Not that Moore cares, but it was America’s gun-control movement that sprouted from racist soil. Infamous Chief Justice Roger Taney, of Dred Scott fame, wrote that if blacks were “entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens ... (i)t would give persons of the (N)egro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one state of the union, the right ... to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the state. ...”

Meanwhile, Moore’s “Bowling” recently received an award for best documentary of all time from the International Documentary Association, despite the film’s deceit, half-truths and distortions.

There are lies, damn lies, and the insufferable Michael Moore.

Read the entire article, as it’s too good to quote in chunks.  Now I know why Moore won’t go near Elder.

One student chimed in that the speaker should be Chris Rock: “I’d be happy with a comedian, just not a comedian who poses as a journalist.”

“I never said he was a journalist,” shot back Moore’s original supporter, “but I thought he would make a fine candidate. He asks provocative questions that journalists should be asking.”

In his defense, the student might have consulted Merriam-Webster‘s, which defines a journalist as “a writer who aims at a mass audience,” especially “a writer or editor for a news medium.”

Although that needs updating to include contemporary media, Moore cuts the mustard on both counts. The filmmaker and author lacks a J-school degree, but he was a founding reporter and editor for his hometown alt-weekly, The Flint Voice, which he later helped expand into The Michigan Voice, a statewide paper. That led him to a short stint as editor-in-chief of Mother Jones magazine, a bastion of liberal investigative journalism.

Sure, he was promptly fired, but that doesn’t make him a lousy journalist—it just makes him an ineffective manager. As for Roger and Me, which was financed in part by Moore’s Mother Jones severance settlement, it’s fair to ask: Does the fact that a documentary—or book, or article—is problematic mean that it isn’t journalism? If so, a whole lot of so-called journalists are going to have shell out for new business cards.

Stay tuned for next week’s debate, in which students and faculty at the California College of Arts and Crafts decide what is, and what isn’t, art.—Brandon Sprague

(Link via Instapundit.)

Now granted I am what you would probably consider left-wing. I don’t support corporate welfare, NAFTA, WTO, the death penalty, and upper-class tax cuts. I also support pro-choice, socialization of medicine, legalization of marijuana and many other liberal ideas.

Well, that explains a lot of the crap you write below.

However; it seems to me that you people feel that every left-winger worships Moore like a god.

No, we never said that.  But Moore is a bestselling author and filmmaker.  He’s highly influentual.  He’s also a professional liar, which is why this site exists.

I’ve read Moore’s books and I’ve seen Moore’s films, I enjoyed many aspects of them but didn’t agree with them 100% either.

Ah, so you’re an independent thinker.  Bully for you.

You tend to bash anybody who would be willing to agree or give thought to any of Moore’s ideas while remaining pretty tight-lipped about your own views, let alone any original ideas.

What kind of an idiot are you?  Jim, Rachel, and I all run our own blogs, as do Ryne and Geoff.  All of us post on a regular basis, and we all propose ideas.  We give links to our sites.  If you want to know what we think it’s very easy to find out.

If anybody has made a God of Moore it is you. You constantly build him up only to try to tear him down. I now realize what Moore has become to you, your great Satan.

Absolutely not.  The “conservative, corporate media” has turned Moore into a populist god.  If he was just some left-wing idiot spouting off somewhere on the internet--you know, such as yourself--then this site wouldn’t exist.  The fact is that we are a repository for information and articles that refute his unmitigated bullshit.

Bush has Iraq and you have Moore. Granted comparing a corporate fueled combatant with Moore is a stretch, but the fact is obvious without Moore you would have to find the next person to wage war on.

Absolutely not.  We don’t have Donahuewatch or Carvillewatch or Begalawatch.  There are plenty of lefties out there that don’t have sites devoted to them.  If Michael Moore was to drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow (not out of the realm of possibility) this site would probably wither and die.

I am an American citizen which gives me the right to disagree with anybody’s opinion.

Absolutely.  I am also an American citizen, and I have the right to disagree with you.  Lefties seem to constantly forget that fact, and accuse anyone who disagrees with their nancy-boy cowardice as trying to “suppress their message.”

I am also a human being and simply wouldn’t have the time to spend waging a war with someone who probably doesn’t even know me or of me for that matter.

So this brings me to my main question why would anybody with a sembleance of a life spend money and time to berate a public figure?

