I just watched Michael Moore’s SICKO. I have mixed feelings about his methods, but I applaud his message.

The world is at war. And it is being fought over a single driving disagreement: who gets to have a better life. And there are only two points of view.

The first point of view is that a minority of people get to have a better life. There is endless disagreement over which minority, but taken together, it is the majority view that a minority deserve to have a better life.

The other point of view is that everyone deserves to have a better life.

I subscribe to the second point of view. I don’t “believe” it. It’s not a question of belief. It is correctly a question of feeling, but feelings are secondary. It is the right point of view because it is reasonable, and because it is workable. The idea that a minority of people deserve to have better lives, while the rest should resign themselves to hopelessness, is not workable.

SICKO, like other films I have seen by Michael Moore, and other documentaries by other directors, dances around this issue—who gets to benefit from progress—but it is at the heart of what he is trying to show his audience. In some societies (in his words, every Western democracy except the United States), progress is meant to be shared by all. Perhaps not completely equally, but at least equitably. In the United States, however, it is not the case. They say it is, but it is demonstrably not so. Moreover, it is demonstrably the case that those people who currently benefit the most from progress, who have the most wealth and power, are working as hard as they can to take even more away from those who have less. And a large number, perhaps even a majority of Americans, support this, to their own detriment.

The reasons that Americans undermine their own health, wealth, and happiness are numerous. Societies are complex; there is no simple explanation. But the American people are confused, and in their confusion, they are both passively and actively bringing harm upon themselves.

A major—if not the primary—source of their confusion is the decades-long campaign of deceit, distortion, misinformation and secrecy on the part of their leaders, in government, business, religion and other institutions. But it is also apparent that they suffer from a cultural disease, one which manifests itself in a pestilent pride in what any sophisticated society would be considered faults: ignorance of the world around them; blind patriotism; excessive focus on individualism and family values at the expense of the large community; racism and other kinds of tribal prejudices; and near-delusional levels of adherence to myths and fantasies of all kinds, not the least of which is evangelical christianity.

Now, let me say that it is not my aim to cure the ills of America or Americans. While I would like to help them, I’m not in a position to do so, for financial and legal reasons, but mostly, because they don’t want to be helped. They don’t really need help, either, at least not materially.

My only point is to remind people that the disease which afflicts the culture and institutions of the United States are contagious. Canada is exposed to American influence across out entire spectrum of daily life, and the distorted values and beliefs of Americans constantly threaten us. Even though the failure of the American way of life has never been more apparent, there are still a large number of Canadians—and they may still be grown in numbers!—who foolishly believe, against all evidence, that Americans have it better than we do.

When you look at their arguments carefully, it’s quickly obvious that it’s all made up of hearsay, propaganda and trivial details. America has better weather. America is more free. Americans accomplish more. Etc etc. Lies, of course, spawned by American media and other institutions which have been infiltrating Canada for as long as the two nations have existed. But the facts do not support it. Every objective measure of human health and happiness shows Canada as superior to the United States. And only since more of our business and government leaders have been seduced by the glamour of American fantasia—consisting, mostly, of the improvement in the lives of that small minority of Americans with whom they identify: business and government leaders—has Canada’s quality of life begun to decrease!

America is a sick country. They are a sick people with a lot of problems, and they are making little or no headway in solving them, despite abundant riches. Moreover, their problems are growing exponentially as they continue to dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole that they’ve convinced themselves is they way to the promised land. Well, if they are so keen to go there, it is there choice, at least to some degree. Societies follow their own logic. But I don’t want to follow them down that path.

It’s time Canadians took a close look at their own society, and asked themselves whether they really want to throw away what they’ve worked so hard to achieve on a gamble. One which Americans have made time and time again, only to lose time and time again, and worse and worse each time. To the point where the harm they have done to themselves may be more than they can even hope to recover from.