The Free View - weblog of a presidential candidate

Here's a list of Films on Liberty and the State, with mini-reviews for each, from Stephen W. Carson at Mises.org.

The list is long and the reviews are concise and effective. Non-libertarians might be thrown off a little by all the references to Austrians and Murray Rothbard. Austrian Economics is a school of economic thought which is largely held to be the backbone of libertarian economic theory. I must confess to not being very well-read in terms of the Austrian School's big names -- Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. This makes me a bit of an anomaly among hardcore libertarians. The stereotypical libertarian is an economics geek who likes guns. I'm more from the individualist/hippie side of the movement, I guess. It's probably the Ayn Rand influence that kept me from growing up to be a full-on left-liberal. Ayn Rand is sort of Austrian Economics for the Masses. She novelized it, and Americanized it. So without knowing it, I was schooled in Austrian economics when I was 15, reading Atlas Shrugged.

Which explains why I haven't felt a great need to dive into the vast sea of scholarly work on the subject of Austrian economics. When I do dabble in such readings, or when I hear folks refer to the works and conclusions of von Mises or Rothbard or Hayek, most of what I hear and read seems self-evident to me-- as though someone is explaining the inner workings of something I'm already familiar with. It all centers around a few basic premises and theories anyway-- then it's just a matter of trying out the premises, and comparing the theories with the real world.

They are a pretty close match.

But I didn't mean to get into economics class mode, which is what I'm on the brink of doing (the above sentence is a truncated version of what was about to become an extended rant.) I was just trying to point you to this cool page of freedom-oriented movies. They all sound pretty good to me.

The list is far from comprehensive -- there are a zillion more suggestions on this Reader's Suggestions page at MissLiberty.com. (My "review" of the wacky Sylvester Stallone/Michael Caine movie "Victory" is on that page somewhere.) And of course there's the Miss Liberty's Guide to Film and Video, from Jon Osborne (creator of MissLiberty.com, and proprietor of the weekly freedom-based TV guide.