Blogs > Liberty and Power > Harry Potter and the Libertarian Message



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Amy H. Sturgis - 12/30/2008

I hadn't seen that. Thanks so much for the link!


Joel Schlosberg - 12/20/2008

Check out this rant from Jack Huberman's "101 People Who Are Really Screwing America", a backhanded testament to Harry Potter's libertarian qualities:

"Despite certain liberal themes (how badly, really, do kids still need lessons in the toleration of diversity--the Potter books' principle claim to moral and social value?), _Potter_ is packed with morals, character, and, if you scrape a bit, political lessons on which George Dumbledore Bush would gladly stamp his great seal of presidential approval. Potter and his classmates constantly disobey the rules and get in trouble but in the end are winked at or praised by their professors and Headmaster Dumbledore precisely for ignoring all those _regulations_ and the stuffy, broomstick-in-the-mud authorities who try to enforce them, and for using their own, well, entrepreneurial initiative to save the day. In _The Order of the Phoenix_, Harry spends as much time battling the Ministry of Magic as he does Voldemort. Newt Gingrich would have that ministry shut down before you could say abracadabra. Perhaps the only way to reform this bloated bureaucracy is through privatization, beginning with individual, tax-sheltered magic accounts.

In short, if kids really need more role models for contempt towards rules and regs (see every movie hero from Sam Space to _Dirty_ Harry to #70, *_Ah_nuld*)--and by extension, toward government, the Constitution, and international law--can't we just direct their attention to the Bush administration?"

http://tinyurl.com/4ser6z