First Purge called "most libertarian film of 2018"

“The First Purge” - The Most Libertarian Film of 2018 - Being Libertarian - Luke Henderson:

July 5, 2018 - "The Purge saga ... revolves around a dystopian US where a new political party, called the New Founding Fathers of America, were elected to office on the platform of initiating a holiday where for one night each year, all crime, including murder, is legal, with the intent of releasing the country’s pent up anger towards the collapsing economy....

"Though it is implied that the government of this franchise is corrupt, audiences don’t get a truly in depth look into how until The First Purge. As the title suggests, the newest film tackles the election of the New Founding Fathers of America ... and their initiation of what would become the murderous holiday. What makes this film stand out from the other three films is that the monstrous corruption of government is not hidden in the slightest.

"In the beginning of the film, the NFFA offers citizens of Staten Island, who have been chosen as the location to experiment with the purge, $5,000 to participate in the night, with more money offered if they kill someone.... Many of the residents take the money because of the hope of a new life it offers....

"In Washington D.C. audiences see the Chief of Staff and the social psychologist who created the concept of a night of murder-induced catharsis overseeing the event via video recording drones. They are disappointed initially as the only murders have come from the insane ... and residents mostly vandalize property, loot business and have 'Purge parties.'

"Around midnight, gangs suddenly appear who begin mercilessly killing. The social psychologist finds this unusual as her hypothesis predicted a high initial murder-rate that would quickly taper off. She goes to a private office to investigate.... [T]he social psychologist finds video of the gangs suddenly appearing out of garages after midnight out of nowhere and the Chief of Staff has her sent to Staten Island to be killed for revealing the truth....

"Frankly, the film left me stunned with its unintentional libertarian messaging on the terrors of a corrupt government, human nature and individuals defending themselves....

"The initial failure of the purge experiment ... tells a lot about how government officials will go to extreme lengths to create situations where their legislation seems essential. Without the meddling of the Chief of Staff, the purge very well could have failed and the population would have seen that in general people just want a release from their frustration, but many of the options to do so aren’t afforded to them. It’s a lesson in the possibilities of decriminalization and legalization of illegal substances and 'obscene' activities.

"Finally, The First Purge offers one of the best arguments for the right to gun ownership and self-defense.... Even the most ardent gun hater can’t deny that a corrupt government using deadly force on its citizens should have been met with the same force.

"Every libertarian should ... see The First Purge.... Films are one of the most effective tools to spreading a message and getting people emotionally invested, so using the market to accomplish this is one of the most libertarian things we can do."

Read more: https://beinglibertarian.com/the-first-purge-the-most-libertarian-film-of-2018/
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The wackadoo libertarianism of Demolition Man

On ‘Demolition Man,’ Libertarian Action, and the 3 Seashells - Abraham Riesman, Vulture:

October 9, 2018 - "I’m a lover of dystopias, but I’ve always found Brave New World irksome.... But there’s a movie that makes me wonder whether my real problem with Brave New World was simply that it didn’t have enough car chases and zingy one-liners. That film is Marco Brambilla’s 1993 epic Demolition Man, which  ... presents a bizarrely compelling philosophical argument, ultimately becoming a libertarian screed that’s as wackadoo as it is persuasive.

"In it, Sylvester Stallone portrays the titular gent, ... the phallically named LAPD hero John Spartan, whom we meet in the then-future of 1996, patrolling a hellish Los Angeles [in] battle with a crime lord who has an even better name: Simon Phoenix, played by Wesley Snipes.... Phoenix ... prompts Spartan to blow up the building they’re in [and] Spartan and Phoenix are both sentenced to a curious form of imprisonment: cryogenic freezing....

"We’re transported to the year 2032, where everything is … pretty great, actually. Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego have merged into a cheery megalopolis called San Angeles, where everyone and everything is chill as heck.... Phoenix is woken up for parole and mysteriously able to break free, killing a warden and a few guards in ... the first murders committed in decades. Baffled and unqualified for dealing with a killer, the cops ... retrieve the legendary Spartan.... Obviously, Spartan will catch Phoenix.... The real magic of the movie lies in its world-building and its message. This is, believe it or not, less a movie of plot or spectacle than it is a movie of ideas.

"The elaboration of San Angeles is a wonder to behold, veering back and forth smoothly between satire and sheer invention.... There are also completely bizarre ideas.... Spartan uses the bathroom at the precinct and informs the cops that they’re out of toilet paper. Everyone giggles and he’s told that no one uses TP anymore — instead, they use 'the three seashells'.... At no point, however, is there any explanation of how one can use three seashells to take care of one’s fecal matter....

