New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | October 26, 2005

Jesse Walker reports from the right side of the left coast.

Comments

fyodor|10.26.05 @ 6:55PM|#

"You have no right to speak!"

Wow, did they really say that??

the crowd was proudly partisan, clapping wildly whenever a movie gave them a glimpse of George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, even John Bolton

They must have felt so good to be among their own. Humans are like that!

"I just hope that we don't need to use state legislatures to get colleges to adopt its principles."

I hate talk like that. The implication always seems to be that we'd love to leave people alone only if they would clean up their act. But if they don't.... And of course people always disappoint so if the frailties of human nature are reason enough for coercive state intervention, you'll never lack for excuses!

(Obsession, which won the festival's Best Feature award).

That's the flick I was most curious about, so I'm a little disappointed you didn't say more about it. Was it any good?

Ideology and aesthetics don't always match.

But that's because you have a brain, Jesse. Most folks would find a way to make them match.

Entering Zion

I didn't think you needed to spend so much time on why this flick sucked. What does its making say except that there are dorks in the world? Their shot of the checkpoint and accompanying commentary would probably been enough.

Which they are�in the world of The Lord of the Rings. In Fahrenheit 9/11, the soldiers are killing Iraqis. Do the filmmakers think that they aren't human?

I'm not sure if this is fair or not. I kind of lean to the not. I don't think the analogy goes that deep.

(entering a women's center, for example, and asking, deadpan, where the men's center can be found. This is funnier than it sounds.)

I'm glad it's funnier than it sounds, cause as much as I might sympathize with his point in many respects, I also think that's an infuriating way to make a point. (Which I learned from seeing Moore do it.)

Thanks for the report!!

|10.26.05 @ 7:05PM|#

Meanwhile, Horowitz turned his introduction to Brainwashing 201 into a pitch for his Academic Bill of Rights, a measure that could give students the right to lodge official complaints against professors for the views they choose to explore in class.

I was just in high school at the time, but back in the Reagan days, we had the AIA. ...I don't remember hearing that they wanted to can professors for what they wanted to discuss in class; as I recall, it was supposed to be about punishing professors that got the facts wrong.

I think it goes to show that the people calling themselves conservatives these days are comin' from a different planet. ...Yes, that's right, when I was young, everything was perfect--even the imperfections.

They could look like Melrose Larry, who stood up in one Q&A session to wonder whether anyone would ever make a movie of his book Why the Clintons Belong in Prison.

...um...even if he's a wacky, weird idiot doesn't mean he isn't right every once in a while ...even if it's for the wrong reasons.

...a broken clock and all that...

P.S. Great piece!

Dave W.|10.26.05 @ 7:05PM|#

I have never had a chance to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. Is it more anti-state or anti-right? Is it worth seeing?

fyodor|10.26.05 @ 7:12PM|#

Dave W,

My take is that F 9/11 was mildly amusing at times but otherwise rather a waste of time for anyone who pays enough attention to current events to know what's going on and form his own opinion. That said, a lot of people liked it a lot more than I did....

As for what it's anti, it's basically anti-Bush.

Jesse Walker|10.26.05 @ 7:15PM|#

Fyodor: Unfortunately, I was eating lunch while Obsession was screening, so I'm not able to say anything more about it than I did in the piece.

|10.26.05 @ 7:23PM|#

fyodor,

It had some footage from Iraq you'd never see on T.V. After watching it (I had the same reaction after watching "Blowing for Columbine") I asked myself, "People are hopping mad over this? What the hell for?"

|10.26.05 @ 7:30PM|#

It had some footage from Iraq you'd never see on T.V. After watching it (I had the same reaction after watching "Blowing for Columbine") I asked myself, "People are hopping mad over this? What the hell for?"

I haven't gotten around to seeing F9/11 yet. I did finally see Bowling for Columbine a few months back, and I had the same reaction as you.

|10.26.05 @ 7:38PM|#

"If you asked this audience which they'd rather live in, a world without socialized health insurance or a world without Michael Moore, I'm not sure the fellow from Flint would survive."

He's from Davison, goddammit, not Flint (okay, so Davison is only 5 miles from Flint, but let's keep the blame where it belongs) :)

"There's no ignoring the man from Flint."

See above.

Otherwise, good article.

|10.26.05 @ 8:16PM|#

Moore: So you like killing orcs. It's like to you they're not even human!

First Soldier: They're not human, all right? They're orcs!

Second Soldier: Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're, like, demon creatures or something.

Which they are�in the world of The Lord of the Rings. In Fahrenheit 9/11, the soldiers are killing Iraqis. Do the filmmakers think that they aren't human?

Seems to me that the soldiers say this because they want to satirize Michael Moore, who, they suggest, if he made a movie about Middle Earth, would portray the soldiers from the armies of Men, Dwarves, Elves etc - stand-ins for the Gulf War coalition - as warlike caricatures.

Then again, I didn't see the movie.

|10.26.05 @ 8:19PM|#

Now with new and improved quoting, for increased readability!

Moore: So you like killing orcs. It's like to you they're not even human!

First Soldier: They're not human, all right? They're orcs!

