Michael Moore's Where to Invade Next is a misguided offensive

Michael Moore’s documentaries have made the Oscar-winning director the darling of liberals and a punching bag for conservatives. His new film, Where to Invade Next, succeeds in showing his concern for America’s neediest citizens. But once again Moore’s deafness to opposing opinions and advocacy for some unhealthy positions undercut many of his valid points.

With his camera, Moore “invades” eight European countries and one in North Africa, intent on “bringing back what America needs.” Moore’s “first target” is Italy, where a professional couple explain the government-mandated 6-7 weeks of annual paid vacation and long lunch breaks.

“It’s our right and our pleasure” to provide so many benefits, a Lardini clothing company executive adds. “What’s the point of being richer?”

Ducati Motorcycle bosses credit their workforce’s productiveness to ample, stress-free leisure time. Moore plants his American flag in the middle of the factory floor, “[claiming] these ideas for America.” He admits Italy has its problems, but brushes them off.

“My mission is to pick the flowers, not the weeds,” he tells viewers.

In France, Moore finds schools provide children with healthy lunches fit for “3- or 4-star restaurants.” He also sits in a high school sex education class.

“Abstinence is not for us,” the teacher claims. “It’s not really contraception.”

Finnish students do not have homework or take standardized tests but rank among the best educated in the world. Teachers insist the ban on private schools means the rich and poor learn from an early age how to co-exist. Moore then meets with Slovenia’s president, who boasts that the nation’s colleges and universities are free, even for foreign students. Moore talks with a happy American student who says she can’t afford community college tuition back home.

Moore admits citizens in these countries pay high taxes but notes Americans have to pay private entities for the same services.

The filmmaker trumpets Germany’s universal health care system, Portugal’s recent decriminalization of drug possession (including heroin and cocaine), and Norway’s criminal justice system “based on rehabilitation, not revenge.” At the Halden Maximum Security Penitentiary, prisoners keep keys to their cells and guards don’t carry weapons. Moore also interviews the father of one of Anders Breivik’s 77 murder victims and seems to celebrate the fact that the maximum prison sentence for any offender in Norway, even Breivik, is 21 years.

In Iceland, former president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Europe’s first female president, and three female bank executives hypothesize the strongest governments and companies are ones where women are equally involved. Almost half Iceland’s parliament and the country’s CEOs are women. And a Tunisian activist tells Moore her government’s funding of contraception and abortion “helps women to be equal to men.”

Critics of Moore’s work might be misguided in suggesting he hates America. It’s not unpatriotic to point out perceived ills, even without offering practical steps toward solutions. And Moore rightly confronts the disproportional imprisonment of African-Americans. But he ignores abortion-on-demand, another early 1970s offensive that has destroyed the American family unit, especially in the African-American community.

Interviewing only like-minded voices—no working-class folks and only one person of color—Where to Invade Next (rated R for language, some violent images, drug use, and brief graphic nudity) lacks the edginess of Moore’s previous work. He may want to do justice and love kindness, but without walking humbly with God, Moore has a defective ability to recognize what true justice and kindness are.