Liberty on screen: Is it too good to be true?

All of a sudden it's fashionable to be showing the fight for liberty on the silver screen. "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith" memorably shows the disintegration of a republican form of government into a tyrannical empire. "Serenity" shows a small group of people trying to fly under the radar of a nasty government and then making a stand when they can't any longer. Based on the source material the upcoming films "Aeon Flux" and "V for Vendetta" will have similar themes.

What's up?

Best-case scenario: The film makers have a true love of freedom and are willing to pursue these themes in the face of an ever-increasing hostility toward liberty by The Powers That Be. My greatest fear: The decisions to greenlight these films are being made by partisans who dislike the Bush administration not because of its anti-freedom mind set but because it is a Republican administration, partisans who were willing to overlook the anti-freedom bent of the Clinton administration because they consider Democrats to be righteous.

If that's the case, they will consider the battle won once we have a Democratic Congress or a Democrat in the White House, and these important themes will fade away.

The framework of the totalitarian Department of Homeland Security was developed by a commission appointed by Clinton and co-chaired by Warren Rudman, a Republican, and Gary Hart, a Democrat. The differences between Democrats and Republicans are purely cosmetic; the bottom line is both major parties are friends of centralized government and enemies of freedom.