Matt Damon, Please Shut-up! (Opinion, VIDEO)

Why do we give ignorant celebrities such large soap boxes? And why does anyone really care what they have to say? Fresh off of Tom Cruise‘s idiotic remarks comparing his job to that of a deployed soldier’s, Matt Damon has offered us some social theory.

Video of actor Matt Damon reading from Howard Zinn’s 1970 speech entitled “The Problem is Civil Obedience” has been circulating the internet. Many people are falsely attributing the speech to Damon, and many are lauding his words. One link to the video proclaims you will want to start a revolution after hearing it. So I bit, I watched and I casted aside all my previous opinions of Damon. I ignored his previous asinine calls for gun control and unfounded economic opinions and decided to give this viral video a chance. What I saw was not revolutionary (though, perhaps it would have been in Czarist Russia), what I saw was an argument justifying big government and state aggression.

Damon reads from Zinn, saying that the wealth in this country, and the world, is distributed so unfairly, that it “requires a drastic reallocation of wealth.”

Stop right there.

This one statement is so loaded, carries with it such broad-ranging implications, that whatever Damon says after this must be weighed against this opening remark. Any civil disobedience he advocates later in the speech is in support of this aforementioned goal.

What would a massive reallocation of wealth look like? Who would manage it and decide how it was to be allocated? What authority, with how much power, would be necessary to redistribute property and wealth on a world scale? And how can things which are already owned be reallocated?

Only by force.

State aggression, the type of which has become common place in countries like Venezuela, where government forces loot property and food shortages plague an already struggling populace. Venezuela is a shining example that socialism does not work; a wealthy country with world leading oil production has a population that suffers so greatly and lacks food and basic amenities like toilet paper.

Video: Damon Reads Zinn


Matt Damon reads from Howard Zinn’s speech “The Problem is Civil Obedience” (November 1970) from Voices of a People’s History on Vimeo.

Howard Zinn, Damon’s longtime friend and colleague was an avid admirer of Venezuela’s strongman dictator Hugo Chavez. Despite massive corruption, intimidation of political rivals, and massively failed economic policies, Chavez has been a darling of liberal Hollywood. While the country is still struggling under the harmful socialist policies enacted by the dictator, liberal Hollywood actors like Damon are busy advocating for the same failed policies here in the US and the world over.

RELATED: Russell Brand Calls For Socialist Egalitarianism, Massive Redistribution of Wealth

Damon and other leftists like to wrap the naked aggression of State redistribution and regulation in civil disobedience because it is more appealing rhetoric. Especially at the height of a government created economic crisis where people are rightfully downtrodden and disillusioned. The idea of rallying behind a cause that promises more wealth to those in need, is one which is easy to understand. However, when examining the rhetoric behind such calls, what is revealed is a much uglier truth.

It isn’t revolutionary, in fact it is the same tired song sang by tyrants throughout history.

From Caesar to Hitler to Stalin to Mao, despots have seized upon the calls for reform and the economic disparities that create them as justification for more power. Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek wrote of such attitudes that empower authoritarians in his renowned work: The Road to Serfdom. [contextly_sidebar id=”2b91286b14bd9ee2bda0daaea2f7d0b4″]

Hayek saw the inevitable end of such moves to redistribute wealth as resulting in an end of democracy and further economic disparities:  “It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.”

The monopoly he wrote of was a monopoly of power, possessed by the State. Such a monopoly is needed to institute the reforms Damon evoked through Zinn’s speech.

I say to Mr. Damon, no thank you. You and your friends can keep your opinions. We know you are all skilled at playing roles, but the role of socialist revolutionary doesn’t fit spoiled, millionaire, Ivy League actors, who are successful only because that system they rally against (capitalism) has allowed them to make lavish livings off of entertainment. Maybe someone should explain to Damon that in a socialist country, actors are not millionaires?

If Matt Damon is so committed to his cause, he should start by reallocating his own substantial possessions and wealth.

Keith Farrell is a frequent contributor to The Libertarian Republic and Founder and President of Spirits of ’76 national nonprofit organization. He holds a BA from the University of Connecticut in American Studies, with concentration in political science, and Urban and Community Studies. Follow him on Facebook

 

 

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