1. It’s fun.
2. It needs to be done.
3. Moore makes a living out of berating public figures, in a much larger forum than this website.  Why aren’t you asking him the same thing?

Judging by the blog beside your names it became quite apparent. Ulteriour Motives. You bash Moore for using his films, books, and shows to push his own agenda and beliefs. And you guys then use Moore as a way to push your own agenda and beliefs. Isn’t that ironic you guys are doing the exact same as you accuse Moore of doing.

No, stupid.  We bash Moore because he is a professional liar.  There are plenty of avenues for intelligent debate on the isssues of the day.  Moore is not one of them.  He lies, obfuscates, and simply invents facts to fit his agenda, and drooling sycophants like you eat it up.

But probably the best thing of all about your website is as follows.

In just a short time, this site has grown well beyond our initial expectations. The bandwidth appears, at the moment, to average around 20-30GB per month. We expected 5GB. Needless to say, as we grow, so shall the bill. Such is the price of success! If you’d like to help, please consider making a donation. Every little bit helps. Thank you!

Blatantly asking for a handout. The same thing conservatives berate people on welfare, unemployment and other social programs for.

Asking for a handout?  This is how you think welfare works?  We’re asking for a voluntary donation from people who find this site useful.  If they don’t feel like contributing that’s no problem.

Conversely, welfare is stealing.  Money is stolen from my paycheck eash week by the government, in the form of taxes.  This money is then disbursed to people who do not earn it and don’t deserve it.  There’s nothing voluntary about it.  If I don’t pay my taxes I go to jail.  The fact that you cannot distinguish between a voluntary contribution of a couple of bucks and the systematic theft of billions of dollars to support a failed social welfare system shows just what a true left-wing idiot you are.

I think I should start a site called hypocrit watch but I have neither the time nor the ability to write about 99% of the world.

Plus you’d have to learn how to spell “hypocrite.”

In any case best of luck running your site, I hope you manage to accomplish all the goals you’ve set to accomplish no matter how much I disagree with them.

If I can just convince one left-wing fuckwit--such as yourself--as to how utterly full of shit Michael Moore is then this whole endeavor will have been worth it.

"If guns are outlawed,” an American bumper sticker warns, “only outlaws will have guns.” With gun crime in Britain soaring in the face of the strictest gun control laws of any democracy, the UK seems about to prove that warning prophetic.

For 80 years the safety of the British people has been staked on the premise that fewer private guns means less crime, indeed that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger.

Government assured Britons they needed no weapons, society would protect them. If that were so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were forbidden to carry any article for their protection, it no longer is.

The failure of this general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed and violent crime could not be more blatant. According to a recent UN study, England and Wales have the highest crime rate and worst record for “very serious” offences of the 18 industrial countries surveyed.

But would allowing law-abiding people to “have arms for their defence”, as the 1689 English Bill of Rights promised, increase violence? Would Britain be following America’s bad example?

Old stereotypes die hard and the vision of Britain as a peaceable kingdom, America as “the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic” is out of date. It is true that in contrast to Britain’s tight gun restrictions, half of American households have firearms, and 33 states now permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons.

But despite, or because, of this, violent crime in America has been plummeting for 10 consecutive years, even as British violence has been rising. By 1995 English rates of violent crime were already far higher than America’s for every major violent crime except murder and rape.

You are now six times more likely to be mugged in London than New York. Why? Because as common law appreciated, not only does an armed individual have the ability to protect himself or herself but criminals are less likely to attack them. They help keep the peace. A study found American burglars fear armed home-owners more than the police. As a result burglaries are much rarer and only 13% occur when people are at home, in contrast to 53% in England.

Much is made of the higher American rate for murder. That is true and has been for some time. But as the Office of Health Economics in London found, not weapons availability, but “particular cultural factors” are to blame.

A study comparing New York and London over 200 years found the New York homicide rate consistently five times the London rate, although for most of that period residents of both cities had unrestricted access to firearms.

When guns were available in England they were seldom used in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found an average of one handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million. But murder rates for both countries are now changing. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by last year it was 3.5 times. With American rates described as “in startling free-fall” and British rates as of October 2002 the highest for 100 years the two are on a path to converge.

The price of British government insistence upon a monopoly of force comes at a high social cost.

