V for Vacuous

I mention V for Vendetta here and here, and indirectly here, but I hadn't seen it before last night. I went out of my way to avoid all reviews and commentary -- especially in the libertarian blogosphere -- back when I thought I'd be seeing it "any day now," but I got the impression that libertarians loved it and that left-anarchists hated it. To me, that's a strong recommendation, implying a liberal-anarchist hero.

Now I'll have to go back to those old commentaries to see who misunderstood what. Maybe I'll agree with the left-anarchists, after all.

There are only 3 genuinely libertarian statements in the movie:

1. "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people."
2. "Stealing implies ownership; you cannot steal from the censors."
3. "One thing is true of all governments: their most reliable records are tax records."

While watching the movie, I kept thinking, This isn't libertarian. This is just left-wing Hollywood.

And sure enough, Alan Moore, author of the original comic book, had this to say about how they'd perverted his story:

It's been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country.... It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives -- which is not what the comic "V for Vendetta" was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England.

(Source: "Alan Moore: The last angry man," cited on Wikipedia.)