I bet most of you have seen the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma but maybe you never thought about the subtle libertarian messages in the movie. Tom Ender has written a nice
review of this classic film from a libertarian perspective. Here's an except:
"Oklahoma captures, on film and in song and dance, what America once was. It shows the exuberance of a free people. From the ubiquitous open carry of firearms by almost all the male characters (which goes almost unnoticed most of the time without massive bloodshed), to Laurey’s purchase of some very interesting inhalant (“elixir of Egypt”) from Ali the peddler without any physician’s advice, to the almost complete disregard – if not open contempt – for the Federal Marshal Cord Elam, the characters in this movie run their own lives free of the meddling of any “enlightened class” (politicians) who know what’s best for them.
Oklahoma was made in 1955 about a period that was about fifty years yet further in the past. Not only are the people in the movie mainly free, but the people of 1955 did not find this unusual. In the movie at the big dance they auctioned picnic lunches to raise money for materials to make the new school which was to be constructed on donated land. My guess is that school would have been built with volunteer labor. In 1955 these ideas were still familiar. Perhaps through watching films like Oklahoma, the spark of liberty can be reignited in enough people that society can find its way back to the wisdom of that era."