First, it is unrealistic. No police force, however large, can protect everyone. Further, hundreds of thousands of police hours are spent monitoring firearms restrictions, rather than patrolling the streets. And changes in the law of self-defence have left ordinary people at the mercy of thugs.

According to Glanville Williams in his Textbook of Criminal Law, self-defence is “now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law”.

Nearly a century before that American bumper sticker was slapped on the first bumper, the great English jurist, AV Dicey cautioned: “Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians.” He knew public safety is not enhanced by depriving people of their right to personal safety.

Joyce Lee Malcolm, professor of history, is author of Guns and Violence: The English Experience, published in June 2002.

Anyway, here’s some excerpts from the Blow piece:

Michael Moore has a problem: Nobody wants to put him on television. “I’ve been on a total of two network shows in nine months,” the lefty filmmaker and author recently told The New York Times. “What’s going on with that?”

Actually, this is a stunning statement as to the standards of television and comes at a time when “standards” and “television” are knee-slappingly oxymoronic.

As the Times reported the same day, “Democrats are scouring the nation for a liberal answer to Rush Limbaugh.” Why isn’t it Michael Moore?

Good question.  Personally, I’d love to see Moore become the television figurehead of the left.  I can already imagine the day when I’ll have oodles of daily laughs as the man sweats under the bright lights of a studio set.  And that’s one make-up job that is sure to win someone awards.

In all reality, Moore becoming the de facto voice of the left would be a good thing: his lunacy might actually get some press.  His fetching race war shennanigans will present (literally) too large of a target to ignore.

Now, Michael Moore isn’t ugly.

Now, I don’t know this for a fact, but I believe that Richard Blow does not have the gift of sight.  And Mike?  If you’re looking for a good barber, Glenn Reynolds knows one.

He’s also funny and smart.

Ho-ho.  Compare and contrast the above statement with this one:

At his last appearance, staffers refused to work or even open the theater’s doors, forcing the lardy lefty to make a groveling apology so that the show, already an hour late, could go on.

I guess that no one told Moore that English laborers have a rather dry sense of humor.

But the sloppily-dressed, huffing and puffing Moore isn’t exactly ready for TV.

Or for flights of stairs.  But if you’re talking about a green room snack plate, Moore’s your man.  Note to studio honchos who may one day have to care for the whimsical Everyman: Moore is a ground floor only type of guy.

The real reason that Moore doesn’t get on television is because Moore isn’t just a liberal. By today’s standards, he’s a radical.

Substitute “radical” with “liar,” and you’d be right on target.

But TV producers never know if Michael Moore will go off the reservation and start talking about, say, how NBC-owner General Electric polluted New York’s Hudson River. (The same phenomenon applies to Ralph Nader.) And so they don’t give him the chance. The irony is, if they did, and he did, it’d make great TV.

Actually, they did, and no, it didn’t.  Read: cancelled.  Where have you been, Blow?

The entire Tom Paine piece, to put it mildly, Blew.

What happened at that party in Aston? I don’t mean “what happened?” in the sense of the piercing analysis of Chief Superintendent Dave Shaw, who concluded: “There has clearly been some sort of dispute which has resulted in people coming to the premises with guns, discharging their weapons and causing this incident.” You can’t put anything over on these coppers, can you? But my question is directed at the broader meaning of the event. Chief Supt Shaw went on: “We have never had to deal with anything like this. In terms of the nature of the incident, it’s almost unprecedented in Birmingham.” He didn’t quite say Birmingham is one of those bucolic tightly-knit communities where everyone in the village knows everyone else and no one locks their doors, but you get the drift: this is some sort of bizarre aberration.

I think not. When those young men decided to open fire in Birchfield Road, they were making an entirely rational decision. One reason why Chief Supt Shaw has “never had to deal with anything like this” is because Aston was long ago ceded to the gangs. And, if you can deal drugs with impunity and burgle with impunity and assault with impunity and use guns with impunity, who’s to say you can’t murder with impunity? The West Midlands Police have offered a reward of £1,000 for information leading to the arrest of those involved. Think about that: would you name a known gang member for a thousand quid? Once the funerals have been held and the media’s moved on, the constabulary will go back to forgetting about Aston. But you’ll still have to live there.

When Dunblane occurred, all of us - even, if they’re honest with themselves, the shrieking hysterics baying for pointless legislation - understood it was a freak event: a nut went nuts. It happens, and, when it does, the event has no broader implications. But what happened in Birchfield Road is of wider relevance: it’s a glimpse of the day after tomorrow - not just in Aston, but in Edgbaston and Solihull and Leamington Spa.

