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Have You Seen These Essential Libertarian Movies?

It happens every year in Hollywood.

The industry winds up and delivers a film with overt liberal messages. Think 2015’s “Truth,” a failed attempt to spin liberal anchor Dan Rather’s attack on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service.

Last year, the industry uncorked “Miss Sloane.” Jessica Chastain’s film might as well have been written by Everytown for Gun Safety or The Brady Campaign.

Actually, that might have been the case.

miss-sloane-nasty-woman
While ‘Miss Sloane’ served up anti-gun rhetoric, the following Libertarian movies deliver tributes to limited government and freedom.

What about Libertarian movies? You may not believe it, but the film industry has produced a number of films which libertarian-leaning audiences adore.

The messages often aren’t as obvious as with “Miss Sloane” and “Truth.” These Libertarian movies honor freedom and limited government all the same.

Hollywood in Toto reached out to several Libertarians to learn which movies truly embrace their ideals. Note: the following responses either reflect the sources direct thoughts or were paraphrased from submitted material.

Filmmaker Ted Balaker (“Can We Take a Joke?”)

“The Barbarian Invasions” features a son returning to Canada to care for the terminally ill father he blames for breaking up the family. The film is not explicitly libertarian, and that helps explain why it’s so compelling. It leads with a great story, but viewers also witness the clash between the “capitalist” young son and his “socialist” father, the failings of a bureaucratic health care system and the human cost of drug prohibition.

“The Hunt” shows the dangers of groupthink and how quickly an innocent man can become a pariah. A brilliant film anchored by the brilliant Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen.

The Hunt Official Trailer #1 (2013) - Mads Mikkelsen Movie HD

Veronique de Rugy, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University

“Dallas Buyers Club” is a perfect example of the deadly consequences that arrogant, know it all bureaucrats have on people’s lives. It captures well how regulatory policies though the FDA and other agencies are commonly captured by the country’s most powerful interests.

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” attacks the lame arguments that we should all be okay to have the NSA spy on us because it’s for our own protection.

“The Hunger Games” series is all all about fighting back, even when the odds of winning are small. It also shows the moral decay of the elite who feed off the system—they dressed better and wear their moral decadence on the outside unlike their counter-parts in Washington DC.

“Amazing Grace” gives me hope because it shows that there are always a few people who are willing to fight an oppressive system even if they are in the minority. The movie also reminds us why it’s worth fighting even if it seems politically impossible to win at the time. The battle of ideas takes time but freedom can prevail. Not fighting for freedom and individual rights and against injustice is simply not an option.

“McFarland USA” puts a face on the millions low-skill immigrants who come to this country to make a better life for themselves, the adults and the children in work their butt off (in this case picking fruits and vegetables) every day.

McFarland, USA Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Kevin Costner Movie HD

Shayne Madsen, lawyer

“Thelma and Louise” is the ultimate libertarian movie showing how criminal laws and police officers can follow the rules while destroying lives and character.  Also “Philomena,” the story of closed adoption records and the Catholic Church destroying families and lives.

Sherrie Peif, Reporter for Complete Colorado

“The Blind Side” shows how an upper class family can help and under privileged child flourish and become successful because they chose to, not because they have it shoved down their throats. The bonus? It’s based on a true story!

Joshua Sharf, PERA administrator for the Independence Institute

The Magnificent Seven” (1959 version) shows that in the absence of law, villagers voluntarily band together to protect their property and livelihoods.

Randal O’Toole, transportation expert for The Independence Institute

My favorite movie is “Serenity,” a classic tale of the fight between personal liberty and the greater social good. It tells the story of a group of people trying to live free on the edge of a bureaucratic empire. At the beginning, the hero is a man who has lost faith in the universe because the bureaucrats won’t leave him alone.

The bureaucracy has a goal of creating a “world without sin” and has experimented with putting chemicals in people’s water to make them peaceful. Of course, this backfires spectacularly. So the bureaucrats send a man to cover up the mistake by killing anyone—men, women, and children—who has been in contact with anyone who knows about the experiment.

Serenity Official Trailer #1 - Morena Baccarin Movie (2005) HD

By the end of the movie, the hero has come to believe so strongly in individual liberty that he is willing to die to preserve it. He gives a speech saying that the bureaucracy is based on “the belief that they can make people better. And I do not hold to that.” Whenever I show the movie to friends, when it reaches this point and they say, “So that’s why you like this movie.”

