Libertarians and Culture... A Bit Lacking?

Leftism dominates Hollywood while libertarians beg for scraps

Many of my readers have wondered why the Rants have been so quiet lately.  They’re used to getting 2-3 rants a week from me, not to mention the shameless spamming all over Facebook and Twitter.

Luckily, I have two rants ready to be published this week, so my readers need not fear.  Still, that doesn’t exactly explain why the recent lack of content on my blog.

The truth is that over the past few months I’ve been writing my butt off… just not so many rants.  I’ve been writing not just articles, but books!  I already announced on a radio interview that I’ll soon be releasing a compilation book (hey, I can’t let Jeffrey Tucker or Ann Coulter have all the fun).

This book is over 300 pages long and includes my best rants, as well as other editorials I’ve written for other venues. The title is Don’t Piss Me Off!: Libertarian Republican Rants and Raves.

The best part about it is that I’m releasing the e-book free of charge.  That’s right, it’ll cost readers zero dollars and zero cents to download it!  Consider it a special thank you to all my brothers and sisters in liberty who have encouraged me along the way.

But that’s not the main reason for my absence!  You see, I’ve noticed something that I feel can no longer be ignored by the growing libertarian community.

When it comes to economics and politics, we’re so far above and beyond the leftists—Marx, Keynes and Krugman are buried by the Austrian economists and libertarian philosophers.  Try as they might, no leftist (or neocon) statist has ever been able to refute us.

However, when it comes to culture, the left kicks our ass six ways to Sunday!  Leftist ideas dominate the movie industry, the music industry, and literature.  This is why Michael Moore gets standing ovations at the Academy Awards and George Clooney hosts $40,000-per-plate fundraisers in Hollywood for President Obama.

This is also why conservatives crapped their pants in excitement over the docu-film 2016: Obama’s America, and libertarians lost sleep counting down to Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike.

Both of the above mentioned films were fairly well made, but remarkably underwhelming and ultimately ineffective in swaying viewers away from leftism.  (Personally, my crush on Samantha Mathis was half my motivation for catching Atlas Shrugged Part Dos).

This is why libertarians need to become guerrilla novelists and guerrilla filmmakers, slowly but surely hacking their way into the cultural spotlight.  We won’t be getting major funding for big blockbuster films or New York Times bestselling books anytime soon, but we can sure as hell grow our niche.  I have no clue about filmmaking, but I do know a thing or two about writing.

Let’s look at an example of libertarian literature.  Ayn Rand did an amazing job with her novels.  As a matter of fact, I’m honestly having trouble naming a novel that outdoes Atlas Shrugged—only the unabridged Les Miserables comes to mind.  Now there is the rub—both novels are the sizes of cinder blocks, and it’s remarkably difficult to get today’s reader, with the attention span of a gnat, to put down Twilight in favor of The Fountainhead.

Rand’s novels, brilliant as they are, are also remarkably complex.  Their contents are too big of a pill for many folks to swallow.  This is why we need a new vanguard of libertarian writers to give the world a new wave of libertarian novels.  I’m talking about 100-300 page works that are dramatic, moving, and promote the ideals of liberty as wew see it.  We need literature, people!

I’ve always been good at talking about issues, but my friend Janine K. of the Libertarian Party called me on my BS and put it into perspective: “It’s easy to identify problems, but it takes a leader to do something about it.”  Very true, Janine!

And so, the whole time Zach Foster Rants has been quiet, Zach Foster himself has been typing away producing fiction novels.  Apart from Don’t Piss Me Off! and one other nonfiction book I wrote this summer, I’ve got two other novels I’ll have completed this year.  Writing them has been some of the most fun I’ve had in a while.

Provided I’ll be able to scrape up enough free time over this school year—two quarters to go before I’m done with my Bachelor’s Degree and my parents can let me die in peace—there will be several more novels where that came from.  I’m so excited!

Some of these novels I’ll self-publish, and for others I’ll bust my tail to find a publisher that’s bigger than, um, me.

In the meantime, I have a challenge for all of you.  I know some of you are also writers.  A few of you have libertarian or Constitutional conservative books you’ve self-published.  More of you have blogs on which you regularly write political op-eds or economic treatises.  I’m sure even more of you write in journals and do a little bit of fiction just for fun.

Why stop there?  You folks ought to join me in producing good, original libertarian fiction.  Don’t be afraid to self-publish either!  It’s better that your fiction, interwoven with libertarian ideas, reaches a smaller audience rather than no audience at all!  You have no idea whose mind you’ll change or whose life you might touch.

I know that some of you folks are better with a video camera or with a musical instrument than you are with writing.  That’s totally okay!  Grab your camera, grab your guitar and microphone, and use your artistic talent to promote liberty.  Don’t let Golden State and Aimee Allen have all the fun!  Get your stuff up on YouTube and iTunes!

The more that we all strive together to undo the cultural domination of statism over libertarianism, the sooner our ideas will become commonplace in the minds of ordinary folks who have little interest in politics.

So what are we waiting for?

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Hollywood Sign image courtesy of Flickr user raindog808. Atlas Shrugged first edition cover art is the property of Random House and used according to Fair Use Law.  Timeless Books image courtesy of Lin Kristensen.  All images were obtained from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.