After Dunblane, the police and politicians lapsed into their default position: it’s your fault. We couldn’t do anything about him, so we’ll do something about you. You had your mobile nicked? You must be mad taking it out. Why not just keep it inside nice and safe on the telephone table? Had your car radio pinched? You shouldn’t have left it in the car. House burgled? You should have had laser alarms and window bars installed. You did have laser alarms and window bars but they waited till you were home, kicked the door in and beat you up? You should have an armour-plated door and digital retinal-scan technology. It’s your fault, always. The monumentally useless British police, with greater manpower per capita on higher rates of pay and with far more lavish resources than the Americans, haven’t had an original idea in decades, so they cling ever more fiercely to their core ideology: the best way to deal with criminals is to impose ever greater restrictions and inconveniences on the law-abiding.

The gangs on Birmingham’s streets instinctively understand this. They know, even if the Government doesn’t, that the Blairite “total” ban, which sounds so butch and macho when you do your soundbite on the telly, is a cop-out: it makes the general population the target, not the criminals. And once that happens it’s always easier to hassle the cranky farmer with the unlicensed shotgun than the Yardies with the Uzis. When you disarm the citizenry, when you prosecute them for being so foolish as to believe they have a right to self-defence, when you issue warnings that they should “walk on by” if they happen to see a burglary or rape in progress, the main beneficiaries will obviously be the criminals. Aston is the logical reductio of British policing: rival bad guys with state-of-the-art hardware, a cowed populace, and a remote constabulary tucked up in bed with the answering machine on.

I see I haven’t yet mentioned the touchy social factor which even squeamish British Lefties have been forced to confront: Aston is yet more “black-on-black” violence. The reason I haven’t mentioned it is because there hardly seems any point. What’s new? Canada also had a Dunblane-like massacre, followed by Dunblane-like legislation, and, like Birmingham, boring, bland Toronto has lately been riven by gun violence from - wait for it - Jamaican gangs. But in neither Britain nor Canada is it politically feasible to suggest that perhaps Jamaicans should be subjected to special immigration scrutiny. As it happens, that Canadian massacre, of Montreal female students 12 years ago, was committed by the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, but, although we all claim to be interested in the “root causes” of crime, they tend to involve awkward cultural judgments. It’s easier, like Mr Blair, just to go “total”: blame everyone, ban everything.

This basic approach of addressing any cultural factors apart from the ones that correlate was pioneered by American progressives. The corpulent provocateur Michael Moore, in his film Bowling for Columbine, currently delighting British audiences, spends an entire feature-length documentary investigating the “culture” of American gun violence without mentioning that blacks, who make up 13 per cent of the population, account for over half the murders (and murder victims, too). Once you factor them out, Americans kill at about the same rate as nancy-boy Canadians.

But, as I said, it’s hardly worth mentioning in relation to Britain. In my part of New Hampshire, we’re all armed to the hilt and any gangster who fancied holding up a gas station would be quickly ventilated by guys whose pick-ups are better equipped than most EU armies. The right of individual self-defence deters crime, constrains it, prevents it from spreading out of the drug-infested failed jurisdictions. In post-Dunblane, post-Tony Martin Britain, that constraint doesn’t exist: that’s why the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea now has a higher crime rate than Harlem.

Meanwhile, America’s traditionally high and England and Wales’s traditionally low murder rates are remorselessly converging. In 1981, the US rate was nine times higher than the English. By 1995, it was six times. Last year, it was down to 3.5. Given that US statistics, unlike the British ones, include manslaughter and other lesser charges, the real rate is much closer. New York has just recorded the lowest murder rate since the 19th century. I’ll bet that in the next two years London’s murder rate overtakes it.

Primary diagnosis: Cognitive dissonance

Being an intelligent man, Moore knows deep down that he is full of shit. On some level, he’s aware of the hypocrisy and manipulation that he engages in on a daily basis. Claiming to represent “working stiffs” while being a famous multimillionaire is becoming problematic, and as his psyche tries to reconcile these two states of being, he lashes out at the people who actually embody what his public persona is supposed to represent.

His subconscious wants to ‘destroy’ the real working stiffs, so as to mitigate the constant influx of information about what it means to be a real working stiff.

