MPI exists to ensure that our understanding of freedom is as nuanced and rounded as possible. And a big piece of this is doing what we can to guarantee that our debates about controversial issues really are debates, and that they reflect a robust variety of viewpoints. That's why, for example, projects such as Stuart Browning's FreeMarketCure.com are so important -- his short films on health care provide a crucial, freely available counterpoint to the mass-marketed vision of single-payer health care forwarded by Michael Moore in SiCKO. Moore's movie is profoundly one-sided and even factually challenged in its portrayals of U.S. health care and of the contrasting systems in Canada, Cuba, and elsewhere. But you can't tell that from the film itself--which is why opposing cinematic viewpoints are crucial.
To their very great credit, the folks at Notre Dame get it: they recently held a screening of SiCKO that was followed by Browning's short films--and so made it possible for audience members to take both views in, and to make up their own minds about the issue. It doesn't get any better--or more even-handed--than that.
