With a documentary titled Where to Invade Next, and directed by Michael Moore, you might think you would know the kind of film you were going to get, and you’d be wrong.  At least, I was.  I expected this to be a critique of what Moore would view as America’s ham-fisted foreign policy, and that he was worried that America was ready to intervene militarily in yet another far-flung place.

Instead, the award-winning director, at his sanctimonious best, takes a junket around Europe, finding what he believes to be superior social policies and claiming them for the United States.  His tour includes stops in Italy, France, Finland, Norway, Germany, Slovenia, Iceland, Portugal, and a side trip to Tunisia.  He paints an idyllic picture of life in these countries, staking claims to, among other things, mandatory paid vacation, superior school lunches, a no-homework education system, a humane penal system, free university, drug addiction treated as a public health issue, and constitutionally entrenched women’s rights.

All these things sound antithetical to hard-working, go-getting America, right?  The conclusions Moore draws might surprise you.