It may also be possible that in attacking genuine “regular folk,” Moore is merely demonstrating that he truly believes he is one of them, in the same way that only another member of an “oppressed” group is allowed by society to insult other members of that group.

In any case, the dissonance between what Moore knows to be true and what he so desperately tries to convince other people is true has become a psychological burden for him, and he is beginning to crumble under the pressure.

Secondary diagnosis: Pompousassity

He just can’t help it.

And then this, today (emphasis mine):

I took my son to see Michael Moore live at the Roundhouse, in north London, before Christmas...Sure there were some flunked bits ? you expect that, the troughs are part of the adventure, an evening with a well-worn rebel.

What we did not expect was to feel so enraged at one point that we almost walked out. It was when Moore went into a rant about how the passengers on the planes on 11 September were scaredy-cats because they were mostly white. If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody. God save us from such stupid white men, especially now, when in the US and the UK, black people’s lives are being ripped to shreds by drugs, lawlessness, fear and frightful violence plus the endless circle of racism, exclusion and incarceration.

Ah-hem. Ah-HEM. Yes, this may simply have been a joke in extremely bad taste...but maybe not. Does it matter?

Primary diagnosis: Projection

Moore is a self-proclaimed overweight nerd. Therefore, he knows that if he were confronted with a challenge such as being on a hijacked plane, he would be a “scaredy-cat” and would be unable to fight back in any meaningful way. But, rather than admit this to himself or anyone else, he attributes these feelings and qualities to others.

This projection not only comforts Moore by convincing him that he’s not unusual or less manly than anyone else, it also gives him an opportunity to talk about Stupid White Men, which is important because he has books to sell.

Secondary diagnosis #1: Black envy

To Moore (as to many others), black people are cool. Black men, in particular, are natural warriors and bad-asses in Moore’s mind. Their Afro-fabulousness is apparent on the football field and in popular culture. They will whup that ass, basically.

On the other hand, Moore sees a problem with white men. The only white men you see whupping much ass have guns. This poses a severe psychological conundrum for an individual like Moore because, remember, guns are baaaad. So a Dirty Harry figure can’t be the hero.

The hero must be the unarmed yet naturally tough black man, in Moore’s mind. I’ll refrain from discussing the homoerotic undertones of this.

Also, the black-man-as-noble-hero image is safe and desirable. It appeals to white guilt and fits right in with contemporary pop culture. We love watching a Denzel Washington shoot poison arrows with his eyes and put the smack-down on the antagonist with an eloquent speech. We love our black sports hero-millionaires, and we enjoy knowing that they overcame hardship and oppression to achieve their lofty status. Our culture adores this sort of thing because it means we’ve changed.

Moore is tapping into that cultural state of mind and attempting to exploit it. He supposes that a rant about how bad-assed black men are, in contrast to white super-wusses, will appeal to our current instinct to vilify Whitey and elevate “minorities.”

Furthermore, it’s really the only option Moore has. His paradigm does not allow for white heroics, unless those heroics are performed by extremely poor or extremely liberal white people, preferably female. He has a best-seller called Stupid White Men. That’s his schtick and he’s stickin’ to it, except now he has added Wimpy to the adjective list.

Secondary diagnosis #2: Blame the Victim Syndrome

In a mind as saturated with modern “liberal” dogma as Moore’s, it is imperative to always find a way to place at least part of the blame for any tragedy upon the victim. To him, no event is allowed to be colored in anything but pallid shades of gray.

Just as he blames Columbine on suburbs, conformity, and gun shows, Moore must use the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to somehow criticize the “establishment,” which is White Men (stupid and wimpy white men, to be concise). At the same time, he strives to be original and provocative, and is aware that all the obvious targets have already been addressed - the federal government, President Bush, the airlines, et cetera.

Therefore, in the midst of a feverish bout of Blame the Victim Syndrome coupled with a desire to be “different,” Moore has found his holy grail: Blame the deaths of 3,000 innocent people on the whiteness of the airplane passengers.

In the paradigm Moore has crafted for himself, this is the perfect solution - it lets the perpetrators off the hook (liberal handbook item #8, check), holds the Black Man up as Heroic Bad Ass (political correctness handbook item #4, check), and lays the blame for the atrocity at the feet of Stupid White Men (Michael Moore best-seller thesis, check).

