The analogy of Plato's cave is usually mentioned as an intellectual exercise; it's defined in simple graphic terms, we laugh and scoff at primitive philosophy, and move on to discover the real world.

Yet this analogy fits perfectly in with movies adapted from novels, and there is no exception; such a movie is a mere shadow of itself on that illusive silver screen. The projected image is superfluous, devoid of analytical self-reflection, only a mirror reflected in the expressions and actions of others. The movie version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, though powerful and libertarian in tone, is a fine example of Platonic metaphysics.

The brash bravado of Jack Nicholson and his over-the-edge acting mesh perfectly with the role Ken Kesey created 32 years ago. Nicholson and the character he plays, Randal P. McMurphy. McMurphy drives the story forward, electrifying the viewer as well as his co-characters. McMurphy is a flesh and bones libertarian hero. Like Hercules and Dionysus (not a distant ideal, like John Galt, nor the poor accidental rebel Winston Smith). McMurphy is a rollicking, death-daring, capitalist-spirited dynamo, looking out for number one, but generous in friendship and trust.

Kesey's 1962 novel, repeatedly nominated for the Hall of Fame, deals with liberty and authority, responsibility and sanity, in the form of a brilliant analogy: the insane asylum as a mirror of our society. Like those patients we are the wards of the state, unless we declare our independence and self responsibility.

Set in an insane asylum, in a ward run under tight rein by Big Nurse Ratched, the initial view for the reader is one of peace and order imposed upon the patients for their own good. Like government's relation to its governed, the myth of benevolent control is loudly and often trumpeted. Yet the purveyors of this myth know that it cannot withstand criticism or suggested alternatives that must be avoided or repressed at all cost.

Along comes McMurphy, the nonconformist, a natural and instant foil to Nurse Ratched. If a natural assumption is made that people are placed in insane asylums for one of two reasons, i.e. that they are sick and curable, or that they are sick and incurable, then those two groups are found in Ratched's ward, but with no cure intended. (Libertarians recognize government is not there to make us self reliant, no matter what the slogans and campaigns promise, but rather government exists to stamp out individualism, self-reliance, and independence.)

When McMurphy sees how Ratched has crushed the spirits of her patients in the guise of trying to help them, he makes it his crusade to expose her frauds to the other patients. She is not the caring, kind mother figure as they see her, but someone who cares only for power and control, and who will use any means to achieve her goal.

The personal cost of McMurphy's crusade is devastating for himself and for many other individuals in the ward. Yet in his defiance, he stirs something in their hearts that changes them forever, and sets in motion events that shatter the calm and order of Ratched's ward. The lesson brought home in this novel is undeniably libertarian: that we alone are responsible for our lives, and that we must act as such.

Is this "science fiction" novel? In a stark and limiting sense: no. Yet like Atlas Shrugged and 1984, it demonstrates the greatest expression of individuality and self-worth, and that makes it a strong candidate for the Hall of Fame Award.

An uncanny early twentieth “dystopian” novel, as much science fiction as speculative fiction. We stands in the ranks of Anthem, 1984, A Brave New World, and This Perfect Day as a classic indictment against authoritarian utopias.

In the world of the United State (the name of the country in the novel), individuals are reduced to numbers, beauty is found in unfelt experiences, and events, and each movement, each emotion, is precisely planned, rationed, and regulated. To a libertarian reader such a world is a terror and a nightmare; to the narrator, who knows nothing else, anything he encounters that is not unfree— that which appears spontaneous is frightening, irrational.

This anti-libertarian point of view makes the novel at first unnerving, yet as the narrator encounters a woman who appears not to care about regulations and protocol, we see his mind attempt to expand. The consequences of this attempt resonate the bittersweet sad mood throughout the novel, and say as much about human character as about the soul-killing world of the collectivist state and society.

Freedom and security tower above the history of humanity as the bloody dichotomy that has eaten millions in its double-hinged jaws. In its wake are the destroyed minds of those who believe in this dichotomy, and that to fully achieve one the other must be sacrificed; and it is always freedom that ends up on the altar. Rather than necessary fact, this dichotomy allows the state to manipulate its subjects, using freedom and security as carrot and stick, all the time slicing off a little more of the former ideal.

In portraying a world built on security, We takes the extreme view, that true security will be true security as long as freedom exists, and freedom always suffers through the fear of the unplanned. As an unknown variable—offering scope to the “independent, original, creative personality” we all embody—individual freedom is a great danger to closed societies built on fear of the unexpected.