Michael Moore, the socialist/communist documentary-maker and progressive hero, published an article on substack laying out what he called a “28th Amendment” that he wants to present to the 117th United States Congress. Since it’s not funny, I have to assume that his proposal is serious. It begins,
“The inalienable right of a free people to be kept safe from gun violence and the fear thereof must not be infringed and shall be protected by the Congress and the States. This Amendment thus repeals and replaces the Second Amendment.”
There is enough right there to justify not reading further except to learn what is lurking in the weeds. Naively or intentionally (since it is Moore, an ethics corrupter, I assume the latter), that language opens the door wide to the institution of a police state. This is a striking admission of the extreme Left’s (that is to say, the Left’s) embrace of fearmongering to induce the public to give up its civil rights for “safety.” The only way a government can guarantee that citizens are “safe” from violence and fear of violence is to so seriously restrict individual liberty that criminal activity is impossible. Once the “safety” excuse is accepted (it’s much admired in the student bodies of left-indoctrinated colleges, which is to say, colleges), the First Amendment will fall too…and people like Moore are just the ones to make it happen:
“The inalienable right of a free people to be kept safe from words, offense, hate, denigration, marginalization, dangerous positions and ideologies, and the fear thereof must not be infringed and shall be protected by the Congress and the States. This Amendment thus repeals and replaces the First Amendment”? Heck, scholars and politicians with a lot more influence than Moore would sign on to that “improvement” right now.
Moore’s “28th amendment” gets worse:
“Congress shall regulate all ammunition, capacity of ammunition, the storage of guns, gun locks, gun sights, body armor and the sale and distribution of such items. No weapons of any kind whose sole intention is the premeditated elimination of human life are considered legal. Congress may create future restrictions as this amendment specifically does not grant any American the ‘right’ to own any weapon.”
Weapons do not have “intentions”—though I understand that in Woke World, guns kill people without human agency.
Moore is in the large category of pundits, celebrities and anti-American activists who make me feel guilty when I point out their unethical nature. He’s always been the same: a dishonest statist who believes that an iron-booted government would mean fairness for the common people, which he still pretends to represent. I assume Moore believes that he will be a member of the elite who always prey on gullible populations foolish enough to fall for his utopian fictions.He’s not a scholar or a lawyer: he’s a freshman year state college drop out who decided without sufficient intellectual stimulation or education that he had everything figured out, and used a natural talents as propagandist to achieve far more influence than someone of his limited perspective should have.
Who is his amendment aimed at? Two groups, I would say: those who, like him, want the personal liberties and values the United States has championed since its founding watered down or eliminated to make a socialist/communist society overseen by an all-powerful government inevitable, and those members of the public who are apathetic, intellectually lazy, badly educated and informed, and thus vulnerable to flawed advocacy offered by a celebrity.
That’s a lot of people, regardless of how self-evidently poisonous Moore’s scheme is. No, Moore’s amendment will never pass. However, it is a bracing reminder of where the party he supports and the ideology he salutes wants to achieve.
Ethics Alarms 
Ironically, that police state that would result from the severe restriction of liberty that the Left wants will not protect people from violence at all.
In the Soviet Union, crime happened all the time, including violent crime.
It just didn’t get reported in the newspaper. People knew it happened; it wasn’t acknowledged by a government that didn’t want to admit that there were problems.
You mean just like the current government is ignoring crime and inflation? The way to solve problems isn’t to pretend they aren’t there. BTW, Michael Moore has a net worth of $30M, which he is happy to wave in anyone’s face who criticizes him (though he’s a minnow compared to George Lucas with over $5B). In his case, though, it just shows that there’s a sucker born every minute. .
But crime and inflation are reported. They may be blamed on the wrong factors, but they are still reported. That’s the difference between a totalitarian regime and our misguided media right now. Once the Socialist paradise is inflicted upon us, notice how there will be no problems. In the Soviet Union and its allies, crime – not including those on the wrong side of philosophy – simply wasn’t reported.
A killer ran amok in the suburbs of Potsdam in Soviet-occupied Berlin during the years after WWII and it never once appeared in the papers.
Can someone explain to me the progressive’s inclusion of body armor in these lists?
You’re afraid of guns? Fine, I understand that. I disagree, but I understand: Squeal away.
But body armor? Explain to me how me wearing body armor makes you in any way less safe. Explain to me how it’s any less stupid than your stupid facial mask fixation. If gun violence is so prevalent we need this amendment, then why the hell aren’t you advocating handing armor out like ticker tape at a Macy’s day parade?
Body armor protects mass shooters from police trying to take him out, I suppose. Or could be hoarded by all those right-wing Nationalist militias out there.
Right. If you’re wearing body armor, Moore’s police can’t shoot you and kill you as easily as the could if you were not protected. Of course, lefties and Commies are always peaceful, so they never have to be shot. It would only be conservatives and Republicans and capitalists who would acquire and wear body armor.