Tracy Smith, Graphic Designer

The LEGO Movie” features President Business, a character who attempts to force residents to build approved LEGO structures only. No imagination is allowed. Any deviation from the rules is met with punishment. The movie has an overarching theme of conformity and control versus individuality and freedom.

Dennis Polhill, Independence Institute Senior Fellow in Public Infrastructure

Anything by Peter Sellers has a Libertarian angle. Plus, “Miracle” offers a Libertarian perspective on achievement. The retelling of the “Miracle on Ice” moment in the 1980 Winter Olympics features Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) say the following when confronted by higher ups about not choosing the elite talent.

“I don’t want the best players; I want the right players.” He meant players with spirit, attitude and persistence are more important than raw ability. The real Brooks died in a car crash before the movie was released, so he never got to see it. Now that my son is a coach I tell him to make the movie a homework assignment for his teams … irrespective of the sport.

Jon Caldara, radio show host, Independence Institute President

Gattaca” features a man who overcomes his “genetic” limitations and the futuristic society that has predetermined his limited fate.

Alex Hutton, Independence Institute

Extraordinary Measures” showcases a man on the corporate fast-track who leaves this lifestyle behind when he discovers two of his children have a rare genetic disease. He combines with an eccentric doctor to come up with a cure, crowd-funding the effort and fighting against the medical and corporate establishment.

David Boaz, Cato Institute Executive Vice President

Shenandoah,” a 1965 film starring Jimmy Stewart, is often regarded as the best libertarian film Hollywood ever made. Stewart is a Virginia farmer who wants to stay out of the Civil War. Not our fight, he tells his sons. He refuses to let the state take his sons, or his horses, for war. Inevitably, though, his family is drawn into the war raging around them, and the movie becomes very sad. This is a powerful movie about independence, self-reliance, individualism, and the horrors of war.

Amistad” tells a fascinating story about a ship full of Africans who turned up in New England in 1839. The question: Under American law, are they slaves? A long legal battle ensues, one that goes all the way to the Supreme Court.

Libertarians like to joke about lawyers. Sometimes we even quote the Shakespeare line, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” — not realizing that that line was said by a killer who understood that the law stands in the way of would-be tyrants.

“Amistad” gives us a picture of a society governed by law; even the vile institution of slavery was subject to the rule of law. And when the former president, John Quincy Adams, makes his argument before the Supreme Court, it should inspire us all to appreciate the law that protects our freedom.

54 Comments

  1. really good comments people, keep them coming, m out my league on the topic yet learning. don’t get too puffy shit, because i am a well read man.

      1. thought there’d be more chatter-box here, but i guess talking has been outlawed — except for fine, chirpy songs, documented by the audubon society.

      2. Is ok because people of whom had sifted thru historic literature & thought, were apt to, and had, made insightful commentary and speculation on the topic.

      3. dear lil f o faces. if this message is not appropriate? sorry. .lil f o, nobody, s heads . . .

  2. No “Demolition Man”? Total fail. Dennis Leary delivers a libertarian manifesto about Jell-O, porn and t-bone steaks that should be nailed to the US Capitol Building’s door.

  3. The Cato guy is spot on with “Shenandoah.” That movie is just wonderful, one of my all-time favorites. I always thought of it as distinctly American, rugged individualism and all that. Has Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne’s son Patrick, Paul Fix–great stuff.

  4. Boaz is wrong. Shakespeare was saying that unless you kill all the lawyers – literally or figuratively – thereby getting rid of all the laws they’ve made, it will forever be, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” There can be no revolution if you allow the lawyers to live.

    That’s the predicament the entire west is in today: The laws the lawyers have made are beyond numbering. Cato said, “The more law, the less justice.” If the laws are beyond numbering, where is there room for justice? The answer is, there is none.

    So, count me all in on killing all the lawyers. They’re professional bearers of false witness anyway, so where’s the moral hazard? lol

    1. Deep cynic, and still searching for the dead sea scrolls, yet resounding, pithy, stop & pause contemplation about the way things go . . .

    2. Utter bullshit. Shakespeare said, through the mouth of Dick the Butcher, that the path to anarchy lay in killing the lawyers. They were the only ones who would stand up for the rule of law. If Shakespeare had meant anything else, Elizabeth would have had his head on a pike. Learn something about history, Pepper.