Furthermore, it’s bullet-proof, so to speak. Moore knows that if and when Whitey stands up to defend himself against such a ridiculous statement, the politically correct crowd (leftists) will scream, “Racist!” Remember, white people are not allowed to defend themselves against statements that simultaneously shred Whitey and praise black people, and Moore knows this.

Moore also likes this, because it helps him sell millions of copies of his book, Stupid White Men.

As you can see, what we have here is a deeply troubled man whose personal reality may not gel with actual reality, but nonetheless has a perfectly reasonable explanation. Pompousassity coexisting with the projection of a feeling of helplessness onto others. A deeply held yet erroneous belief conflicting with hard sensory input from the manifestion of that belief. Black envy wrapped up with the hate of one’s own race. Et cetera, et cetera.

Treatment Plan: Prolonged intravenous infusions of Clue?.

Prognosis: Poor.

I want to tell you about what has proven to be one of the most rewarding experiences in my 30-year career as a public school teacher.

In 30 years what you are about to read was one of the most rewarding experiences of this teacher’s career.  Keep that in mind.

I teach in a small town just south of Buffalo. After viewing ‘Bowling for Columbine’ with my husband, I decided that I simply had to take my Honors English class to see it.

Watching it with them was an experience I’ll never forget—one of those crystal moments in teaching that all teachers long for.

But I would imagine that most teachers would have hoped to have made such a “breakthrough” themselves, rather than pass the buck to someone like Michael Moore.

They cried openly during several scenes, especially the scene with ‘What a Wonderful World’ playing in the background.

This teacher should have simply rented Good Morning Vietnam.  That’s where Mike stole it from.

They gasped collectively at the statistics on gun related murders in the U.S. versus other countries.

They should be gasping at how Mike used those numbers, and how those numbers are tabulated.  Not only did he not solve for population differences, but the numbers don’t even reflect the same thing.

They cheered when you and the Columbine survivors succeeded in having ammunition taken off the shelves at K-Mart.

Cheered?

And, by the end, they hated Charlton Heston and booed when they heard ‘from my cold, dead hands’ for the second time.

Hated?  Hated? This is what children are leaning in an honors English class, to “hate” someone sho stands up for his Constitutional rights?

They were especially impressed with the Marilyn Manson interview and were surprised at his eloquence and intelligence. As one student said, ‘I guess you really can’t tell what a person is like just by appearances.’ And that is a mouthful for a high school kid!

I guess this also goes for course descriptions.  I don’t imagine that the description for honors English included “left-wing indoctrination” as part of the syllabus.

I have no doubt that even the most conservative among them will rethink their positions on gun control, war, ‘President’ Bush, and the atrocities suffered by so many at the hands of our government.

Note the quotation marks around President.  And note how this teacher is taking pride not in producing a group of independent thinkers, but in making sure that they all subscribe to the teacher’s beliefs.  Rather than using BFC as a starting point for a class debate this teacher has used it as a bludgeon to destroy any shred of independent thought exhibited by the students.

They were especially impressed by the idea that it is fear that runs the engine of capitalism—something that had never occurred to them before.

I bet that none of them made the connection that it is Mike’s fearmongering and paranoia that are at the heart of the success of BFC.  He exaggerates gun fatality statistics, warps the truth, and flat-out lies, all to prove his point.

You have helped to create better citizens. You have helped to create better human beings.

You have helped to create another generation of mindless, indoctrinated, left-wing drones.

Yours truly, J.M., English Teacher, Angola, NY

I would love to find out who this English teacher is and interview them for MOOREWATCH.

Steyn said since the British government imposed its “total ban” on handguns five years ago, “there are more and more guns being used by more and more criminals in more and more crimes.” And now, in the wake of shootings in Birmingham over New Year’s, “there are calls for the total ban to be made even more total: If the gangs refuse to obey the existing laws, we’ll just pass more laws for them not to obey.”

The editorial tied an increase in gangland activity and drugs to England’s increase in violent crime. Steyn also said much of the increased crime was “black-on-black” violence. 

He said it wasn’t “politically feasible” to suggest that some ethnic groups—particularly the Jamaican drug gangs—“be subjected to special immigration scrutiny.”