Second Soldier: Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're, like, demon creatures or something.

Which they are, in the world of The Lord of the Rings. In Fahrenheit 9/11, the soldiers are killing Iraqis. Do the filmmakers think that they aren't human?

Seems to me that the soldiers say this because they want to satirize Michael Moore, who, they suggest, if he made a movie about Middle Earth, would portray the soldiers from the armies of Men, Dwarves, Elves etc - stand-ins for the Gulf War coalition - as warlike caricatures.

Then again, I didn't see the movie.

|10.26.05 @ 8:43PM|#

In other news...

Maybe I'm just being a dick, but I often get this feeling from some Reason staff often that they just aren't tuned into the facts about those people who call themselves conservative vis-a-vis those who call themselves liberal, which is that they are both pretty much equidistant from those who call themselves libertarians.

I'm getting used to seeing what seems to be surprise rendered in Cavanaugh, or Gillespie, or Young, or Welch when some faction of American conservatism shows itself to be counter to libertarianism, usually because it leans toward statism or away from liberal pluralism. Each time this happens, I mutter to myself (usually something like "duh"), and then go back to enjoying the article.

Forgive me if I am identifying what some might consider the wrong targets. And maybe it could be argued that I am imbuing them, among my favorite writers on the web, with beliefs or tendencies that they do not have. Quite possible! I'd love to be argued with on this.

|10.26.05 @ 9:46PM|#

Larry, the Liberty Film Festival has billed itself as being interested in both conservative AND libertarian films, not JUST as a conservative film festival. I submitted a film to the festival (which has been well-received at a couple of small festivals so far), but the libertarian orientation of the humor was apparently too much for them. Of course, there's also the possibility that they just thought the production values were poor, but based on the samples I've seen of the things that DID screen, I find that impossible to believe. :-)

I don't know what Ron Bailey expected when he went to the festival, but everything about what the festival's web site said ahead of time would have led someone to believe he might see both conservative AND libertarian ideas there. The films that were actually selected seem to have made it the Neo-Conservative Republican Film Festival instead.

|10.26.05 @ 9:50PM|#

BTW, I just checked the festival's web site and a quick glance around the site found no mention of the word "libertarian" anymore. Perhaps I missed it this time. Or perhaps they realized that the word was anathama to their core supporters. Or maybe they just realized that the libertarians who submitted films might sue to demand our entry fees back based on their false advertising. :-)

Jesse Walker|10.26.05 @ 10:07PM|#

Larry: I think you've identified the point of the joke correctly; I'm just considering the unexamined premises. (You can watch the movie online, by the way -- just follow the link from the article.) As for conservatives, I know some who are about 80% libertarian and I know some who are about 0% libertarian. Neither surprises me.

David: That's the first time anyone's ever mixed me up with Ron Bailey...

|10.26.05 @ 10:12PM|#

Oooops. Brain freeze. May I be forgiven? :-)

|10.26.05 @ 10:17PM|#

which is that they are both pretty much equidistant from those who call themselves libertarians.

I see your point, but most people (including a lot of non-libertarians) think that conservatives are, on average, closer to libertarians than liberals are. Conservative rhetoric certainly reinforces that point. (Then again, anybody who believes political rhetoric clearly needs to learn to be more skeptical.)

The issue of "which side" is more libertarian is complicated by the fact that both sides have a variety of opinions. Still, my take:

1) There's no denying that the conservative coalition/GOP coalition has more libertarian elements in it than the other side. Those elements are, of course, marginalized, but they're more noticeable than any libertarian elements on the left.

2) The worst elements of the right are more odious than the average Democrats, and the worst elements on the left are worse than the average Republicans.

3) Most important, while the right may be closer to libertarians than the left is, the biggest problem is that the right has more in common with the left than with libertarians. If you want to think of this in terms of distance, imagine a triangle with 3 points: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian. The line connecting Democrat and Republican is really short. The lines connecting Libertarian to Democrat, and Libertarian to Republican, are both fairly long. One may be longer than the other, but both are long.

|10.26.05 @ 11:54PM|#

Hey, Jesse, any of your Hollywood connections have use for a libertarian struggling screenwriter/bitch assistant/nine of all trades? You know me, I'll, assistant supervise the hell out of their script.

|10.27.05 @ 1:41AM|#

I'm getting used to seeing what seems to be surprise rendered in Cavanaugh, or Gillespie, or Young, or Welch when some faction of American conservatism shows itself to be counter to libertarianism, usually because it leans toward statism or away from liberal pluralism.

The libertarian/conservative split isn't new news to anyone who's read the pages of Reason or Hit & Run, but there are still a lot of conservatives out there who haven't gotten the memo. I still get surprised when I meet old school budget, tax, free trade, pragmatic conservatives like myself that for some reason still identify with Bush the Younger's Republican Party.

...How many budget cutters out there still self-identify as conservative? Isn't that a surprise?

|10.27.05 @ 5:03AM|#

I have never had a chance to see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. Is it more anti-state or anti-right? Is it worth seeing?

Like all Moore's films, it is pretty much just "anti-".

