Movies
and Books
by
Llewellyn H. Rockwell,
Jr.
It's
been a good year for movies and books that defend liberty. Here
are my choices.
Gladiator.
An inspiring film about the ancient world, a story of how a real
man, an aristocrat, came to fight for his principles against a despotic
government. Hume, Mises, and Rothbard always emphasized that government
can only operate when it has at least the tacit support of the majority.
In this film, the despot Commodus loses the support of the masses
and collapses in a heap at the end. If the general Maximus hadn't
killed him, the people would have. Overall, this a wonderful depiction
of how governments exercise power ("beatings and hangings," as Mises
says) and try to hold onto power (yes, the emperor's minions toss
bread into the crowds at the circuses). Only one complaint: it was
far too kind to the blood-stained philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius,
who murdered Christians by the thousands, and made his monster son,
Commodus, his successor.
 The
Patriot. Amazing, isn't it, that there aren't more movies
about the American Revolution? Well, maybe not so amazing: it's
a story about how a group of property-owning male aristocrats seceded
from a government that taxed and regulated them too much. That's
not a story that Hollywood has much interest in telling. But Mel
Gibson's film succeeds in making up for lost time. This grand epic
could have focused more on the ideological origins of the Revolution,
but you have to appreciate the way the film casts the war as one
man fighting for his right to be left alone. For the average American
colonist, that's what it was about in any case. This film was blasted
by the Left for showing a young boy with a gun. What puritans these
people are!
Feeling
Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore
Years by James Bovard (St. Martins, 2000). You've heard
about Monica Lewinsky, but however unseemly, the affair didn't violate
the rights of a single American (until the feds started cracking
down on people willing to talk about it). Far more important are
the amazing rights violations chronicled in James Bovard's encyclopedic
work. Bovard seemed determined to let nothing get by him, though
he would be the first to say that this is only the beginning. No
anti-Clintonian, no libertarian, should be without this book. In
fact, we need such a book about every presidency.
 The
Irrepressible Rothbard by Murray N. Rothbard, edited by
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. (Center for Libertarian Studies, 2000).
No, this isn't self promotion. All the essays are by Murray himself,
and what a collection this turned out to be. It puts on display
only a small part of Murray's journalism from the last ten years
of his life, and it proves, contrary to the left-libertarian smears,
that Murray became more radical with age. His sights are set on
the Clintons, Republican warmongers, sellout libertarians, the cultural
enemies of liberty, and every social trend that threatens the rights
of Americans. Here is Rothbard, the people's anarchist, standing
up for bourgeois civilization against the egalitarians who seek
to destroy it. This volume is as much a pleasure to read as it was
to put together.
 Lord
Acton: A Biography by Roland Hill (Yale University Press,
2000). Will there ever be another historian like him? Probably not.
The great classical liberal was the product of the sort of education
no longer available, of the glorious 19th century, and
of the old Catholic Church. The biographer himself notes that anyone
writing about Lord Acton should have a working knowledge of all
the languages he wrote in, and have the ultimate travel budget.
Hill had neither, but he writes a spectacular book in any case.
He not only tells us about Acton, but also about his times. We learn
about the complications of politics and religion in the Victorian
era, and how a giant of scholarship and probity responded to them.
Acton ardently defended the right of the American South to secede,
among many other courageous stands. The book should also remind
us of the all-important contribution the European aristocracy has
made to the defense of liberty.
 December
13, 2000
Llewellyn
H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig
von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. He also edits a daily
news site, LewRockwell.com.
This article was originally published on Spintechmag.com.
Copyright
© 2000 LewRockwell.com
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