Libertarians Look for a State to Call Their Own. (Free State Project)

The Everett Herald (WA) | 2/23/2003 | reprint from the Baltimore Sun

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Plans are under way for an invasion of New Hampshire. Or Wyoming. Or maybe Delaware, Montana or Alaska. Sparsely populated and independent in spirit, they're all attractive targets for a certain bloodless coup in the making.

Within the next several years, according to the plan, 20,000 Libertarians would move to a single state and begin infiltrating. They'd get jobs, join civic groups, get elected and take a hatchet to taxes and laws. In this utopia called the Free State Project, schools would be severed from the state, gun-control laws abolished, drugs legalized, health and social services privatized, and most federal aid rejected. Government's only job would be to protect against "force and fraud."

[Catspaw]

Naw, I'd rather just leave you twisting, slowly, slowly in the wind, wallowing deep in your paranoia.

Ta ta, sweetie! Don't you just love a mystery?

[Protagoras]

Ta ta, sweetie!

Another surrender monkey. Running away like the others. LOL

BTW, I don't go for your apparent preference, so don't refer to me as your sweetie.

Don't you just love a mystery?

There is no mystery. It's a simple question and you won't answer because it's true.

How many emails have you had with Roscoe since you were exposed? ROTFLMAO

[Catspaw]

The code word for today is Kartoffelkopf.

[Hadean]

To be thoroughly principled, the freeloaders and parasites should leave America entirely

Well, that would require first agreeing on moving out of the country via heading north, south, east, or west. It would require a vote. Here is how it would actually sound like ( Note: this is an actual FSP conversation on voting I picked up from the website, I took the liberty to replace the name of a state with "direction". My changes are indicated by italics. Nothing else was edited and represents the actual original argument):

"The question I have is do we go with a direction that has a 'majority'? Meaning how many rounds do we do through?"

"No offense, but this is in the FAQ"

"I know it's mentioned there but that doesn't mean we shouldn't disscuss the advantages and dissadvantages of this system."

"the whole point is to measure preferences. If you like two directions -- let's say a strong preference for North and a minor preference for South over the rest of the directions -- and someone else only wants one direction (north), and doesn't give the least hoot about any other direction, CC measures those relative preferences."

"but if you give every direction a 5 then you basically haven't voted. If you give every direction a 5 except one which you give a 1 then in effect you've given an 'anti-vote' which you should be able to do. If you really hate one choice now you would have to evenly spread out your points to all the other directions instead of giving one direction a -10."

"Yes you have, and you've been allowed to indicate more "desire ponts" than someone who gives a 5, a 4, a 3, a 2, and a 1. "

"No thats not true because say someone voted, as you said, and gave a 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. So the score would be North 5 South 4 East 3 West 2 to the moon 1. Now assume someone voted all 5s, the vote would be North 10 South 9 East 8 West 7 to the moon 6. So in other words nothing has changed the directions are all in the same order and no one direction improved or been diminished because you haven't indicated a preference of one over another. "

"if you don't know which direction is the frontrunner, it would be silly to give all your votes to one direction because you would be effectively risking everything on that 1 direction. If your 2nd and 3rd preferences, say, are even mildly important, you should assign some points to them and hope that if your 1st choice doesn't win, your 2nd or 3rd preference votes would make a difference."

"[but]Say that among 5,000 members, 2,000 want to opt for the East. They would know that their best bet is to cast their 10 votes for a country in the East. Say that the other 3,000 want to opt for a country in the West, but it is unclear which country has the best chance of winning, and most of the participants don't have a clear favoriite, knowing that whichever is chosen, they will have the support of the other two. As a result, the vote is split in some fashion, so that Iraq, Afghanastan and Pakistan each receive 1,000 votes. Thus Japan would be the winner even though it was the 4th choice of a majority."

"I would tend to think that what it means is that the pro-western factions would need to form an alliance and agree to all cast votes for a single direction. "

"Now doing this is what I've been talking about and now this system is not better than the regular voting for one choice. But imagine if the Westerners could vote a 'strongly approve' for their favorite, 'approve' for the other two directions, and 'strongly dissaprove' for South that way they can express thier true opinion without diluting their vote."

"I'm in favor of a vote of east vs. west, then settle which direction. "

"I'm quite concerned that we will have a vote between say East and West and the east guys split thier vote and the west guys all vote for Japan. At the same time like Phyllis said it could happen to the West guys where they have 2-3 choices and the east guys onely have one. "

"Why not each direction is ranked by the voter, from 1 to (the total number of directions). Then, if the winning direction does not get a majority, the bottom direction is dropped, and those that chose the bottom direction as their primary choice, then have their 2ND choice applied to the remaining directions, and the votes are recounted. This process continues until one direction has a majority."

It goes on and on and on and on......

[Cultural Jihad]

Herr Kartoffelkopf

[Roscoe]

I'd be flattered if I wasn't so creeped out.

[Roscoe]

Yikes! You've exposed us all!!!

[Roscoe]

ROTFLMAO

Got the munchies?

[Protagoras]

Hey you little creeps creeped back in. Time to answer the question.

BTW, I never used an illict drug in my life. Are you implying that I have?

[Cultural Jihad]

And we'll all pretend to be interested in your personal problems.

[Protagoras]

Hey CJ, you're back too! Got your mods badge on? Push any abuse buttons in the last 5 minutes? Ready to scram again when you secrect email disruption list comes up again? Did your buddies send you the heads up on this latest round or did you find your way here all by yourself this time?

Inquiring minds want to know.

[Cultural Jihad]

Did you sign up for the FSP? I think it's a wonderful idea, and will definitely work, only if there are no self-avowed libertarians or other moral-liberals there.

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"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." -Patrick Henry

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"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." -John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798 Address to the military

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[Protagoras]

You didn't answer my questions. And you made some inferences about me. Did you call me a moral liberal? If so I'll have to do a "CJ" on ya and call the mods. Although you are pretty slick when insulting and evading, so maybe they will let you go ,,,,again. Of course the rumor is you ARE a mod, so who knows,,,,

[Protagoras]

So tell me about your alert list participation.

[Protagoras]

Wow, the only folks who disappear quicker than you when it starts are the French. LOL

[Cultural Jihad]

Get a grip, Protagoras. If you continue down this dead end road you will never find any happiness in life.

[Protagoras]

Well, I might as well leave for the night now that you have crawled back under your rock, you can post back when I'm gone and pretend you didn't run like a child, but we both know better.

[Protagoras]

Oops, back with a picture, but no answers. Tell me about your participation in the alert list.

[Protagoras]

If you continue down this dead end road you will never find any happiness in life.

You sure spend a lot of time worrying about my happiness. But don't worry, I'm happy when I expose people like you and your litle band of frogs. :-}

[Cultural Jihad]

... you will never find any happiness in life.

But the choice is entirely yours.