Fear Will Keep the Local Systems in Line

"People shouldn't be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."I just watched V for Vendetta again last night (for like the sixth time, and it's not even out on dvd yet :-) ) It's one of my favorite movies, and every time I watch it I can't help but see the similarities between it and my other favorite movie(s), Star Wars. On the one hand, this is to be expected, since both movies have libertarian themes. But what I find interesting is that they both focus on the same libertarian theme--the idea that government
capitalizes and survives by producing fear in its citizens. In V for Vendetta, we see the way that the government manipulates the people by actually using biological weapons against them, and then "saves the day"--the government just "happens" to have the only available cure.
In Star Wars (speaking of the entire saga, and not just the original), Palpatine, as powerful as he is, cannot just declare himself Emperor and receive immediate obedience. Rather, he must first make people afraid--and it is to this end that he designs the entire Clone Wars. Star Wars shows how government uses War as an excuse to consolidate and increase its power. And, perhaps more cynically, it shows how government itself is often behind the war in the first place. Of course, after Palpatine's rise to complete power (only made posible by War and the production of fear), he keeps his power by keeping the citizens afraid. Afraid, of course, of the power of the Death Star (much like in V for Vendetta, in which the people are afraid of the government's sheer brutality--curfews, executions, black-bagging, and so forth).

And, of course, I do not think that the examples of the use of fear in either movie should be seen as examples of how a particularly evil government might operate. Rather, we ought to view them as particularly nasty instances of how centralized government must operate. Not every government uses biological attacks on its own citizens--but virtually all deceive their citizens into thinking that, without government's help and good grace, chaos would ensue, free markets would become plague-ridden with huge monopolies, medical care would only be available to the wealthiest of the wealthy, and that the nation would be forever at the mercy of any other nation who wished to invade. By keeping people afraid of being free, government entrenches itself as "the answer" to which people look when confronted with War, Famine, Disease, Poverty, and so forth. But so long as we continue to look to government to solve such problems, we will be at the mercy of the gang of thieves that creates these problems in the first place.