When I read the first sentence, I was tempted to parse the language thoroughly, starting with his dubious use of “inalienable.”
I will be happy for right now merely to point out that this sentence (“No weapons of any kind whose sole intention is the premeditated elimination of human life are considered legal.”) completely negates itself. Even leaving aside “intention,” every gun owner I know has more than one “intention” for every firearm they own. Every fall, we go out into the woods and they bring up guns for target practice and to blow up Tannerite-filled pumpkins. One of the guys even uses them to hunt “dangerous and delicious animals,” as Krusty the Clown would say.
-Jut
Okay, this one too:
“inalienable right of a free people to be kept safe from gun violence”
In order to keep people safe from gun violence, they can no longer be a “free people.” Not even Denmark and Norway can guarantee that inalienable right. China? Probably. But, they are not a free people.
-Jut
What about Singapore?
Brutal punishments for minor infractions?
Not free.
-Jut
Wow – enjoy this run on tangent of epic proportions! Who knows why I write any of the things that I do….but this is still my favorite place to lurk.
Too bad he doesn’t understand what a “right” is. You have a right to exist and create safe conditions for yourself, but you do not have a “right” to protection. If we had a “right to protection”, the Uvalde police officers would be on death row at this moment. No. Police a.k.a. the government, is for maintaining the peace if possible, but restoring peace and cleaning up after tragedy is more correct to their mission.
To that end, Moore’s amendment fall short in only repealing the 2nd amendment. To be effective, it needs to also repeal the 3rd, 4th, and 6th amendments. Why the 3rd you ask? Well, we can’t have gunsmiths and people with the knowledge to create weapons go un-surveilled. We’ll have to station stooges and cameras in the homes of those most likely to create weapons to ensure they don’t.
This whole thing is sprawling out of the mantra of “healthcare is a right”, to which the opposition correctly points out that healthcare is a service and the service of another person is not something that can be a right of yours. Those proponents will argue that they meant “health insurance is a right”, but again, service of another. To which, I actually agree with their motivations. To get the cheapest prices in healthcare, one needs to create the largest pool of participants as possible. Making the service of healthcare a government concern much the way we do with streets and infrastructure would, if nothing else, be a wash from a cost perspective (at least according to my finances). I pay as much for health insurance and service each year as I do taxes, so if you say my taxes will double – what would I care?
So then we say “well, if we kill private insurance, that’s going to put a ton of people out of work.” Yes. Yes it is. You know what? This is probably a great time to do it. We’re a nation in a transition at the moment. We have staffing shortages because a ton of people figured out how to be financially free by creating a social media platform and there are a ton of kids coming of age who will never apply for a job in the first place. So if our private health insurance people can’t swing to a different line of insurance, we can sure use them in some of the trades and service industry. Will they make less money? Sure, but they won’t have to pay as much for health insurance either, so it might actually just be a win-win.
Ho boy. I forgot, the reason I started down this tangent of “Healthcare is a right”. Let’s say it’s true. Really, literally. You have a right to healthcare. That’s actually a good amendment. *STAY WITH ME HERE*. I’m not saying the service of healthcare is a right the way our lefty friends are saying it. What I’m saying is, that you, as an individual, should have the recognized right to try any medicine, any procedure that you think will improve your condition. This would drastically reduce government regulations and restrictions in the healthcare space. If you want to use an unlicensed doctor or try an experimental drug for an off-label use, that should be your right. Again, I’m not saying you have a right to have that all paid for you, but it should be available to you.
Ok, apologies, and congratulations to the 1 person who made it to the end!
I not only made it to the end, I’m going to make it a comment of the day…
I second that nomination. That was some great reading. Now I’m going to start over and read it to the end again.
I’m confused, Tim. You want to nationalize health care AND deregulate it?
Why not nationalize the law industry? All lawyers will be employed by and paid by the government. Everyone has a right to a lawyer’s services?
I’m confused, Tim. You want to nationalize health care AND deregulate it?
I know, right? It’s just so crazy that it might just work!
Also, on the topic of lawyers, I stumbled upon a solution to that which was first published in 1623….
Unless private insurance were actually banned, not all in that industry would be put out of work, nor would everyone save money (or break even). For example, though they have a national health system, Brits who can afford it often carry private policies that afford them the ability to access timely care and better doctors and procedures.
Anecdotes: A nephew was born in the UK while my brother-in-law (& my sister) was on a corporate posting there, with their private insurance affording them the good private doctors. (A six-year-old with a British accent back in a Texas first grade class was amusing). A young relative with unilateral testicular cancer, here in the U.S., was able to get a diagnosis, a second opinion, and surgery within about a week. During his ordeal, he haunted the various relevant boards and support groups. There he repeatedly encountered stories from around the world about those whose healthcare systems left them in the lurch until they were past the point of successful treatment. The oft-posted conventional wisdom was “Get to America for treatment if you can manage it”.
