Every libertarian owes it to himself the see this movie. It is so shot through with libertarian messages, both overt and subtle, as to be an unintentional, non-intrusive ideologic primer on the philosophy for every American. It has just been offered free by Comcast. I’ve watched it again.

Hollywood used to bang out Civil War movies like Shenandoah and westerns, including westerns with post-bellum themes with regularity. Many became classics like The Searchers with John Wayne as the racist ex-Confederate soldier, Ethan Edwards, and The Virginian with Gary Cooper in the title role which was later made into a TV series. It seems all of them starred either James Stewart, Gary Cooper, John Wayne or Henry Fonda with Forrest Tucker, Walter Huston or Ward Bond in some kind of a supporting role.

Many have said that Hollywood, with a few exceptions like Clint Eastwood, doesn’t know how to make westerns anymore. I think they’re right.

John Wayne drew a lot of criticism over the years for his avoidance of military service during World War II, especially in light of his war movies for Republic Pictures with their glorification of the most barbaric of human endeavors. No such criticism could be leveled at James Stewart, just one year older than Wayne, who was first turned down for the draft due to underweight, then physically trained to qualify, was turned down yet again and pleaded his case to be able to serve! And when there were rumors that due to his celebrity status he’d be relegated to training pilots, he sought to be assigned to full combat duties in the Army Air Corps. After the war, he would rise to the rank of Brigadier General in the Air Force Reserve.

During that wartime, he would have been in his early to mid thirties, in what would have been his prime years as a leading man. After the war, he persisted and emerged as one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. A product of the old studio system, he always brought himself to roles, which was characteristic of that fading system, where roles were created for stars rather than finding actors to fill them.

Shenandoah was scripted in 1963, released in 1965, set in the Civil War and concerns widower Charlie Anderson, played by James Stewart, who’s raising his family alone after wife Martha’s death. She had succumbed after the birth of their youngest son. Anderson regularly visits his wife’s grave on their farm and talks to her, trying to make sense of the world.

We learn the family stead is 500 acres and they make their living and life on it. They grow potatoes, corn and whatever Anderson has a mind to. They do it through simple hard work. We learn they cleared much of it.

Charlie is committed to raising the children as good Christians and they go to church every Sunday but always arrive after the service has begun to the mild chagrin of Pastor Bjorling. After the first service, we see Charlie drive a tough bargain with another congregation member, the free market at work.

Charlie has no interest in the Civil War which is raging all around the farm, surrounded by Union troops with the only refuge for the losing Confederacy, logically enough, to the South. It doesn’t concern him and his, like just about every war in history really doesn’t concern the ordinary citizen. The farm is set in the fictional town of Shenandoah Gap. Gettysburg is in the past so many accept that the Confederacy’s days are numbered.

When one son, Jacob, confronts Anderson about the war, he asks are they on our property. Jacob responds no and Charlie says then it doesn’t concern us.

When Confederate Lieutenant Johnson comes with his detachment to the farm to ask for water, Charlie allows them all they want. Johnson then challenges Charlie as to why none of his sons is fighting, especially since some of his men are the same age as Anderson’s sons. He goes on about how it’s their duty to the state, in this case Virginia.

To that Anderson gives one of the best libertarian quotes in movie history. “These are my sons. They don’t belong to the state. When they were babies, I never saw the state coming around with a spare teat. We never asked anything of the state and never expected anything.” That quote has stuck in my head for decades.

Of course today is far different. The state has so infiltrated every facet of our lives that they can justify our required fealty. The collectivists would respond by pointing out how much of what we have, comes from the state and its goodness and it could include the very same water that Anderson gave Johnson to drink. They would use that to justify their forcing us to do anything they desire.

Later a group of Union agents comes to buy some of Anderson’s livestock. When Anderson refuses to sell, the federal agent Carroll states that he is authorized to ‘confiscate’ Anderson’s livestock, the youngest son asks what the word means. Charlie responds ‘steal.’ Isn’t that a libertarian truth when you look at public domain seizures, especially the recent Kelo vs. Connecticut case?

When they persist in their attempts, Anderson and his sons simply engage them in a full fight and run them off. The fight is ended when the daughter, Jennie, shoots a Derringer out of the hand of Federal Purchasing (an Orwellian title) Carroll’s hand. There could never be a better lesson of the necessity for the Second Amendment. Political power does come from the point of a gun.

The agents were accompanied by the local sheriff named Tinkham. After they’ve left Anderson says, “That fella, Tinkham – he’s the only man I know that started at the bottom and went down in the world. He’d steal horses for nothing and now he gets paid for it.” Seems like little changes. Government brings out the worst in people and often it attracts the lowest to begin with. Hayek would be proud.

At a family dinner they discuss slavery. They aren’t slave owners and James says that he only wants what he can earn with his own hands.

Throughout the movie, the men refer to themselves as Virginians, not Americans and certainly not Confederates. That was characteristic of the country until that time. We thought of ourselves as New Yorkers or Virginians, if not a libertarian message, then a constitutional one.

We also hear, repeatedly, the lilting strains of the folk song, Oh, Shenandoah, about a man leaving his ancestral home with its rolling hills and fertile valleys for the west. It would become a theme for many Virginians who left that valley that had been laid waste by the ruthless Union Gen. Philip Sheridan.

By the end of the movie, two of the sons have been killed, Jacob by a Confederate sentry, and James, played by John Wayne’s son Patrick, by scavengers. Charlie visits Martha’s grave where Jacob, James and his wife Ann, who was probably raped by the same scavengers, are buried. He says, “I don’t even know what to say to you any more, Martha. There’s not much I can tell you about this war. It’s like all wars, I guess. The undertakers are winning. And the politicians who talk about the glory of it. And the old men who talk about the need of it. And the soldiers, well, they just wanna go home. I guess you’re not so lonely any more, with Ann and James and Jacob. And maybe the boy (the youngest who may also have been killed. We’re never told his name.) He goes on, “But I wish, I wish I could just know what you’re thinking about it all, Martha. And maybe it wouldn’t seem so bad to me if I knew what you thought about it.”

Every scene rings true. The violence of war is depicted straightforwardly, not gratuitously. In one crucial battle scene, a Confederate soldier takes a musket ball right in his forehead, mid-sentence, showing the capriciousness and finality of it all. He had just said to the missing Anderson boy, they had a dog’s chance of getting through it.

George Kennedy has a great turn as a war-weary Union colonel who helps Anderson find his missing son. You have to look twice to realize it’s the George Kennedy of Cool Hand Luke. He’s that good. He tells of his son who is in school in Boston, “Thank God.”

The movie will leave you wistful and suspended, partly because of the great, recurring Oh Shenandoah theme. Artistically, it’s a triumph.

And there you have it. A man who had seen war up close, mouthing the words of a man who was confused by it all. And isn’t that how life is for all of us, confused?

James Stewart had seen our previous enemies become allies and a previous ally an enemy. I doubt whether the irony was lost on him, another Orwellian lesson.

In 1965, another war was just beginning and we have seen that enemy become a big trading partner. We have seen our erstwhile Cold War enemy destroyed from within by its own inherent contradictions and without a single shot being exchanged directly between the two.

Charlie Anderson just wanted to be left alone with his family, to their own devices to solve their own problems and provide for themselves, a libertarian message if there ever was one. Every libertarian should see it, at least once.

Source: http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=5069

~ About the Author ~
Dr. Roderick T. Beaman is a board certified family osteopathic physician who practices in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a published poet, has composed a blues song and is trying to have his first novel published. It deals with the dangers of big government. He offers anyone who wishes to dignify the trash he writes with a comment, to do so.