Nov 2
Free Staters counter criticisms before they happen
“In the Free State, would we still have problems? Yes. Absolutely. Will people still be greedy? Will they still lie, cheat and steal? No doubt. Will kids do drugs? Will drunk drivers kill people on the roads? Will food, medicine and education still have to be paid for somehow? Yes to all. We will, after all, still live on this mortal coil. The laws of physics and economics will still apply to us. We’re simply acknowledging that and dealing with it, unlike a lot of other political philosophies.” (10/31/03)
The Free State project is one of the most interesting things attemped in politics in recent years. Instead of bleating about it, these libertarians actually plan to put their ideas into practice. It was no surprise to me when they picked New Hampshire as their state of choice. After all, the state’s motto is “live free or die”, and they tend to be much more libertarian round those parts.
5 Comments so far
So the idea of the “Free State Project” is that a huge number of libertarians move to a state in order to guarantee a majority for libertarian political candidates. That is an outrage. The people of whatever state they target have not chosen to elect a libertarian government. They have not chosen a radical tiny government agenda. For a group of zealots to impose these policies on them through a mass immigration of true believers is little more than a coup. It’s gerrymandering from the ground up. They may not be doing anything illegal, but they are urinating all over the spirit of democracy.
Mr Zalotocky said,
“They are urinating all over the spirit of democracy”
Well, no. Actually they are carrying out the spirit of democracy to the letter. The majority rule. Just put together a big enough majority and there you go. The Free State Project put in a lot of work to identify a state which was already quite in tune with their ideas and where they could settle causing least upset to the current inhabitants. What is different about that and Hilary Clinton moving to New York because it is a better place for her to get elected?
Mr Harrison – first names will do, this isn’t a formal occassion!
I don’t agree that the Free State Project is just an example of majority rule because it is trying to engineer a majority where none previously existed by the mass movement of people. That’s why I referred to it as gerrymandering, because in gerrymandering the alterations to the boundaries of electoral districts are just a means to the end of changing where people vote in order to give an advantage to one party. The people who move to New Hampshire (or wherever it turns out to be) would not be doing so because of any personal connection to the state or any particular desire to live there, but simply because it is a good target for a takeover. Even if there is a particularly high level of libertarian opinion in the state, it clearly hasn’t been enough to elect a state government that is committed to your agenda. Indeed, a culture that values liberty and individual reliance does not automatically translate into electoral support for the particular vision of libertarian small government that the proponents of the Free State Project have in mind. If it did, the libertarian agenda would have been enacted already.
Ultimately, the Free State Project still means people moving to New Hampshire (or wherever) to ensure that there is a majority for a radical political program that the existing population have not previously chosen to enact. That is why I see it as fundamentally coercive, because it is a political movement that was not otherwise able to get itself into power imposing itself on a state through a manipulation of the electoral process.
However, I do accept that the “urinating” comment was hyperbole and unnecessarily rude, so I withdraw that.
As for Duchess Hilary going to New York, I have no desire to defend her (on any issue whatsoever). But an individual putting themselves up for election is not comparable to a mass movement of voters, because the latter is intended to ensure a particular result in the election.
This is, of course, is opposed to all the Massholes and New Yorkers who moved to Northern New England and royally fucked up the place. Maine was Republican and low tax before this happened, now its the mostly highly taxed state in the country and broke. The left has been doing it for years, but when libertarians try it…oops its horrible!
Exactly, Andrew: if anything, this is far less of a change from NH’s original character than what happened to Maine and Vermont. I mean “Live Free or Die” wasn’t thought up yesterday.