"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

Government-Managed Capitalism: A Love Story

Memo to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore: Free markets didn’t cause the financial crisis. The biggest culprits were government planners meddling with the market. That’s the message of Acton’s newest video short.

So why on earth is Michael Moore (Capitalism: A Love Story, Sicko) so eager to route even more power and money through Washington? Centralized planning is economic poison. Doubling down isn’t the cure.

(Also, Acton’s resource page on the economic crisis is here.)

Hoekstra: ‘Islam and Free Speech’

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Rep. Peter Hoekstra discusses the impending release of Fitna, a short film highly critical of Islam, by Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament. Hoekstra:

Radical jihadists are prepared to use violence against individuals to stop them from exercising their free speech rights. In some countries, converting a Muslim to another faith is a crime punishable by death. While Muslim clerics are free to preach and proselytize in the West, some Muslim nations severely restrict or forbid other faiths to do so. In addition, moderate Muslims around the world have been deemed apostates and enemies by radical jihadists.

Radical jihadists believe representative government is un-Islamic, and urge Muslims who live in democracies not to exercise their right to vote. The reason is not hard to understand: When given a choice, most Muslims reject the extreme approach to Islam. This was recently demonstrated in Iraq’s Anbar Province, which went from an al-Qaeda stronghold to an area supporting the U.S.-led coalition. This happened because the populace came to intensely dislike the fanatical ways of the radicals, which included cutting off fingers of anyone caught smoking a cigarette, 4 p.m. curfews, beatings and beheadings. There also were forced marriages between foreign-born al Qaeda fighters and local Sunni women.

Read all of “Islam and Free Speech” here.

‘A Threat to Tyranny Everywhere’

Arnold Kling had the opportunity to screen The Call of the Entrepreneur and published his reactions to it on Tech Central Station. In this rave review Mr. Kling, in the first paragraph, calls The Call both the “most subversive film” he has ever seen, and “a threat to tyranny everywhere.” He points out that while the film uses the so-called “G-word,” it avoids the scare-tactics that “An Inconvenient Truth,” also a religious film in his view, makes use of and is based around a much more rational exploration of evidence.

Read Mr. Kling’s review at Tech Central Station. Arnold Kling also blogs at EconLog, and has posted a notice of the review there.

“The university is totally ignoring diversity of thought”

Coming soon to a theater near you (hopefully) - Evan Coyne Maloney’s Indoctrinate U. From the film’s website:

At colleges and universities across the nation, from Berkeley and Stanford to Yale and Bucknell, the charismatic filmmaker uncovers academics who use classrooms as political soapboxes, students who must parrot their professors’ politics to get good grades, and administrators who censor diversity of thought and opinion. With flair and wit, Maloney poses tough questions to America’s academics and university administrators — who often call campus security rather than give him straight answers. And Maloney gives a voice to those whose stories of harassment, intimidation, and censorship make our nation’s universities, supposed bastions of impartiality and free inquiry, seem mere mainstays of groupthink and indoctrination.

Judging by the trailer, the film looks to be quite a ride:

And don’t forget about Acton’s The Call of the Entrepreneur, which will be premiering soon as well.

The Call of the Entrepreneur

As many of you may know, Acton has been working on a documentary. The Call of the Entrepreneur will premier in Grand Rapids, Mich., on May 17 at Celebration Cinema North. Come one, come all, and see this wonderful documentary. The Call of the Entrepreneur tells the stories of three entrepreneurs: one a farmer in rural Evart, Michigan, another a mercantile banker in New York, and finally an entrepreneur in Hong Kong, China. The film examines the drive behind what these people do: Why are they driven to create wealth? Why do they produce? Who does it benefit?

This video clip is also available via YouTube and in a larger format here (Requires RealPlayer or Quicktime).