  5. “…..puts a face on the millions low-skill immigrants who come to this country to make a better life for themselves” taking native’s jobs and welfare while they and their families vote for socialism. E.G. California. The idiotic Libertarian dogma of open borders is the reason I left their party.

    1. I liked McFarland but not because of what you quoted above. I am a retired teacher/Cross Country Coach and my team competed against them in several big meets. What the football coach turned cross-country coach did with those teams was amazing.

  6. Can’t believe the original Ghostbusters didn’t make it; the free market averts supernatural disaster and the chief (non-supernatural) villain is an arrogant, close-minded petty EPA bureaucrat.

  7. Major Oversight: The Incredibles. “Everyone’s special, Dash.”Which is another way of saying no one is. “

    1. Gilbert Huph is the antihero in my doctor’s office, his picture posted in the employee break room: “Tell me how you’re keeping Insuricare in the black! Tell me how that’s *possible* with you writing checks to every Harry Hardluck and Sally Sobstory that gives you a phone call!” Self-pay only now; the doctor got fed up with insurance games.

  8. Love Miracle…had a lot of trouble with “Hunger Games” because of the vitriolic hatred I felt for Americans from Lawrence. So she colored that film for me.

    Still love “Tender Mercies”.

      1. Agreed. My wife refuses to watch anything with Lawrence either now or in the future because of her evil hatred of 50% of the American people.

  9. First off, Miracle is simply the best movie ever made. To tell a true story that is actually closer to the verbatim true story than any other “true story” and have such an amazing result is cinematic masterpiece.

    With that said, I also love Serenity, and it’s really ironic that it is made by Joss Whedon, who is the antithesis of a libertarian.

    1. Almost everything Whedon has done reads like a love letter to liberty, yet he is as big a state schtupper as there is.

      If you want to see his finest work, see his modern retelling of Much Ado About Nothing….positively brilliant.

      1. ya’ll haven’t caught wise? the only way Whedon works is if Whedon toes the party line.

      2. LOL, i.e., he can keep making them because he recites the creed at all other times. Many on the Left–even those who share some of the creedal points of the Progressive religion!–think they are libertarian in some sense. That type of appeal may be how he gets away with it. I remember seeing his extremely odd “commercial” for the re-election of Barack Obama in 2011 or 2012…and getting very strange vibes as to how happy he was making it. Now he could, certainly, just have a serious disjunct in his analytical reason, though, I recognize–he’s primarily a creative, after all. But (perhaps naively) I cherish the notion I described above.

      3. Ah, also a possibility, then, and a good one. A creative might not be analytical enough to recognize the disjunct, if he had embraced such a position.

      4. Yes, you are right. I think it’s better to examine oneself, but there are intelligent and good people who are not temperamentally inclined to it. There are many who would be able to help themselves overcome more obstacles if some self-awareness were trained into them, and I think of that near-automatically, but I have had to stop expecting it from several that I know, the true actives.

      5. Whedon’s movies are about as ‘anti-line’ as you can get, almost every one of them are libertarian leaning, and some of them (Serenity and the Firefly series) border on outright libertarian!

        If he is trying to be a good Hollywood liberal (and from everything I have seen of his public utterances – which I assume he is sincere about – he is definitely one of those), he is doing it wrong.

      6. from the standpoint of the Progressive Marxists, no one that “matters” watches his movies, as long as he tows the party line . . . just saying.

      7. Well, you have to. If you create a movie/TV series about future socialism, you end up with a distopia.

      8. You are unquestionably correct of course, but then again 1984 was about as grim as you get, and it still was quite impressive.

      9. I’ve quit watching Whedon. Even if he made the long-awaited sequel to “Serenity”, “River Tam Beats Up Everyone”, I wouldn’t go to see it.

        Stix nix dix pix.

      10. I understand and respect your point of view here, but I refuse to let Whedon’s stupidity and ignorance deprive me of the truly wondrous quality of his work. Much Ado was one of, if not the best interpretation of Shakespeare that I have seen in a long while (the BBC versions in the 1970s, one of which starred John Cleese as Petruchio is the only one that comes close as I think of them right now), and my life is better because of it.

        Now I won’t pay anything to see these things, I do draw the line at enriching Whedon, no matter how good his work, so perhaps we can agree on that….

        Cheers!

      11. I agree. Loved that movie! It’s as if he doesn’t understand what he writes for his movies and tv shows.

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