“The Free State of Jones” is a movie with a strong libertarian theme that was released in 2016. Unsurprisingly, the libertarian theme was beyond the comprehension of critics and the public.
I recently picked up the film at the library and watched it at home without knowing anything about it beforehand. While watching it, I told my wife that it probably got bad reviews, although it’s a very good movie. I was right.
After watching it, I read scores of reviews, including reviews in such major publications as The Guardian and Rolling Stone.
One review called it a “commie” move, another said it was a “dog whisperer to the Second Amendment crowd,” another lambasted it because blacks are dependent on the white protagonist for their freedom, another didn’t like the movie portraying Republicans as being on the side of blacks during and after the Civil War, still another said that the plot was a mishmash with no clear message about race, and several others sneered that it was anti-war—as if it’s bad to be against war.
The movie deserved none of these criticisms.
The star of the movie, Matthew McConaughey, also was panned for his portrayal of the main character. One reviewer even took him to task for starring in this move after starring in the LGBT movie, “The Dallas Players Club,” as if starring in a movie about a popular topic du jour should keep him from starring in a movie where traditional masculinity prevails in an earlier era. Actually, McConaughey played the role just right, with touches of crazed determination, angry retribution, and several powerful philosophical insights about what it means to be a free man. I was mesmerized by how his expressive and penetrating eyes spoke volumes without him having to say anything.
The movie is based on a true story of a rebellion that took place in Miss. during the Civil War. The main character, a farmer named Newt Knight, decides to desert from the Confederate Army when the Confederacy announces that any soldiers who are the only surviving males of families that own at least 20 slaves can leave the army to return home to run the family cotton plantation. Knight refuses to die on behalf of wealthy cotton growers in a cause that isn’t his cause. (This doesn’t mean that he’s a commie who is against wealth). He later joins up with escaped slaves and other angry white farmers and deserters to lead an insurrection against the Confederacy, which among other travesties, is confiscating the crops and livestock of farmers. They use guns of all things in the insurrection.
Knight eventually hooks up with an escaped female slave, has a child with her, and lives with her as man and wife.
After taking control of two counties, Knight announces the establishment of the Free State of Jones to his followers. He reads the Free State’s principles, which is probably the point in the movie where reviewers’ gel-saturated hair caught on fire. The principles are nearly identical to the libertarian principles of self-ownership, non-coercion, non-aggression, and the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. In other words, the principles run counter to contemporary statist principles.
Knight goes on to say that a man has to be a man, which to anti-masculinity reviewers was probably like throwing gasoline on their burning hair.
In one scene, a racist Confederate tells Knight that he doesn’t want to fight on the side of slaves, because, unlike them, he is a free man. Knight responds by saying to the guy that being sent to die in someone else’s war makes him more of a slave than the slaves. I cheered at that.
In another scene after the Union had won the war, Knight leads his followers into a polling place to exercise their right to vote. Asking for Republican ballots, he is told by a Democrat Party poll watcher that Republican ballots aren’t available. To Democrat reviewers (and revisionists), this was undoubtedly akin to dousing them with napalm.
Some reviewers didn’t like where the movie went from there. It shows the Union starting off on the right foot in protecting the rights of freed men and women, as well as protecting them from retribution. But then it shows the federal government withdrawing troops and leaving the former slaves at the mercy of their former overseers. The libertarian message is clear: Don’t subject yourself to the whims of government.
Of course such a message is totally incomprehensible to statists with fire-damaged brains.
