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."

[Aarchaeus]

Jack, you may as well give up on providing information here. A lot of these Freepers have been conditioned so thoroughly by our collectivist system that they have no concept of what liberty means or what libertarianism is about. Their judgment is barely better than that of a liberal.

[verity]

If you place 144 libertarians in a room, you get gross ignorance.

[tpaine]

Equating the Free State Project to Jonestown is indeed:

"Further proof that you are, as always, clueless.
I hate to tell you this, but libertarians are not generally known for their blind religious fervor. That sort of mania is generally reserved for cultural conservatives, like yourself.
I guess nobody told you that."
-dead-

Anyone at FR that gets too close to proving such a mania usually gets suspended, or worse.

Now ~that's~ fervor.

[Roscoe]

They'd get jobs, join civic groups, get elected

They'd try to get jobs, then go on welfare, ask Mom and Dad to send 'em money, buy dope, smoke it, hold meetings at Denny's, run for office and lose.

[tpaine]

"I'm surprised at the hostility to their project evidenced here. Here are a bunch of people who want to "roll back liberal programs", theoretically a goal of Free Republic (though this place has lost a lot of focus as its grown).
They aim to do this completely by working within the US political system, peacefully. They are willing to move their families to help achieve this. In all of this I don't see anything that deserves the heavy scorn."
-jb-

Whats really surprising about the hostility to the project, is the supposed political stance of those here at FR who are 'scorning'.
Most of them profess to believe in local standards and community majority rule.
They loudly champion states 'rights' to control moral standards, -- yet here they are scorning that same view when applied to political standards. - those same standards of our constitution.

Hypocrites all.

[tpaine]

Hypocrites all.

[Kevin Curry]

Nowhere did I say, don't do it.

I merely said you'd fail. Libertarians running their own statewide government would be like luddites running a textile plant.

But hey, give it a try. We could use the comic relief.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Last I noticed, I was completely consistent.

Are you sure you understand the English language?

[Roscoe]

Entirely ad hominem.

[Roscoe]

Migrant aspiring Libertarian office holders?

[cookcounty]

Sierra Leone is pretty libertarian. Ditto Somalia.

[x]

It won't work. Either you'll have libertarians moving to a rural Republican state and making it more conservative -- by no means a bad thing, but no revolution -- or you'll have affluent libertarians moving in, tearing up the drug laws and attracting "the wrong element" -- self-indulgent, anarchic types.

One difficulty is that you can't control who else will move in. You could argue that an informal "free state project" has been going on for years, as Americans move to lower tax states. As the economy begins to pick up in those states, other people move there who aren't committed to lower taxes and less government. They want the "social services" and "safety net" that they had where they came from.

Another problem is the life cycle. Young earners in the prime of life are natural, small-l libertarians, though most don't go whole hog. Adolescents, couples with young children, old people, those with aged parents or ill health are more inclined to turn towards government. And rebellious younger generations often turn against their parents.

A third problem is the business cycle. A stiff economic downturn and unemployment may rattle even the most committed libertarian. But it will be interesting to see what will happen. Will corporations rush to invest in the state or will they hold aloof, expecting it to be a mere flash in the pan?

[Cultural Jihad]

'Don't do it?' By all means, do. We can use a good chuckle.

[Catspaw]

I merely said you'd fail. Libertarians running their own statewide government would be like luddites running a textile plant.

Com'n--be positive.  Maybe he'll run again.

[Kevin Curry]

Libertarian Papa Smurf Jones, you mean?

[tpaine]

"I'm surprised at the hostility to their project evidenced here."


Nowhere did I say, don't do it. -kc-

Kevin, nowhere did anyone say, that you said, "don't do it".

- I said you are a hypocrite in your scoffing hostility to our constitutional principles, only some of which has been evident on this thread.

[tpaine]

See #56.

[tpaine]

See #56.

[tpaine]

See #56.

[Kevin Curry]

And I repeat: go take over a state and set up your "constitutional" republic according to your lame-brained understanding of the Constitution. Celebrate pot, porn, and prostitution. Make these and other vices the foundation of your culture and economy. Be free, tpaine. Be free. Show the rest of us how healthy a society can be that espouses no morals or behavior controls beyond "if it feels good, do it."