Liberty at the Movies

David Boaz highlights movies with strong themes of liberty.

David Boaz

David Boaz was a distinguished senior fellow of the Cato Institute and played a key role in the development of the Cato Institute and the libertarian movement. He was the author of The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom and the editor of The Libertarian Reader.

Boaz was a provocative commentator and a leading authority on domestic issues such as education choice, drug legalization, the growth of government, and the rise of libertarianism. Boaz was the former editor of New Guard magazine and was executive director of the Council for a Competitive Economy prior to joining Cato in 1981. The earlier edition of The Libertarian Mind, titled Libertarianism: A Primer, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “a well-​researched manifesto of libertarian ideas.” His other books include The Politics of Freedom and the Cato Handbook for Policymakers.

His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and Slate, and he wrote the entry on libertarianism for Encyclopedia Britannica. He was a frequent guest on national television and radio shows and has appeared on ABC’s Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, CNN’s Crossfire, NPR’s Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered, The McLaughlin Group, Stossel, The Independents, Fox News, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other media.

A few years back, I wrote about the libertarian themes of many of the movies nominated for Oscars. Now, for the summer, I thought I’d recommend some all-​time favorite libertarian movies. I’m not going to discuss documentaries or educational films such as The Incredible Bread Machine, Waco: The Rules of Engagement, or John Stossel’s superb ABC specials. Today’s topic is libertarian movies from Hollywood -- and there have been more than you might think.

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. I cried when I was 11 years old, and I teared up again when I saw it recently. This is a powerful movie about independence, self-​reliance, individualism, and the horrors of war.

War may be the most awful thing men do, but slavery is also a contender for that title. Steven Spielberg’s Amistad (1997) 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, going up 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.

Lawyers play an important role in two other fine libertarian films. The Castle was produced in Australia in 1997 but reached the United States in 1999. It’s a very funny film about a character who thinks that living near the airport is just great. He even likes looking up at the massive power lines near his house because they remind him of what man can accomplish. Shades of Ayn Rand! Anyway, a man’s home is his castle, and the protagonist is shocked when the airport decides to seize his property to extend its runway. He fights the system to no avail until a smooth, well-​dressed lawyer -- way out of the lead character’s league -- shows up and offers to take his case. Again we see powerful interests forced to defend themselves in a law-​governed society. A nice defense of private property, and very funny to boot.

That same season in 1999 I also enjoyed The Winslow Boy, a David Mamet remake of a Terrence Rattigan play/​movie from 1948. Despite a very different atmosphere -- a stuffy, bourgeois family in Victorian England vs. a comic contemporary Australian family -- it has two things in common with The Castle: a proud father who will do anything to defend his home and family, and a distinguished British lawyer who comes to the family’s aid. Mr. Winslow’s teenage son is expelled from the Naval Academy. Convinced his son is innocent, Winslow challenges the expulsion. When the Academy refuses any sort of due process, Winslow exhausts his life savings in a fight through the courts. The theme is the right of every person in a decent society to justice.

So Big (1953) stars Jane Wyman as a wealthy young woman suddenly delivered into poverty. She becomes a teacher, marries a farmer, has a son, loses her husband, and must run the farm on her own, at a time when women didn’t do that. It’s an inspiring story of self-​reliance, and the disappointment she feels when her son chooses money and society over the architecture he loves. Based on a novel by Edna Ferber, the screenplay sounds almost Randian at times. Don’t see the 1932 version starring Barbara Stanwyck; it’s flat and boring. The difference is unbelievable.

The Palermo Connection (1990) is an odd Italian-​made movie (but in English) cowritten by Gore Vidal. New York city councilman Jim Belushi runs for mayor on a platform to legalize drugs and take the profits out of the drug trade. The Mafia isn’t happy. His life is threatened. So he decides to go on a honeymoon, in the middle of his campaign -- to Sicily. I said it was odd. But interesting, and very pointed.

Pacific Heights (1990) is a thriller that is almost a documentary on the horrors of landlord-​tenant law. A young couple buys a big house in San Francisco and rents an apartment to a young man. He never pays them, and they can’t get him out, and then things get really scary. The lawyer lectures the couple -- and the audience -- on how “of course you’re right, but you’ll never win.” I just knew this happened to someone -- maybe the screenwriter or someone he knew. Sure enough, when Cato published William Tucker’s book Rent Control, Zoning, and Affordable Housing, and I asked Pacific Heights director John Schlesinger for a jacket blurb, he readily agreed to say “If you thought Pacific Heights was fiction, you need to read this book”; and he told me that the screenwriter had a relative who had gone through a tenant nightmare.

Finally, I’ll mention My Beautiful Laundrette, made for British television in 1985. What’s interesting about this film is that novelist/​screenwriter Hanif Kureishi thought he was making a savage indictment of Thatcherite capitalism. But to me, the good characters in the movie -- white and Pakistani, gay and straight -- are the ones who work for a living, and the bad characters are clearly the whining socialist immigrant intellectual, who doesn’t like his son opening a small business, and the British thugs who try to intimidate the young Pakistani businessman. My favorite line: The enterprising brother of the layabout intellectual takes a young working-​class Briton with him to evict some deadbeat tenants. The young Brit suggests that it’s surprising the Pakistani businessman would be evicting people of color. And the businessman says, “I’m a professional businessman, not a professional Pakistani. There is no question of race in the new enterprise culture.” I think Kureishi thinks that’s a bad attitude. The joke’s on him.

More information about many of these movies can be found in Miss Liberty’s Guide to Film and Video: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium .