Coming Soon: “Mercantilism: A Love Story”

Judging from the previews, Michael Moore’s latest, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” ought better be titled as above. Someone, quick, give him a copy of Adam Smith’s A Wealth of Nations and explain to him that the best way to stop corporations from taking advantage of government largesse distributed at the expense of the politically impotent is to cut off Congress’s ability to confer such favors.

As the late Harry Browne put it, in the context of the apparently now long-forgotten Savings & Loan scandal, “If there are packs of wild dogs roaming the streets because someone has strewn raw meat around, you don’t blame the dogs.”

Proving, once again, that “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

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As a footnote to Moore’s previous movie, “Sicko,” in which he holds up the Cuban health-care system as the ultimate model, see Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s recent column in praise of Cuban neurologist Hilda Molina, founder of the International Center for Neurological Restoration:

Castro became a frequent visitor to her center—until in 1991 the health ministry informed Molina that she and her staff would have to devote their better efforts to treating foreigners able to pay in dollars at the expense of Cuban patients. When she protested, she was reminded that she had an elderly mother and a son ...

Alvaro recently met with her in Buenos Aires, where she has finally been able to join her mother and son:

As I listened to Molina, I kept thinking that her story was not about the tragedy but about the perfect farce that is Cuba’s communism. What else can be said about a regime that reserves its medical institutions for capitalist dollars in the name of abolishing capitalism and that for 15 years, in the name of anti-imperialism, prevents a woman from crossing borders in order to join her son? Yes, one perfect farce.

Perhaps farce is Moore’s new genre?