Rebutal to Moore

Here's an excerpt from an article written by Richard Lowry. He offers a nice analysis of the different expectations or attitudes Americans and Europeans have regarding the responsibilities of government. He's not pollyannaish when it comes to problems in America but he rightly faults Michael Moore for outright dishonesty in his latest documentary/propaganda film, Sicko. The whole article is worth reading but here are two paragraphs that stood out.

"You would never know (from watching Sicko) that America ranks highest in the world in patient satisfaction, or that only about half of emergency-room patients in Canada get timely treatment. This is not to say that Moore doesn’t highlight real problems in the American insurance system — which is badly distorted by the fact that most people get their insurance through their employers — but his complaint goes much deeper: Americans don’t have the “free” things of the French, who not only get lots of paid vacation, but have government nannies come to their homes to do their laundry for them after they have children."

"Moore hints at — of course — a conspiracy to try to keep us from liking the French for fear that we too will develop a taste for the good life on the government’s dime. Unfortunately for Moore, it’s worse than that. America has a deep-seated individualistic value system that, coupled with the lack of European-style class conflict, inhibited the rise of social democracy here. As one historian has put it, if you were to set out to design a society hostile to collectivism, 'one could not have done much better than to implement the social development that has, mostly unplanned, constituted America.'"

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0ZGVjYjIyZjZmMDExZTJlYmY4MGFiZGQ4NjgwOGE=