Modern take on the intellectual battle of Friedman (Batman) vs Marx (Bane)
Batman fights the Occupy movement, who tries to bring about a world reminiscent of the Soviet Union. Thankfully, we have yet to see a leader emerge trying to imitate Bane or Stalin.
Two recent Wall Street Journal articles brought this issue to the forefront of my mind. Andrew Klavan’s “Batman Battles the Politics of Resentment” and Stephen Moore’s “The Man Who Saved Capitalism.”
I watched The Dark Knight Rises and couldn’t help but notice the resemblances that Klavan mentions. I vividly remember the scene where Selina Kyle (Catwoman) is holding a shattered photo of a family and delivers the most powerful line in regards to Bane’s mob’s destruction to her sidekick, who returns with the most telling line of the mob’s mentality.
The Occupy movement, redistribution of wealth, Marxism, whatever you want to call it; these people are mad at the system (they occasionally say they hate capitalism) for a variety of reasons. They don’t realize that we haven’t been living in true capitalism though.
We’ve had far too much government involvement in business at least since FDR for a true capitalistic society to evolve and flourish. The answer to this problem isn’t a Marxist revolution, but a defense of free market capitalism in a republic (our system of government).
Milton Friedman knew economics. Obama doesn’t. Friedman knew that the government doesn’t produce, it only takes. We need more producers (small business owners, employees of big and small businesses, creatives) and less takers (government employees, Occupy thugs, welfare riders).
Keynesian theory failed. It just doesn’t work; the government cannot nor should not attempt to fix all our problems. We should really give capitalism a shot. We’ll all have a better standard of living and the opportunities to rise above your current level will be abundant as the government will be out of your way.
The newest Batman film packs a punch as the perfect visual aid to why we need to prevent the advances of a movement that wants to depose our systems and redistribute the wealth to whoever has the most ammo (which is essentially what happens).
It’s difficult to have an intellectual debate with a majority of a society that has collective ADD and a rapidly dwindling ability to read (see Nashville’s public school kids reading scores for proof), so we must approach the conversation in a new way. Film may be the answer.
With the current superhero craze, I can’t think of a better way to get the message to the masses than Batman stopping a group of socialist thugs to save Gotham (society).
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