Dave W.|10.27.05 @ 5:30AM|#

T, the new style libertarians are called seamless garment libertarians. They are coming to take away both your army and your SS. This approach won't eliminate taxes, but it would serve to reduce them significantly.

Dave W.|10.27.05 @ 6:54AM|#

We are also sometimes called "fearless libs" because we fear neither the prospect of invading armies nor the prospect of being reduced to eating dog food in our dotage.

|10.27.05 @ 9:36AM|#

thoreau, am I correct in assuming that we libertarians are, in the eyes of the Democrats and the Republicans, the Popular Front of Judea?

As for the festival, I've been reading their blog, Libertas, for a while now, and I find it quite conservative--in the anti-left sense. There's an occasional libertarian moment, but those moments are few and far between. For example, I remember being a little annoyed with their reaction to V for Vendetta. Instead of taking the film as it probably is--a story about people fighting a fascist government--they seem to see it only as an effort by Hollywood to whitewash terrorist tactics. I suppose that that may be true, but I haven't seen much to back that belief up. Overall, though, I find the blog interesting for its insider perspective on being a non-leftist in the movie industry (besides, they have a picture of Orson Welles from The Third Man on the top of their site--how cool is that?).

fyodor|10.27.05 @ 10:24AM|#

I suppose that that may be true, but I haven't seen much to back that belief up.

I like the way you say that. A lot of things might be true that aren't backed up by much! :-) I find myself thinking or saying that a lot. Sometimes it's all you can say!

Dave W.|10.27.05 @ 10:41AM|#

I like the way you say that. A lot of things might be true that aren't backed up by much! :-) I find myself thinking or saying that a lot. Sometimes it's all you can say!

I call it knowing what you don't know.

|10.27.05 @ 11:09AM|#

Here's what Bertrand Russell had to say on the matter: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

And, of course, there's always Socrates/Plato (from The Apology):

I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed him--his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination--and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is--for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know.

|10.27.05 @ 11:19AM|#

I saw Brainwashing 101 some months ago and thought it was pretty powerful, if amateurish. I can easily imagine people getting ticked off at it, but the idea of protestors jumping on stage is outlandish. Any news on what happened to them or who they were?

|10.27.05 @ 11:38AM|#

I asked myself, "People are hopping mad over this? What the hell for?"

I had a similar reaction to the Eminem "Mosh" video. Some people at my ISP were posting things like "This is the most powerful piece of popular culture I've ever seen" and "It brought tears to my eyes". I watched it and said "Yeah, OK, and...? That was it?" It reminded me of the saying "Make a man think and he will hate you; make a man think he is thinking and he will love you." People are much more receptive, unfortunately, to things that pat them on the head and tell them that everything they already thought was right.

dhex|10.27.05 @ 12:06PM|#

i was sorta interested in brainwashing 101 until i heard a bunch of stuff about the highly selective editing involved - real cut off in mid sentence type stuff.

i dunno...complaining about being subjected to leftish values in higher learning is like complaining about religious instruction at a parochial school. outside of outright examples of speech supression - which obviously do happen - there's a lot of crying and moaning over "people call me nasty names."

well, yeah. and if you get them drunk later, they'll fuck you. welcome to college.

Jesse Walker|10.27.05 @ 12:09PM|#

JD: I don't know who they were, but it seemed clear that their ire was aimed at Horowitz, not at the film. (This was a sequel to Brainwashing 101, by the way, not the original film that you saw.)

|10.28.05 @ 12:14AM|#

I did not see Brainwashing 101, but Brainwashing 201 was fun and nicely done. And of course the editing was highly selective, that's why they call it editing. As far as the filmmakers cutting people off mid-sentence, that was usually due to poor craftsmanship. The production seemed no more censorious than any other documentary. You would never have the opportunity to miss anything that interfered with their thesis due to its lack of inclusion... but this is how documentary film is made. Ultimately, their point is made and it's fun to see them do it.

I don't get why you say, "complaining about being subjected to leftish values in higher learning is like complaining about religious instruction at a parochial school." Unlike religious training at a religious school, there is nothing inherently left wing about scholarship so I think complaining about bias is perfectly valid.

And Jesse, you are certainly right about the protestors going after Horowitz directly. I recall them yelling something about the Students Bill of Rights right after saying he had no right to speak. Do it yourself irony, just add water.

|10.28.05 @ 1:04AM|#

Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" is an effort to prove that sometimes the cure really is worse than the disease.

|10.28.05 @ 1:28PM|#

The issue of "which side" is more libertarian is complicated by the fact that both sides have a variety of opinions. Still, my take:

I find your take on this pretty dead-on.

|10.28.05 @ 1:31PM|#

Seems to me that the soldiers say this because they want to satirize Michael Moore, who, they suggest, if he made a movie about Middle Earth, would portray the soldiers from the armies of Men, Dwarves, Elves etc - stand-ins for the Gulf War coalition - as warlike caricatures.

Then again, I didn't see the movie.

I saw it online, and that's basically the context. It's actually worth a laugh or two at the more extreme anti-war arguments and rhetoric.