Demosophia

Michael Moore's Central Thesis in BFC

What about Michael Moore's central thesis, expressed in Bowling for Columbine, that Americans are violent because they're afraid of their neighbors, of strangers, and of anyone who does't look or act like their white ethnic protestant friends? Well, there are two parts to this thesis. The first is that we are more violent than others, and the second is that the explanation has to do with our irrational fears and prejudices.

It's true that we're more violent than most other Western societies, though Moore vastly exaggerates that disparity by his sloppiness. If you compare homicide rates, rather than just gun homicide rates, you find that other cultures tend to substitute other means of dispatch for the missing guns, and just don't use guns as murder weapons as much as we do. They're more likely to stab you or whack you on the head with a lead pipe, or even poison you. But even with that adjustment we're still more violent than most countries, in terms of homicides (but not bulglaries or robberies, apparently).

So there is an apparent research question. The problem is, we have a perfectly good explanation already, an explanation that is widely if not universally accepted in political and social science. And this theory is explaned very coherently by S.M. Lipset in most of his books (see Continental Divide and American Exceptionalism: A Double-edged Sword). Moreover, this theory has the distinct advantage of elegance and simplicity, something that Moore's theory, shoe-horned into the ill-fitting boot of history, lacks. Americans are simply less deferent toward authority.

The big split between Canada and the US took place during the American Revolution, when Canada became the country of the Counter-revolution. If you visit the Old North Church in Boston you can read the placards dedicated to the Tory church-supporting families of the parrish who skedaddled to Canada when the revolution started. Many, if not most, didn't return. So as you look at the history of the two countries the difference becomes obvious. Where the hero of the American West was a gunslinger and outlaw, the hero of the Canadian West was a policeman. Canadians were told to switch from English to Metric, and they did. Americans were told to switch from English to Metric, and they didn't. Etc., etc. Furthermore this disparity is borne out by virtually all of the cross-national polling data on the topic, including some that I happened to conduct with Lipset in the '90s, administered by the Angus Ried Group.

So, the reasons why the US is more violent aren't mysterious. And that means that Moore is apparently dedicated to solving a riddle that isn't a riddle. Oh, there's a problem alright. The problem is: how do you reduce the violence that's a natural conseqence of low deference for authority without reducing the creativity and vitality of the culture? It's a dilemma that occupied the careers of some of the fathers of sociology, like Emile Durkheim. And the short version of the story is that there's a tradeoff that Europe resolves one way, and we another.

And there's another aspect of the problem that the great Senator and Social Scientist Daniel Patrick Moynihan tackled most of his life: the breakdown of family life. But this is a rich avenue of investigation that is conspicuously absent from Moore's little film project.

However, if Americans really are more fearful than other national groups, that still might explain some part of the problem. And it's certainly worth investigating that possibility, the little cartoon-historical-shiboleth notwithstanding. But (and this is about as big as "buts" get) Americans aren't more fearful. In fact, they're less likely to reject people as neighbors either for their race or their religion than the average European. There aren't a lot of cross-national surveys that investigate the specific question of bigotry, explained as fear of having a neighbor unlike yourself, but one that does is Ron Inglehart's World Values Survey, conducted by the University of Michigan in three waves in 1980, 1990 and 1995-6. And in the most recent wave the World Values Survey specifically asks a question designed to probe whether respondents are fearful about having neighbors in various ethnic or social categories, including a question about whether they'd be comfortabe with a Muslim or person of another race as a neighbor. As the table below shows, people in the US are less likely to reject a neighbor on the basis of either race or being a Muslim. Although Canada is at the bottom of both lists in terms of prejudice, only Spain is more accepting of Muslims amoung European nations than the US. And everyone is less fearful than the Belgians, especially with regard to our Islamic brethren. Ironic that Belgium includes the capital of the nascent Euro-nation.

So the question that arises from these data is not "Why is the US more prejudiced?" because it isn't. The question really is: "Why are Canada and Belgium so different?" In other words why is Canada so consistently accepting of other ethnicities and social groups, and why is Belgium so bigotted? I don't know, to be frank. But one theory that makes sense is that Canada can afford to be accepting, because it has the US as a neighbor. It's a bit like the kid who has the toughest biggest guy in school as a best friend. He can afford to be magnanimous. And Belgium has, historically, been surrounded by neighbors who periodically trample it underfoot, as they make a bid to conquer the European continent, a situation very close to the opposite of Canada's. It's just a theory. But it's a theory that makes a lot more sense than Michael Moore's theory that the US is a nation of 'fraidy cats. And although fear does lead to prejudice and mistrust it doesn't necessarily lead to social violence. The murder rate in Belgium isn't particularly high.

Table I Q: On this list are various groups of people. Could you please sort out any that you would not like to have as neighbors? (Chi-square for the race and muslim tables are 370 and 388, respectively)
% who reject another RACE as neighbor.			% who reject MUSLIM as neighbor.
Belgium	15.29		Belgium	26.65
Italy	09.74		France	17.47
Spain	09.20		Britain	16.37
Britain	08.73		W Germany	16.29
W Germany	08.07		Denmark	15.44
N Ireland	07.95		N Ireland	14.80
Netherlands	07.91		Italy	14.32
USA	07.87		Netherlands	14.06
France	06.86		Ireland	13.40
Ireland	06.31		USA	13.28
Denmark	05.06		Spain	11.72
Canada	04.36		Canada	10.35
Average	08.53		Average	15.25

So, if this sort of fearfulness were really the explanation for gun ownership and violence why aren't the Belgians armed to the teeth and shooting one another? Because they defer to authority..

In fact, as a general rule there are two things one can say about such nations:

1. They had, at one time or another, a centralized church that left in its wake an institutionalized deference for authority--a deference that ultimately transfered to the secular state as religiosity inevitably waned.

2. They also almost all have at least one relatively powerful and influencial socialist party.

And the US has never had either. Instead it has had competition between various religious sects, and a separation between Church and State that has, among other things, preserved a certain religiosity that waned long ago in Europe (except, for obvious reasons, in Ireland). And it has also had a two-party system that, according to H.G. Wells (who was also a historian), could easily fit ideologically within the British Labor Party. It has never had a viable socialist party, not even during the '30s era. And therein lies the real reason why Moore hates the US. It has nothing to do with social violence.

So, not only does Moore fail to appreciate that his research question already has at least one, and possibly two, elegant and broadly accepted answers, but he provides an unneccesary AND EMPIRICALLY UNTRUE explanation for the phenomenon.

And one has to ask what his agenda must be. Because it clearly isn't social violence.

So, what's the point of this movie, and why is he talking only to the stoners or children who are incapable of skepticism about his message? Well, let's ask Mike: "Michael, don't you really care about the Columbine shootings? Why did you make this movie, anyway? Simply to give your anti-American theories some sort of borrowed emotional legitimacy, by linking them inappropriately to domestic school violence? Doesn't that issue deserve a real documentary treatment, from a real film maker?"

If one simply looks at all the blatantly manipulative emotional content in this movie as the unabashed schmaltz that it actually is, what's left is a really stupid motion picture. I mean, stupid in the technically incompetent and silly sense. All the lying and deliberate deception aside, it embodies the documentary equivalent of what my highschool classmate, Gene Siskel, would have called an "idiot plot."

(Also, check out Kay S. Hymowitz's article on Michael Moore in City Journal.)

Posted by Demosophist at September 18, 2003 12:09 AM | TrackBack