.

True, however, there is no such thing as a 'fertilised ovum'. Sperm and egg cease to be at conception, forming a single celled entity, called a zygote, genetically distinct from either parent.

For this reason, these 'emergency contraceptives' are falsely termed, for they do not prevent contraception, but instead, result in the death of a very young human person.

Do you consider it acceptable to attempt to pass legislation banning all treatments, including birth control, that interfere with the implantation of a fertilized ovum? The Catholic Church does, to stay consistant with it's definition of life. By your own statement you aren't Catholic, so what are your thoughts?

My thoughts, are identical to the Catholic church with results to these abortifacients, for the reasons above. They should be banned, because they cause the same result as a later-term abortion, the death of the unborn child.

I'll stack my working with those special needs children
up against your protests any day of the week.

Then go do so. We each have our calling, and I would loathe to condemn someone with a different path.