National healthcare is not without its drawbacks.
Here in New Zealand the government pays most of our hospital and medicine bills but only lightly subsidises our ambulance and GP bills, and doesn’t pay our optician, dental and hearing aid bills. If you need something like a hip replacement you go on a waiting list and at any time your operation can be delayed like when my father fell over and broke his hip so he had his operation straight away and whoever was due for an operation that day would have been shoved further down the waiting list.
I have my own health insurance with a $NZ5000 ($US3067) excess on it to keep my payments low so if I need an expensive operation like a hip replacement I can use it to avoid being on the waiting list too long.
Exponentially more people were killed by their governments last century than the total of all those killed in American “mass shootings.”
We had to watch his documentary on universal health care in my freshmen government class. When you are young and not raised by parents who talk much about politics, you go into situations like this without knowing what you are even watching.
I assumed if a professor was showing me the documentary that there was some merit to it (which, I’m sure there are some points here and there, considering how long it is). I look back and wonder how the college I went to would be okay with a professor showing something like that to freshmen students.
I always assumed college professors were the smartest people in the world because you are taught that in high school. So, I followed them and eventually became a progressive. Never a socialist, but close.
I know people who are educated who like Moore and think he is insightful and brilliant. There is something about the humanities that attracts people who never have to face the consequences for being wrong.
Minor point: I don’t think it’s fair to state colleges to identify Moore as having mostly not attended one. I’m hoping public colleges and universities will save us from private colleges and universities.
I’m hoping that both public and private colleges will continue the trend of insane tuition increases and price themselves out of business.
“To which, I actually agree with their motivations. To get the cheapest prices in healthcare, one needs to create the largest pool of participants as possible. Making the service of healthcare a government concern much the way we do with streets and infrastructure would, if nothing else, be a wash from a cost perspective (at least according to my finances).”
Bad analogy. Streets and infrastructure are, generally speaking, natural monopolies. They benefit from centralization because production or delivery is redundant if competitors exist. Moreover, they scale well and aren’t ripe for abuse (e.g., some people consume very, very little healthcare over a lifetime while others, due to either choice or circumstance or both, can easily consume more than a few decade’s worth of someone’s value in mere years).
I’ll reuse this analogy: imagine two apartment buildings that are exactly identical in every way, from the construction materials to the number of people living in each apartment. One of these buildings decides to pay all the utility costs (water, electricity, gas, internet, etc) and then equally divides those costs among each apartment. The other building charges each apartment according to its actual usage.
What would happen to the comparative usage of resources between these two buildings? Which would result in more efficient distribution and usage of resources and would, in the end, cost less (both in terms of price and cost)?
This was supposed to be a reply to Tim’s comment above.
Thanks for the reply. I don’t disagree – but I wonder if they both had the same limitations to their resources, if the “paid for” building wouldn’t innovate their way to greater efficiencies because of the stressed resources while the “owner paid” building continued on an individual basis and became ambivalent with a “it is what it is” attitude.
I mean, the whole thing is extremely complex and it’s easy to become complacent and throw your hands up and say “hey, it’s working” but there are plenty of other scenarios where we can say “Hey, it’s not working”. I don’t think we should fight against improving what we have, and we should always be considering the proposals that come our way, which involves making a decision on whether the proposal will improve the situation in the short term, the long term, both, or neither.
As a thought exercise, what is 1 way (however small or large) that we can improve US systems for health care / health insurance?
You mentioned a few in your remarks in your comment of the day post.
There was a study done by PwC years ago about healthcare spending that found that upwards of 1/3 of the total spend in healthcare was redundant testing. This is a direct result of the threat of tort.
Unfortunately, lawyers and malpractice insurance companies will always be overly cautious, but trying to ease the burden of over-diagnosing is the low hanging fruit.
And in general, I’m in favor of moving the cost closer to the individual, rather than farther away as you seem to be. Decouple insurance from employment, incentivize hospitals and clinics into more standard, transparent pricing, and incentivize insurance companies to simplify contracts, pricing, and reimbursement policies.
Moving the whole country into one risk pool might save a bit on overhead, but it would lose out hand-over-fist in other efficiencies. Just ask anyone who regularly deals with Medicare billing.
Moore is irrelevant except, perhaps, as a weathervane to the opinions of the looniest of the American loons. Unfortunately, “Loony” seems to constitute a large tract of real estate in today’s America.
If he’s a weathervane, he’s one that’s rusted solid in place. No swiveling from this guy, he’s been locked in one monotonously predictable direction for decades.
