Freedom isn’t free. Here’s a sweet short film as thanks to the armed forces, who have held at bay those who would take our freedom from us. Happy Veterans Day!
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The Berlin Wall: Eight Films To Honor the Dead
The infamous Berlin Wall was socialism itself: concrete and razor wire in the name of humanity, guard towers and machine guns in the name of human progress. It’s ostensible purpose was to protect vulnerable East Germans from invasion, but as a practical matter it was simply a way of preventing the slave populations of the USSR from escaping to the West.
By the time it finally fell on November 9th, 1989, 5,000 had attempted to cross it, most ending up in brutal labor camps and about 200 killed on the spot. And yet, so unhappy was life behind the Iron Curtain, that young people in particular never stopped trying to breach it. The following films remember the Wall and its victims.
The first victim of the Berlin Wall was 18-year-old Peter Fechter.
The moment he was shot down by East German border guards as he tried to cross the barrier to the West, the Berlin Wall quite suddenly became real because everyone near the wall saw him die.
“Peter Fechter (14 January 1944 – 17 August 1962) was a German bricklayer from Berlin in what became East Germany in 1945.” –Wikipedia
Despite the risk, many made heroic escapes, particularly in the beginning when the Wall was not fully completed, as captured in this early news reel.
Inspired by these heroic escapes, a young George Lucas, later of Star Wars fame, would make one of his earliest short films, Freiheit.
A number of tunnels were attempted, some successful. Several films were made on the subject, including the German film Der Tunnel.
One of the most daring escapes, in which a family used a hot air balloon to get out, was made into an excellent film by Disney, Night Crossing.
This was remade in 2020, with the release of the German film Balloon.
The human cost of the Berlin Wall was not only human life as such, but human misery on a scale unimaginable. It separated loved ones quite suddenly, and for decades. That cost is well captured in The Promise, a film about a young couple in love. It begins with their attempted escape to the West. The man slips, hesitates, and before he knows it the moment is lost. His girlfriend goes on and makes it to the West, but he is left behind. It isn’t clear why he hesitated. Was it fear of being caught? We and he don’t know. But his failure fills him with guilt, compounded by his subsequent draft into the border guard service. Each further opportunity for him to escape is lost by bad luck and his own lack of daring. And as time goes by, he makes one compromise after another to survive until finally he is doing whatever the state wants him to do just to have the slight crumbs of happiness they allow him.
Then one day a speech that almost didn’t happen changed everything. Speechwriter Peter Robinson was told by US diplomats to write a speech for President Reagan’s visit to the Berlin Wall, but was warned against any “commie bashing.” He didn’t take their advice, and Reagan loved what he wrote. “Tear Down This Wall” became an iconic moment of the Cold War.
Enough time has apparently passed that Germans can now laugh about the Wall, in a sort of bittersweet way. The German-made comedy Good Bye Lenin! captures, in its own ironic way, the fall of communism far better than any straightforward telling. At one level, it’s a delightful farce that relentlessly mocks East Germany’s socialist past, but at another it also touches on the emotional perspective of many former East Germans, that in the transition to freedom…their side, the side they had been taught to love, lost.
Four Halloween Films For Libertarians
Happy Halloween! Nothing is scarier than unrestrained government, of course, so here are four Halloween films on the subject. Enjoy!
Ghostbusters (1984)
This popular classic tells the story of an entrepreneurial ghost-removal service — Ghostbusters — that runs into opposition from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other creatures of evil. It seems that all hell is breaking loose, as it were, in New York City — ghosts are showing up everywhere. The Ghostbusters succeed in capturing many of these renegade spirits, for a fee of course. But then a blundering, high-handed EPA official arrives at their office and mistakenly releases all they’ve captured. The release in turn awakens an ancient, evil god. It’s up to the Ghostbusters to save the day. Among libertarian Halloween films, this is the only comedy and for my money would be the top choice.
“Ghostbusters is the most libertarian Hollywood blockbuster of all time.”
