The Free State Project, One Decade Later 701
Okian Warrior writes "About a decade ago Slashdot ran an article about the Free State Project: an attempt to get 20,000 liberty-minded activists to move to one state (they chose NH) and change the political landscape. Eleven years on, the project is still growing and having an effect on statewide politics. NPR recently ran a program discussing the movement, its list of successes, and plans for the future. The FSP has a noticeable effect on politics right now — still 6,000 short of their 20,000 goal, and long before the members are scheduled to move to NH."
The Free Staters chose my town as the test bed (Score:3, Informative)
They chose my home town as the test bed.
They attempted to stack the select board with their members using unscrupulous means such as slander stuffing mailboxes without stamps in violation of federal rules.
There is some good as they oppose wind development which largely benefits out of state interests and decimates local ridgetops. As a group they seem like nice folks, kind of like right wing hippies ; )
However they are subverting the will of the public by attempting to hijack local and state politics and a similar bunch has devastated the legislature at the state level and made many questionable laws in defiance of the majority of the electorate.
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:5, Informative)
WTF does that even mean? That could be anything from Libertarians who don't want to pay taxes to hippies wanting to set up a socialist utopia.
Liberty means that both of those groups should be able to do those things that they want, short of hurting others.
I'm a long-time NH resident, and have met several of the FSP early movers. That pretty well fits each one of them - let people do what they want, short of hurting others (oh, the horror). They're almost all strong on property rights (except for the odd Georgist or two) and favor peace and tolerance as the prevailing basis for society. Most favor sound money and work hard for private charity. There are already a few that live in something like a commune and the ones that are pro-markets and free enterprise are completely down with that - they think it's silly, but the commune-ists pose no threat to them.
It's probably a safe bet that none favor Greek-style central control, central banking, and a pervasive regulatory environment, or the US-style warfare/welfare state (corporate welfare being tops among them). Their statement of intent [freestateproject.org] says, "the maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property."
I've worked with some of them at the State house on issues like the right to record public officials in their official duty, the prosecution of victimless crimes, and legalizing industrial hemp. The Earth is "full" as there are no unclaimed jurisdictions, so the new reality of the past century is that one cannot simply move to settle a new area with like-minded friends (e.g. Utah) - the only option left is to move en masse and gentrify an existing area.
It's certainly not for everybody - those who would rather be kept as pets should not move here, and that's the beauty of political migration - those who do wish to "Live Free or Die" can move here with the FSP and work to make this one beautiful spot of nine-thousand square miles the freest place on Earth.
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:3, Informative)
Their definition of 'Liberty' is to submit to group think. They pretend that you are free to vote as you want (wink wink) but the idea is to transplant 20,000 libertarians into New Hampshire and introduce their political beliefs into that state. If you read the FAQ, you will notice that they don't consider current residents of New Hampshire as full members (they are allowed to subscribe to the newsletter). They do everything they can to not openly declare their intent since they don't want to be considered a political organization. They assume that the 20,000 members (i.e. artificially introduced voting block) will vote for the Libertarian candidate within the voting district that all 20,000 members agreed to reside.
The ability of a long time residents to continue to have their desired form of local government is not included in this group's definition of 'liberty'.
Re:The Free Staters chose my town as the test bed (Score:5, Informative)
They chose my home town as the test bed.
The hippies chose the city of San Francisco here in California and now it's one of the most liberal cities in the United States. The hippies left the conservative communities around the country from which they originated, and where they weren't accepted and couldn't change things politically, to move to an area where they were accepted and could vote to change things. The Free Staters are just a better organized and more intentional effort to do the same.
They attempted to stack the select board with their members using unscrupulous means such as slander stuffing mailboxes without stamps in violation of federal rules.
The lefties here in California have done that and more in pursuit of getting what they want politically and now they run this state. So that's actually pretty tame by California standards.
There is some good as they oppose wind development which largely benefits out of state interests and decimates local ridgetops. As a group they seem like nice folks, kind of like right wing hippies ; )
One thing that you can count on with Libertarian types is that they won't be a drain on local social services. New Hampshire could do a lot worse than attracting a bunch of people who want to work hard and be self sufficient.
However they are subverting the will of the public by attempting to hijack local and state politics and a similar bunch has devastated the legislature at the state level and made many questionable laws in defiance of the majority of the electorate.
