• Home
  • News
  • Top Picks
    • Movies & Films: Top 25
    • Documentaries: Top 25
    • Films For Students: Top 10
    • Music Videos: Top 10
  • Categories
    • Film
    • Documentary
    • Shorts
    • Blog
    • Calendar
    • Links
    • About

Miss Liberty's Film & Documentary World

Libertarian Movies, Films & Documentaries

Janet Reno, Her Legacy in Three Films

Janet Reno, US Attorney General from 1993 to 2001, died today and is being eulogized as a wonderful public servant. But libertarians remember her rather for her aggressive use of force and disregard for Constitutional rights, an unhappy legacy that is forever recorded in three films.

Most damning of all is the PBS documentary The Child Terror, which focuses on Reno’s groundbreaking efforts to incarcerate child care workers who were accused of child molestation and animal sacrifice, accusations that spurred a media frenzy. As PBS tells it, Janet Reno bent the rules to make convictions easier, creating a legal hell for perfectly innocent people, including a 14-year-old babysitter who Reno tried as an adult warning him that if convicted he would be “on every inmate’s dance card.” Her success at getting convictions (many of which were later quietly overturned) catapulted her to the US Attorney General spot.

In that role, she ordered the raid on a religious commune in Waco, Texas, resulting in the fiery death of 73 people, including children, burned alive. The Academy Award-nominated documentary Waco: Rules of Engagement was made about the tragedy. Reviewing it, Roger Ebert wrote: “Whatever happened at Waco, these facts remain: It is not against the law to hold irregular religious beliefs. It is not illegal to hold and trade firearms. It is legal to defend your own home against armed assault, if that assault is illegal. It is impossible to see this film without reflecting that the federal government, from the top down, treated the Branch Davidians as if those rights did not apply.”

And finally, there was the Elián González affair. Elián’ was a small child, whose mother had died getting him out of communist Cuba. He was living with his mother’s family in Miami, when Janet Reno decided he should be sent back to Cuba and staged a raid to take him by force. That became the subject of a South Park episode, Season 4, Episode 3, entitled HAND OVER THE CHILDREN, Happy Easter! Here’s the clip where Reno grabs Elián.

The trailer from Waco:Rules of Engagement…

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Featured Post

The Onion: Should the Government Stop Dumping Money Into a Giant Hole?

It's one of the great economic questions of our time. Does dumping money into a giant hole create jobs and stimulate the economy, or is it simply a waste? Paul Krugman has suggested that even faking an alien invasion would be good for the economy, the idea being that any activity, with or without production … Continue Reading

maos great famine

Mao’s Great Famine (2011)

Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward," a far-reaching program of forced modernization intended to transform China into a socialist paradise, instead results in the greatest holocaust in human history — with a death toll of 45 million. Also listed as La grande famine de Mao. [ Mao's Great Famine credits: Dir: … Continue Reading

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999)

WINNER: TOP 25 LIBERTARIAN FILMS In the name of saving the children from obscene language, the parents of the South Park kids go to all extremes—including censorship, mind-controlling implants, executions, and finally war on Canada. [ South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut credits: Dir: Trey Parker/ (voices … Continue Reading

Themes

Abuse of power American revolution Anti-draft Anti-regulation Anti-slavery Anti-socialism Anti-taxation Anti-war Ayn Rand Corrupt government Creator as hero Democide Econ 101 Eminent domain Equality & law Escape from socialism Freedom of speech Free press as hero Government as bigot Government as torturer Government enforced morality Government healthcare Government schools Incompetent government Individualism John Stossel Law & liberty Legalize Drugs Libertarian heroes Libertarianism 101 Power corrupts Power worship Pro-capitalism Pro-immigration Propaganda Psychiatric coercion Resistance to tyranny Right to secede Search & seizure Second amendment Sexual liberty Social tolerance Unions & monopolies Voluntarism Working for government

Genres/Categories

Action-Adventure Animated Biography Blog Comedy Documentary Drama Family Featured Film Foreign History Horror Music-Dance Netflix News Romance SciFi-Fantasy Shorts Thriller Upcoming Western

About Miss Liberty

This site is a collection of films and documentaries of particular interest to libertarians (and those interested in libertarianism). It began as a book, Miss Liberty’s Guide to Film: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium, where many of the recommended films were first reviewed. The current collection has grown to now more than double the number in that original list, and it’s growing still.

  • RSS

© 2023 Miss Liberty's Film & Documentary World. All Rights Reserved