Michael Moore On Religion and Capitalism
October 4th, 2009Guest Column
by Michael Moore
I’d like to have a word with those of you who call yourselves Christians (Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bill Maherists, etc. can read along, too, as much of what I have to say, I’m sure, can be applied to your own spiritual/ethical values).
In my new film I speak for the first time in one of my movies about my own spiritual beliefs. I have always believed that one’s religious leanings are deeply personal and should be kept private. After all, we’ve heard enough yammerin’ in the past three decades about how one should “behave,” and I have to say I’m pretty burned out on pieties and platitudes considering we are a violent nation who invades other countries and punishes our own for having the audacity to fall on hard times.
I’m also against any proselytizing; I certainly don’t want you to join anything I belong to. Also, as a Catholic, I have much to say about the Church as an institution, but I’ll leave that for another day (or movie).
Amidst all the Wall Street bad guys and corrupt members of Congress exposed in “Capitalism: A Love Story,” I pose a simple question in the movie: “Is capitalism a sin?” I go on to ask, “Would Jesus be a capitalist?” Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the 95 percent under them combined?
I have come to believe that there is no getting around the fact that capitalism is opposite everything that Jesus (and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha) taught. All the great religions are clear about one thing: It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what’s left for everyone to fight over.
Jesus said that the rich man would have a very hard time getting into heaven.
He told us that we had to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers and that the riches that did exist were to be divided fairly. He said that if you failed to house the homeless and feed the hungry, you’d have a hard time finding the pin code to the pearly gates.
I guess that’s bad news for us Americans. Here’s how we define “Blessed Are the Poor”: We now have the highest unemployment rate since 1983. There’s a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds. 14,000 people every day lose their health insurance.
At the same time, Wall Street bankers (“Blessed Are the Wealthy”?) are amassing more and more loot — and they do their best to pay little or no income tax (last year Goldman Sachs’ tax rate was a mere 1%!). Would Jesus approve of this? If not, why do we let such an evil system continue? It doesn’t seem you can call yourself a Capitalist AND a Christian — because you cannot love your money AND love your neighbor when you are denying your neighbor the ability to see a doctor just so you can have a better bottom line. That’s called “immoral” — and you are committing a sin when you benefit at the expense of others.
When you are in church this morning, please think about this. I am asking you to allow your “better angels” to come forward. And if you are among the millions of Americans who are struggling to make it from week to week, please know that I promise to do what I can to stop this evil — and I hope you’ll join me in not giving up until everyone has a seat at the table.
Thanks for listening. I’m off to Mass in a few hours. I’ll be sure to ask the priest if he thinks J.C. deals in derivatives or credit default swaps. I mean, after all, he must’ve been good at math. How else did he divide up two loaves of bread and five pieces of fish equally amongst 5,000 people? Either he was the first socialist or his disciples were really bad at packing lunch. Or both.
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Tags: Capitalism, Michael Moore, Religion
October 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Moore’s critique offers nothing new — it’s been said before, starting hundreds of years ago. That takes nothing away from the validity of his points, of course.
Underlying the surface problems — lack of compassion, greed, arrogance, etc — is a deeper problem, namely the failure to understand the connectivity of all life and the inherent dignity of life.
For all his insight about the surface, Moore fails to plumb the depths, and further fails to offer any way out. He further does not realize that the basic ideology of “outside-of-self saviors” is, itself, the root problem.
Simply taking people to task for not being as smart or sensitive as oneself might change a few minds here and there, but for the kind of change Moore seems to want, a profound change in both heart and mind among many millions is necessary.
And the latter kind of change requires long, hard effort in a day to day struggle with the negativity within one’s own life and environment.
Certainly, information and education are an essential part of that effort. But establishing a beachhead on the shores of evil is much more involved than only shouting orders at others, which is what Moore seems inclined to do.
October 4th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
It’s pretty obvious what he is doing is what we call in the news biz, being “provocative” and trying to challenge people to think.
Of course the problem, as always of late, is to get the right people to pay attention and think. Mostly, I suspect, he is preaching to the choir.
But perhaps his message will trickle down to some independents — and make a difference at the margins. Because the fact is, he is right…
October 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Moore is right, insofar as his analysis goes. He doesn’t have a proposed, or apparently even imagined, solution for the problems enumerated, other than “let’s make the evil guys be good” or “let’s keep the evil guys from being evil.”
Rousseau had a similar idea more than 200 years ago, i.e., “let’s keep the evil guys from being evil” by transferring sovereignty, over everything, to the people. There are downsides to that, of course, including precepts that taken to their ultimate logical conclusion result in authoritarianism or even totalitarianism.
Jeans-Jacques took it one step further than Moore, not only seeing the evil but coming up with a structured ideology for preventing it. The trouble with that was the cure was in many ways worse than the disease and led directly to a savior on a white horse named Napoleon.
At least Rousseau had an idea about what to do, systemically, while Moore is simply shouting, “Stop that! Be good!” Moore is being provocative, as Glynn indicates, but only provocative in a schoolyard, junior high school sense, not provocative on the level of ideas.
Truly provocative would be to suggest that we scrap the present political system altogether and introduce one based on the philosophy of the Iroquoian Confederacy of the mid-18th century.
Provocative would be to understand that endless political sport — the victory of one team of ideologues over another for a period of years, during which the winning team force feeds its vision of life on all — might be good for the so-called news media, but really horrible for almost everyone else.
Provocative would be to suggest that maybe the United States is just too large and diverse to be governed rationally and successfully by a relatively small number of politicians and bureaucrats on the East Coast, and that a more devolved system might be in order.
Provocative would be to acknowledge that a permanent class of professional politicians is the main structural governance problem, aided and abetted by the parasitic lobbying industry.
That’s the kind of provocation we need now, not the adolescent variety being offered up by Michael Moore.
October 6th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
One step at a time.
America is a juvenile nation.
One step at a time…