–Washington Examiner
Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)
As we learn in the opening, Clonus is a medical facility where human clones are created, raised, fattened, and harvested for their organs. Most of the clones are given a dumbing down treatment at early birth, so they aren’t clever enough to realize what’s going to happen to them ultimately. They’re told that all the healthy stuff they’re made to do—eating a strict diet, exercising, etc.—is just a preparation for being sent to a sort of far away heaven. And who are these harvested organs for? Entrenched politicians.
Yes, as if the efforts to obstruct term limits weren’t bad enough, in Parts: The Clonus Horror we are exposed to the very real horror of them all living eternally “for the good of the people.” At one point a senator involved in this cloning program attempts to justify his personal harvest of flesh by pointing out how different the world might have been if only Franklin Roosevelt had been able to live a few hundred years. That image alone justifies the film’s R rating.
“Parts: The Clonus Horror has the distinction of being the only libertarian horror movie of which I am aware.”
–MissLiberty.com
The Omega Man (1971)
The Omega Man presents a post-apocalyptic world following a devastating international germ war, in which a scientist battles a gang of anti-technology crusaders as he tries to save mankind. What makes the film all the more delicious is that at the head of the rabble opposing him is none other than a former television news anchor. My favorite line occurs near the end of the film, when the scientist has apparently been defeated. As he lies at the feet of his hideous captors, ready for death or torture, he quips: “Tell me something. Are you fellas really with the Internal Revenue Service?”
“An extremely literate science-fiction drama starring Charlton Heston.”
–-Variety
The Bleeding Edge (1971)
If the foregoing aren’t scary enough, The Bleeding Edge tells the story of a young Western tech executive who gets a heart transplant in China, only to discover afterward that the heart was taken from a Chinese prisoner as part of China’s organ “harvesting” program. Although the story is fictional, the horror is unfortunately real and has been brought to light in several recent documentaries, including Hard to Believe and Leon Lee’s own Human Harvest, as a well as an undercover BBC expose.
“This is a film that stays with you after the end, not only because it’s a story well told, but because the horrors it describes are happening right now.”
–-MissLiberty.com
In addition to these Halloween films, here’s comedian Tim Slagle’s classic bit on how to teach your kids about taxes on Halloween…
Also Bob Hope on zombies and Democrats…
And lastly, Remy’s outstanding Halloween Trigger…
Nestor Almendros: Libertarian Film Hero
Nestor Almendros — born October 30, 1930 — is best known for his cinematography. He was indeed the favorite cameraman for directors Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut and was nominated for four Academy Awards for cinematography (Sophie’s Choice, The Blue Lagoon, Kramer vs. Kramer, and Days of Heaven). However, he also directed two powerful documentaries that together blew a hole in the side of the left’s tidy pro-Castro narrative, revealing the horrors of Cuba’s socialist revolution and the country’s shocking abuse of its gay community. One of these films — Improper Conduct — is included in the top 25 list of Best Libertarian Documentaries.
Almendros released Improper Conduct in 1984. This brilliant documentary ripped the lid off of Cuba’s until-then hidden anti-gay atrocities in such an exhaustive and credible way as to command respect from all corners of the political spectrum. Even the New York Times had to reluctantly admit “The movie’s tone is civilized, but the testimony is as savage as it’s convincing.” Improper Conduct won the Grand Prize at the 12th annual International Human Rights Festival.
The particular genius of the film is that it used the testimony of actual Cuban refugees, dozens of them, to gradually build a damning and irrefutable picture of what it’s like to live in a “worker’s paradise.” Through their stories, the viewer learns something of recent Cuban history: the revolution gone bad, the implementation of socialism, the exodus of a full ten percent of the population, the concentration camps, the Orwellian way of life.
Note: the full documentary can typically be found online via YouTube, Online, or Vimeo search.
This film was followed three years later in 1987 with Nobody Listened, a second documentary about the untold horrors Castro had inflicted on the Cuban people. The title reflects Almendros’ dismay that media elites in the West seemed to have no interest in covering what he was reporting.