Is it too much to ask that those proposing changes to the fundamental defining text of our society at least read the document they wish to edit? I’m not even saying they need to have a deep understanding of it, but at least give the ol’ girl a once-over. Scan it for keywords. Something. Any kind of exposure to it would be preferable to this proudly ignorant attitude these people approach it with. Use the fucking thing as a placemat for your dinner one night. Just sit quietly in a room with a copy of it nearby, one time. Anything. Burn a copy as incense. Lie down on a copy and see if you can absorb anything by osmosis…
You owe me a keyboard…
You almost have to admire how the whole thing is so slapdash and poorly thought out. He wants to amend the constitution, but can’t be bothered to give it more than 30 minutes of thought.
Probably my favorite part is where he bans “all guns made of plastic or any homemade equipment and machinery or a 3D printer that can make a gun or weapon that can take a human life.”
So, it’s back to the Stone Age, then? No more machines that could possibly make any weapon that could take a human life. I wonder how the few survivors who don’t starve to death are going to bury everybody else’s corpses if they aren’t even allowed the capability to make a shovel.
On second thought, maybe not even the Stone Age. A rock used to knap a piece of flint into a sharp blade likely meets the definition of a “machine that can make a weapon that can take a human life.”
Oh, shit, the human arm is such a machine, since it’s capable of making a fist (which are used more often to kill Americans than rifles). Enforcing Moore’s edicts is going to get messy.
The 2nd Amendment was not created to protect me from the shooter that walked into the school in Uvalde. Nor was it created to protect me from the shooter in the store in Buffalo. Nor was it created to protect me from the the shooter in Las Vegas, nor Dylan and Kliebold in Columbine, nor the criminal taking pot-shots at police officers as he/she runs by me in an attempt to flee. It wasn’t created to protect me from a home invader, wanting my TV and stereo.
The 2nd Amendment was not created to allow me to hunt animals for food. Nor was it created so I could hunt them for sport. Nor was it created so I could protect myself from an attacking bear or moose or mountain lion, or a pack of feral cats wanting to give me rabies. Nor was it created so I would be free to just shoot squinnies or prairie dogs trying to mimic – in my yard – the tunnel system below Stalag 13.
The 2nd Amendment was not created to offer me some sort of defense against a Russian invasion, or a British invasion, or any invasion, including the Invasion of the Neptune Men. It was not created so I could have an answer to attackers in a zombie apocalypse or any other apocalypse.
The 2nd Amendment WAS created to protect me from an overreaching, tyrannical government…just like the other rights listed. The Founders knew that even with the best intentions, given time, government tended to become more and more totalitarian. The Bill of Rights were the “Ten Commandments” of our system…they were “thou shalt not’s” – directed at the government.
And now Michael Moore (along with numerous others) suggests that we cede one of those rights back to the single entity from which it was designed to protect us. That is the height of stupidity and clearly demonstrates how much he (and all those others) doesn’t know on this subject.
The 2nd Amendment was not created to protect me from the shooter that walked into the school in Uvalde. Nor was it created to protect me from the shooter in the store in Buffalo. Nor was it created to protect me from the the shooter in Las Vegas, nor Dylan and Kliebold in Columbine, nor the criminal taking pot-shots at police officers as he/she runs by me in an attempt to flee. It wasn’t created to protect me from a home invader, wanting my TV and stereo.
The 2nd Amendment was not created to allow me to hunt animals for my food. Nor was it created so I could hunt them for sport. Nor was it created so I could protect myself from an attacking bear or moose or mountain lion, or a pack of feral cats wanting to give me rabies. Nor was it created so I would be free to just shoot squinnies or prairie dogs trying to mimic – in my yard – the tunnel system below Stalag 13.
The 2nd Amendment was not created to offer me some sort of defense against a Russian invasion, or a British invasion, or any invasion, including the Invasion of the Neptune Men. It was not created so I could have an answer to attackers in a zombie apocalypse or any other apocalypse.
The 2nd Amendment WAS created to protect me from an overreaching, tyrannical government…just like the other rights listed. The Founders knew that even with the best intentions, given time, government tended to become more and more totalitarian. The Bill of Rights were the “Ten Commandments” of our system…they were “thou shalt not’s” – directed at the government.
And now Michael Moore (along with numerous others) suggests that we cede one of those rights back to the single entity from which it was designed to protect us. That is the height of stupidity and clearly demonstrates how much he (and all those others) doesn’t know on this subject.
If tyrannical people like Michael Moore want to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve, this is exactly how to do it. The lunatic totalitarian fringe who think like Michael Moore will drive the USA into a bloody Civil War. These people should be very careful with rhetoric like this because…
No one truly what’s war, but sometimes it’s full appropriate to project the resolve of we the people and our willingness to walk into a bloody war to show the totalitarians that their efforts to strip the rights of we the people will not be tolerated by we the people.
This totalitarian bull shit cannot go unchallenged; there should be a massive civil protest at Michael Moore’s home to project the complete resolve of we the people.