The Real Professor Bernardo de la Paz

Tim Minear was executive producer for the show "Angel" of which I'm a fan. He was the executive producer for "Firefly" of which I'm a fan. I have every episode of both those shows on DVD. He also directed and wrote for both those shows.

Those are both Joss Whedon shows. I've considered myself a fan of Joss Whedon's for a while, but I discovered I was a fan of Tim Minear's from Wally Conger's blog, where I learned not only that Minear is writing a screenplay for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but also that he "gets it":

This is about a revolution. It's big and it has a lot of really complex political ideas. It's hard in that respect. How do you personalize this? There's a lot of talking in the book ? theoretical talking about Libertarian ideals and political structure and that sort of thing ? how do you take that and make it immediate and dramatic and emotional? How do you say that stuff through scenes and action, as opposed to characters sitting around and having a conversation? That's difficult.

The other thing is to make sure the powers that be in Hollywood don't force you to turn it into some Marxist screed on socialism, when Heinlein was a Libertarian and it's about free-market capitalism. You want to try and not make it about an evil corporation. That's the trick.

At the time, I wrote that "there might be a big screen version of Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in the works. (And by someone who is (a) connected to Firefly, (b) aware of what libertarianism is (although he miscapitalizes the word), and (c) aware of the fact that Hollywood is much more interested in Marxist screeds than in libertarian screeds!)"

Well, as it happens, Tim Minear himself stumbled onto that blog post yesterday and wrote me about it:

I don't know why this bugged me, but it did, so I e-mail you. I didn't miscapitalize the word "libertarian." The quote was from a phone interview, and while I was basically quoted correctly, I didn't proofread the copy for spelling.

Lame that I emailed you for that, huh?

Best regards --

Tim Minear

My wife was pretty impressed that I got a note from one of her favorite Hollywood bigshots, even if it was to correct me for impugning his knowledge and syntax.

Most of what Minear calls the "theoretical talking about libertarian ideals and political structure and that sort of thing" was done by the great Professor Bernardo de la Paz, the Jeffersonian rational anarchist whom Heinlein based pretty directly on his friend Robert LeFevre.

As I understand it, there were two great poles of radical libertarianism in the America of the middle 20th century: Murray Rothbard in the east, and Robert LeFevre in the west. In 1957, LeFevre founded the Freedom School, which he ran until 1968, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Rothbard organized economics seminars for LeFevre, and was responsible, I believe, for bringing Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises to the Freedom School.

And as it also happens, LeFevre's 1959 booklet The Nature of Man and His Government is today's daily article at Mises.org.

A few years ago, the LeFevre estate donated his library and papers to The Ludwig von Mises Institute. You have to visit Auburn, Alabama to see the books (over 10,000 of them) and papers, among which "are transcripts of lectures by many giants of the libertarian cause, Mises among them." (Lew Rockwell, "The Wisdom of LeFevre")

But you don't have to go to Alabama to listen to over 26 hours of LeFevre's audio commentaries, thanks to Mises.org. This is one of the very first things I did with my very first iPod. Having been a radio professional, LeFevre is wonderful to listen to and very good at explaining "the freedom philosophy".