10 Great Libertarians Of Film And TV

By Jon Marco /

5. Janet Tyler - The Twilight Zone (In The Eye Of The Beholder)

€œThe State isn€™t God! [...] It has no right to make ugliness a crime!€ Today€™s more savvy audience will see the twist coming a mile away, but The Eye of the Beholder is as relevant as ever as an allegory for conformity. Janet Tyler is born disfigured, into a world that refuses to tolerate her harmless difference in appearance. Her only choices are to have facial reconstruction surgery, or to be banished from society. In the story€™s most overt allusion to Orwell, the propaganda of this imagined world€™s leader is televised across ever-present screens, blearing €œ...there must be a single purpose! A single norm! A single entity of people€™s! A single virtue! A single morality!€. While on the surface, this episode can be enjoyed for what is says about the subjectivity of physical beauty, peer deeper, and you will see a story that is about tolerating all the differences in your fellow man, physical and otherwise. While many governments seek to create homogeneity or cohesion, libertarianism accepts that people will always be fundamentally different from each other, and that that€™s alright. Other people€™s freedoms are to be defended, even when they exercise that freedom in ways that are unpopular, or subjectively €œugly€.