Nestor Almendros unfortunately died in 1992, at age 61, before he could see that he had won after all. In the years following his two films, more stories gradually came out backing up his claims, including that of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, whose experience under the Castro regime was retold in the Johnny Depp film Before Night Falls. Finally, in 2010, before Castro died, he was forced to admit it was all true.
Links
Margaret Thatcher: Happy Angel Birthday!
Margaret Thatcher was born on October 13th, 1925. She did more to roll back the State than just about any other politician of the last century, both at home and abroad. She is celebrated in the excellent documentary Margaret: Death of a Revolutionary.
“SHUT your eyes and think of Margaret Thatcher (twin-set, hair-do, hand bag, smells nice) and Fidel Castro (combat fatigues, bushy beard, revolver, smells of backy). Which one is the firebrand working-class revolutionary? The answer, of course, is Mrs Thatcher. The vile tyrant Castro enslaved and impoverished the lower orders in Cuba. Thatcher enriched and liberated them in Britain.” — Martin Durkin
Cameron Hawley: Libertarian Film Hero
Cameron Hawley — born September 19, 1905 — was an American fiction writer. Although he published only a few books, two of them were turned into films: Cash McCall and Executive Suite. Both films are unusual for their Randian tone and strongly pro-capitalism character. Cash McCall, the better of the two, took the top prize of Best Libertarian Picture at the First International Libertarian Film Festival.
In 1954, Hawley’s book Executive Suite was released as a film, and with an all star cast: William Holden, June Allyson, and Barbara Stanwyck.
Executive Suite opens with the sudden death of a furniture company’s president. His unexpected demise creates a power vacuum within the company’s management. The firm’s head accountant, a calculating, politically astute man, moves quickly to fill the void. But his policy of making short-term profits at the expense of the company’s long-term prospects, and his general lack of vision, have already been causing damage.
Among the few who understand this is a research scientist, who enters the fray to oppose him. In the scientist’s decisive speech at the end of the film, he argues, as Rand would, that people are not motivated simply by money but by pride; that both money and pride are the product of genuine accomplishment; and that to try to take short cuts to money (by producing shoddy merchandise, as had been advocated by the head accountant) would in the end produce neither the pride needed to motivate the company’s workers nor maximum profitability.
The implied maxim — that doing your best is the correct path to self-benefit — will appeal to libertarians, and amounts to the moral flip side of Adam Smith’s observation that people intending only their own self-interest tend to benefit others “as though led by an invisible hand.”
This was followed five years later with Cash McCall, probably one of the most Randian films ever made and a film that remains popular with libertarians now more than half a century later. It’s a genuine capitalist morality story and a pointed attack on envy. The film stars James Garner and Natalie Wood.
The hero here is Cash McCall, an ingenious businessman who creates value by buying and reorganizing troubled companies. His success has made him the object of envy, and his willingness to sometimes shut down and liquidate hopelessly unprofitable firms, with all the attendant social costs, has made him the object of hate. But he makes no apologies, frequently saying things like: “I don’t belong in the ‘better circles.’ I’m a thoroughly vulgar character. I enjoy making money.”
Most of the story surrounds McCall’s purchase of a small, troubled plastics molding company. McCall quickly solves the company’s problems and is set to reap the associated gain. News of the quick profit gets back to the company’s former owner, Grant Austen, who in turn feels McCall cheated him by paying him less than his company was really worth, and who therefore threatens to sue. (Woven into all this is a secondary story of a romance between McCall and Austen’s daughter.) McCall is a very ethical person and this turns out to be decisive in his ultimate triumph, a resolution in which all ends well with everyone making lots of money.
Cameron Hawley died in 1969, at age 64. Hawley was unusual for a writer in that he worked in business for decades before writing about business. He was writing what he knew, unlike so many who write about business what they imagine. The Atlas Society wrote a very thorough tribute to him: “Cameron Hawley made the life-and-death drama of business palpable. Sharing the fears, frustrations, and achievements of executives and factory workers alike, readers come away from his works experiencing the importance and romance of business.” The same could be said of his two films recommended above.