“This basic approach of addressing any cultural factors apart from the ones that correlate was pioneered by American progressives,” he wrote. “The corpulent provocateur Michael Moore, in his film “Bowling for Columbine,” currently delighting British audiences, spends an entire feature-length documentary investigating the ‘culture’ of American gun violence without mentioning that blacks, who make up 13 percent of the population, account for over half the murders (and murder victims, too). Once you factor them out, Americans kill at about the same rate as nancy-boy Canadians.”

“America’s traditionally high and England and Wales’ traditionally low murder rates are remorselessly converging,” Steyn said. “In 1981, the U.S. rate was nine times higher than the English. By 1995, it was six times. Last year, it was down to 3.5. Given that U.S. statistics, unlike the British ones, include manslaughter and other lesser charges, the real rate is much closer.”

WorldNetDaily reported in March 2000 that when Australia banned private ownership of most guns in 1996, crime rose dramatically. 

After Australian lawmakers passed widespread gun bans, owners were forced to surrender about 650,000 weapons, which were later slated for destruction, according to statistics from the Australian Sporting Shooters Association. 

Australian officials discounted the report, which used figures also cited by the National Rifle Association. 

But while figures showed that murders fell from 312 in 1996 to 284 murders in 1998, after experiencing a slight increase in 1997, from 312 to 321, Australia’s crime data also showed that almost every other form of crime had increased, often dramatically, in the same time period. 

I watched the film amid a largely white audience who laughed at and applauded Moore?s representation of a peaceful, non-violent Canada. Moore showcased our apparent lack of ghettos and friendly citizenry. Now, it is true that this recent spate of gun violence erupted after Moore?s film was complete. But what is troubling about the film is its shallow handling of social issues related to gun culture in Canada. Moore speaks to hunters, goes shopping for bullets at the friendly Canadian Wal-mart and interviews some folks in a bar in Windsor. But he does not ask much about gun-related crime or gun deaths in Canada. Instead, he roams some streets in Toronto and finds some unlocked doors and passes off Canada as safe and sound.

The depiction of Canada left me flat. Why didn?t Moore probe the pernicious effects of gun culture in Canada? Didn?t he wonder why we needed a gun registry? Such questions might have produced a different Canada from the one in the film. How did Salter Street Films—the Canadian company that co-produced the film—allow such seeming oversight?

Must be for the same reason the audience was laughing. Canadians love to see themselves on the big screen, favourably compared the U.S. Who wouldn’t? And, yes, crime in Toronto and Canada does not look like crime in many major U.S. cities. And, yes, our ghettos might not be comparable to U.S. ghettos. Good. But when Moore tries to pass off the densely populated, mixed-income neighbourhood some call “Co-op City,” just south of the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, as a ghetto, it’s downright cinematically dishonest. And it undermines his credibility.

As black men allegedly shoot and kill each other in Toronto, how do we ignore gun violence here? How do we ignore the violence of racism, internalized and systemic, that breeds violence? Did all this just begin a few months ago? Or is there a history of violence and guns worth exploring in Canada, too, that goes beyond hunting deer and geese?

After all, there are shootings. There are killings. Many people of colour experience Toronto and Canada as violent, but not from the assumed usual suspects. Rather they find it violent from those in authority, like the police. Did not Moore come across all the police killings of black men and other men of colour in his research on gun violence in Canada? Or does police gun violence not count?

As violence of various sorts continue to erupt across North America post-September-11, many are looking for alternatives to a culture of violence. Moore’s film offers important insights into why U.S. citizens would collectively support violent responses to the world we currently live in. But as progressive U.S. citizens, and we must count Moore among them, look around the world for alternatives to their country’s behavior, they should be wary of romanticizing other places without doing the hard work of looking at how the ravages of global capital have brought similar conditions to many places. In the U.S., globalization’s intensification has impacted the working poor and people of colour most harshly. In Canada, many experience globalization as a kind of low-intensity warfare. A perpetual housing shortage, police brutality to keep folks in their place and a neo-conservative re-ordering at both the provincials and federal levels of government, decidedly transferring wealth from the already poor to the already rich—this is our experience of violence.

Moore’s work has always been incredible in its ability to popularize and expose the relationship between big business, class oppression and racism. His work speaks to an audience that many on the left have just not been able to reach. We have to grapple with Moore’s films because he has an audience whose ear it is worth having. That’s why we must take seriously the portrayal we see on the screen. There is something at stake when we refuse to see ourselves, our own violent culture.

Moore should know better, and so should his Canadians audiences.