"But ultimately, the non sequiturs are overpowered by the commentary. It becomes clear as things progress that Demolition Man is intended to be a libertarian manifesto. Nowhere is that clearer than in the words of the leader of the utopia-rejecting underground, Edgar Friendly [who] delivers a stunning monologue....

See, according to Cocteau’s plan, I’m the enemy. ‘Cause I like to think, I like to read. I’m into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I’m the kind if guy who wants to sit in a greasy spoon and think, Gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecued ribs with the side order of gravy fries? I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, butter, and buckets of cheese, okay? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in a non-smoking section. I wanna run through the streets naked with green Jello all over my body reading Playboy magazine.... You wanna live on top, you gotta live Cocteau’s way: what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. Your other choice: come down here, maybe starve to death.

"Has there ever been a rawer, more perfect argument against the nanny state in mainstream cinema?"

Read more: https://www.vulture.com/2018/10/on-demolition-man-libertarian-action-and-the-3-seashells.html
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The Prisoner turns 50 (video)

The Prisoner Turns 50 - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Jesse Walker:

September 29, 2017 - "The Prisoner — a science fiction series about a former spy confined in a mysterious totalitarian enclave — was both the most experimental and the most anti-authoritarian TV program of the '60s. It first aired 50 years ago today, so I'll mark the occasion with one of my favorite installments: 'Living in Harmony,' the episode that answers the question, 'What would a western written by Philip K. Dick look like?'"

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/29/the-prisoner-turns-50
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North Korea: The invisible gulag

The Invisible Gulag | World Security Network - by Jonathan Kay, National Post:

December 10, 2010 - "The world remains pock-marked by countries that still insist on calling themselves 'communist.' But in reality, Joseph Stalin's totalitarian dream of exterminating the individual human spirit survives in only one tiny corner of the world: North Korea....

"North Korea is a giant prison. Worse than a prison, in fact, because prisoners in normal countries don't have to forage for wild grass, or catch rats, to stay alive. For most Westerners, who aren't permitted to see this real-life Mordor with their own eyes, the country's horrors are so vast that they lie in a surreal place beyond our political imaginations. North Korea seems less an actual country than a sort of sovereign theme park dedicated to the glorification of evil....

"Norbert Vollertsen, a blond middle-aged German doctor, first travelled to North Korea in 1999, as part of his charity work with an international NGO. Taking shifts in a Pyongyang emergency room, he was horrified by the scenes he witnessed. Even patients with treatable diseases such as diabetes and tuberculosis lay dying on gurneys. Meanwhile, the medication that had been sent from Germany to save their lives was on sale for American dollars at a special Pyongyang store reserved for foreign diplomats.

"One day, Vollertsen saw a line-up in front of his hospital. He learned that a tractor-factory worker had been severely burned by molten metal, and that the people queuing up were donating pieces of their own skin so that the man could be saved.... Vollertsen made the fateful decision to join the line-up....

 "A week later, Vollertsen was asked to make another skin donation. But this time, when he showed up at the hospital, North Korean TV cameras filmed the whole thing. The event was broadcast on the country's (only) newscast, and Vollertsen was celebrated as a national hero.... The regime even awarded him the "North Korean Friendship medal" and -- more importantly -- a driver's licence that permitted him to roam the North Korean countryside unimpeded. No Western journalist has ever had such access....

"Nothing Vollertsen had seen in Pyongyang prepared him for the even more piteous scenes he witnessed in the rural provinces.

"All around were desolate landscapes -- the forests having been chopped down for firewood. Starvation was rampant: Most peasants survived on bags of donated rice from the West (which the North Korean government claimed to be a form of 'tribute' delivered from fearful Western powers)....

"The patients Vollertsen treated in children's clinics were scarcely more animated than corpses. He recalled to me one particularly haunting specimen -- an emaciated 12-year-old whose striped pajamas, reminiscent of a Nazi concentration camp prisoner, struck a grim historical chord with Vollertsen. 'He looked straight into my eyes,' the German doctor remembers, 'so full of sorrow and despair. No future. No hope. Nothing. It reminded me of the photos of the people you see at the Washington Holocaust museum.'"

Read more:  https://web.archive.org/web/20130417005739/http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/Koreas/National-Post/The-Invisible-Gulag