Just over 50 years ago, Rod Serling began working on the idea that would eventually turn in to one of the most popular and successful television programs of all time, The Twilight Zone. Everyone who has ever seen the show can recall the spooky introduction, the brilliant writing, and the ability to scare without using buckets of blood or indiscriminate violence.

I can remember catching a glimpse or two when I was younger while my dad watched them, always enjoying its sci-fi nature but never grasping the deeper philosophical and political undertones that drove the show. Re-watching a few episodes a dozen years later, The Twilight Zone was truly one of the best modern defenders of the individual over the collective and freedom over control, and its messages and warnings are still as relevant as ever. The characters even tended to say some very unpleasant things about government officials!

Take for example the episode entitled “It’s a Good Life.” The fictional town of Peaksville is the only town left in the entire world, and the inhabitants have no idea how the rest of the world was destroyed. They do know the cause: a terrible monster that reads minds and is easily disappointed. The classic opening narration tells it best:

She began to sing aloud. Now, the monster doesn’t like singing, so his mind snapped at her, turned her into the smiling, vacant thing you’re looking at now. She sings no more. And you’ll note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio, have to smile. They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because once displeased, the monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror. This particular monster can read minds, you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion.

Peaksville is filled with numb and fearful citizens, constantly worried about displeasing their authoritarian monster-master. American culture closely resembles this small Ohio town, where our speech and our thoughts are policed, monitored, controlled, directed, and molded until it’s PC-approved. The media and the public schools do a very good job of this, only the monster-master in America resides near the Potomac River. Like Huxley’s sheeple in his Brave New World, individualism and the freedom of our minds are being sacrificed to that dangerously vague “the common/collective good.”

Perhaps my favorite episode from the archives was “The Eye of the Beholder,” where a Leader on a telescreen shouts to the people.

We know now that there must be a single purpose!  A single norm!  A single approach!  A single entity of peoples!  A single virtue!  A single morality!  A single frame of reference!  A single philosophy of government!  We must cut out all that is different like a cancerous growth!  It is essential in this society that we not only have a norm, but that we conform to that norm!  Differences weaken us! Variations destroy us!

This would have done George Orwell proud, who’s depiction of “Big Brother” in 1984 is eerily similar to this episode’s “Leader.” The Leader’s rant is unique only in the sense that it is so upfront about what he desires. In reality, this is what all leaders, be they dictators or elected representatives, want: the herd mentality of their subjects, the continuing conformity of thought and morals. A numbed population walking on politically-correct egg shells doesn’t ask too many (or the right) questions.

The spirit of individualism and anti-authoritarianism in The Twilight Zone struck a chord with Americans who were comparably free and immensely more independent. 50 years later, their nightmares have become our reality.

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For more of Robert’s work, please visit his Libertarian Examiner blog.

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