They are the public. They moved there, remember? Elections have consequences, as the left is fond of saying, and in this case their strategy of moving to an area to concentrate their votes appears to be working. You may not like the results, but coordinating your move with like minded people isn't illegal and it's the right of every American to live in wherever they choose to and are able to. The states cannot deny any American citizen the right to become a resident if they want to live there and freedom of association is protected in the First Amendment of our Constitution, right up there with speech.
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:5, Informative)
Probably because you're an idiot. Read up on the economic situation in the US at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century if you want to see why Libertarianism is doomed to failure. Either by destroying the things that made America great or just fizzling out when there's no longer a supply of idiots to buy into it.
We used to have what the Libertarians want, and we no longer have it because it sucked.
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:5, Informative)
Taxation to support a social safety net is not a violation of liberty. For an argument why, you might consider reading F.A. Hayek.
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:3, Informative)
To be "fair", it could end up in feudalism rather than fascism: some rich people letting you live in their company towns and sharecrop their farms, as long as you abide by their rules (agreed to via contracts, of course: you're "free" not to sign them if you don't want to eat!).
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:3, Informative)
Hate to burst your bubble, but I've been to tea party rallies, and had my best friend by my side. He got "go back to mexico" and "fucking wetback" shouted at him a number of times, but at least the shouters had the sense to look sheepish and try to look away when we turned back to confront them.
Tea Partiers like this [plunderbund.com] are surprisingly common in the south.
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:3, Informative)
Nice thing about jury nullifiication is that you can change that. Sure, the law might say that blowing up a church with black girls in it might be illegal, but "thankfully" no jury will convict you for it. That is, if they can get anyone to prosecute you, that is.
Re:The Free Staters chose my town as the test bed (Score:4, Informative)
If you look at presidential election results since 1916, you'd notice that the plurality of the population of San Francisco have voted for a Democrat 21 out of 25 presidential elections with 19 of them being a clear majority of the votes (over 52%). Since this is almost a hundred years of voting, I don't see San Francisco ever being right-leaning during your lifetime.
If anything it shows that, when it comes to moving to a new community, people will choose a community that reflects their own personal views. The Free Staters are going against that trend by purposely moving to an area with the intent of changing that community's political landscape.
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not seeing what Libertarian views have to do with allowing law breaking like that. As far as I know, Libertarians would be in favor of doing what it took to stop violence like that because people were hurt in the process and individual rights were violated. In that case, at least, the federalization of some of those cases would still make perfect sense to a Libertarian. Libertarian != State's Rights except where individual rights are better protected with local government.
If the "libertarians" were not in favor of protecting the rights of the blacks who were hurt in that way, then they wouldn't be libertarians, they'd be racist assholes. There's nothing about Libertarian views that requires the Federal government to stay out of cases of actual violence. That's more of a States' Rights argument. As far as I know, States' Rights is only useful to libertarians because local governance is more likely to take individuals into account, but it isn't an absolute above and beyond protecting individuals from harm.
Re:"Liberty-Minded"? (Score:5, Informative)
And would you want to go to a business who doesn't like who you are and is willing to deny you the ability to give them money?
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to be on the other end of that, but as much as I hated it, I wouldn't want the government to be able to force people to think in a certain way, because if the situation was different, the government could be used to make *me* think a different way or punish me if I didn't.
Let's just put some KKK tags around your statement:
"And if that means treading on the "right of association" of a thousand [faggots/niggers/wetbacks], I'm perfectly ok with that, because there are more important rights at stake."
You'd be giving those guys that exact same power, it would just be a matter of time before they got it. Sooner or later, as much good as you thought you would do with that, it would all be undone.
Obviously, certain public health situations need to respect legal documents like Power of Attorney. If they are not, then there should be recourse in law for that. Any libertarian should be behind your right as an individual to make contracts and delegate your own authority as required. If someone says that they are a "libertarian", but doesn't believe that, then there is something inconsistent about them.
And look at it this way, even if you thought being gay was wrong, in theory I should be able to make out a Power of Attorney to a third party, and that party could be, and often will be, the same sex as me. Accepting Powers of Attorney isn't about gay rights, it's about people who are ignorant of the law. If they were ignorant of the law in that way, I'd support you in any lawsuit you made to get that rectified. They don't have the right to override legally binding agreements like that.