Posted on 04/21/2005 2:16:53 AM PDT by Solitar
The Free State Project has won some converts. Also: The lowdown on mercury - in loons and maybe legislators' hair.
We're calling a truce this weekend. Today - and today only - there'll be no talk of budget bills, school funding plans or Medicaid reform. We got enough of that last week, and there will be plenty more hot air steaming out of the State House to keep us busy next week.
Instead, let's revisit some old friends: the Free Staters. It has been 18 months since the Free State Project chose New Hampshire as its home, with the hopes of fostering a libertarian-friendly atmosphere by moving its members here en masse.
So how's the plan progressing?
FSP leaders say about 100 people have made the move so far. Add the 250 or so native project members, and about 350 Free Staters call New Hampshire home. Those who have settled here like what they see.
Take Keith Murphy, a Baltimore native active in the FSP for nearly two years. He moved to New Hampshire in February after finding a managerial job in Manchester. Since settling here, Murphy has taken an active role in the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, a lobbying group that shares some membership and political outlook with the Free State Project. But mostly, he's been reveling in New Hampshire's pro-liberty atmosphere. ---ADVERTISEMENT---
"There's not a day that goes by I don't do something I couldn't do in Maryland,"Murphy said.
Last week alone, he said, he drove to work without a seatbelt and purchased beer at a supermarket - two activities verboten in Maryland.
"And in Baltimore, if I go around and say things like, 'I wish my taxes weren't so high,' I'd be in the minority. Here in New Hampshire, I fit right in. By and large, I think we're all blending in just fine."
The FSP's goal is to bring 20,000 freedom lovers to New Hampshire. Amanda Phillips, FSP president, says she's happy with the progress the group is making.
"We're still trying to spread word about the project around the rest of the nation,"Phillips said. "It's definitely a long-term perspective."
Welcoming committees across the state meet regularly to introduce new arrivals. And some members are taking a more diligent approach, participating in weekly political seminars organized by the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. Don Gorman, a former Libertarian state rep from Deerfield, has been leading State House tours since January. Thursday was Meet Your Senator Day.
The goal, Gorman said, is to give NHLA members "an understanding of how the real Legislature works. Half the pieces of that place are invisible."
Gorman takes his pupils to committee hearings, introduces them to lawmakers and urges them to pick up tactics from more experienced lobbyists. He's a stickler for protocol. He has sent away a couple of attendees who show up in jeans or T-shirts. And he wants to allay any fears that libertarians are fire-breathing anarchists.
"I'm not in for rabble-rousing or protesting or burning flags," he said. "I want to channel this energy in a positive way. These Free Staters are coming in with a strong desire to learn and become better citizens."
Dawn Lincoln of Winchester moved with her two daughters to New Hampshire a year ago. She's been overwhelmed
by what she's learned on Gorman's tours, and even testified on one bill. She may run for office herself one day.
Her most recent trip to the State House left her with a new appreciation of the citizen legislature. She popped into Sen. Tom Eaton's office last Thursday, hoping to introduce herself. Eaton was in a meeting, so Lincoln left her name and hometown -"just to let him know one of his constituents had come to visit."
When she arrived home an hour later, a message from Eaton was waiting on her answering machine. The senator was sorry to have missed her.
"He took the initiative to look up my phone number," Lincoln said. "I was so impressed and pleased. These legislators are so approachable."
They are not in love with anything except their own control of every single thing in everyone else's life.
Order is the top priority. All other things take a secondary importance.
Could you imagine the most immoral among us crying about the immorality of others? It's nothing short of amazing.
I moved to NH in 03 to get away from MA. It is AMAZING with what you can do here as oppsed to the the Soviet State of Mass. That being said i was DISMAYED when NH voted for a Democrat Munchkin for Governor and for KERRY - the biggest socialist in the Senate
I know you guys on the west coast have some pretty whacked ideas about conservatism, but do tyou realize you are at odds with the Republican governor of NH and allied with the state Democratic Party in opposing the FSP?
There are many sorts of authoritarians. Some should have been Mullahs, Mahdis, Muftis, Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, Inquisitors, Grand-Inquisitors, etc.
JIHAD -- Mostly used in Muslim writing to denote ‘holy war.’ However, in mystical literature, this term was interpreted in its root sense of ‘exertion’ and came to mean an inner struggle for purification.
As long as they keep the Jihad an "inner struggle".
When it comes to them trying to "purify" the rest of us...
Then I retreat to the very northernmost portion of New Hampshire or some mountain redoubt which is defensible -- someplace where our liberties can be recovered and defended -- and where we can be left alone!
They will never, ever, leave you alone. You can run, but you can't hide.
The authoritarians will hunt you down no matter how well you hide to make sure, at gunpoint if necessary, that you don't take a forbidden substance or look at a picture of a nude person or break some other "law" they have written.
Thanks for the kind words D & H. For you and any of the others who are already in New Hampshire and want to hook up good communications with the local freedom lovers, come by NHfree.com
They have a really cool libery calendar there where you can find out what kind of liberty activity is going on (house testimony, small demonstrations, moving parties, socials, etc. ).
You can post your own events there or chat on the forum they set up in December, already operating at 80 posts per day. Let's roll!
But we can run and hide where they will leave us a lot more alone than what we have now. If our sorts, whether native, local, or newcomer, occupied most of the elected and appointed seats in local, town, city, county and regional governments then we sure could make it harder for the authoritarians to interfere with us. We just want to mind our own business and be left to live in peace.
Liberals and conservatives will never let that happen. They will use whatever force is necessary to make sure that they can continue to rule every aspect of your life.
So do we give up without a fight? Do we fight where we are -- outnumbered thousands to one? Or do we vote with our feet and move to someplace freer and someplace where several thousand of us or even several hundred of us can keep free and make freer? Someplace where we have the full rights guaranteed to us by our Bill of Rights? Even one county or section of Alaska would be an improvement. If we can muster only the classical "six hundred" then one part of one county in the lower 48 or one small borough in Alaska would be an improvement -- a refuge.
Coos County, Northern New Hampshire
Anyone who thinks they know why New Hampshire elected John Lynch should have a look at the Secretary of State's town-by-town voting statistics.
All of the towns except along the Massachusetts border except for the far eastern ones near the crunchy college town of Portsmouth voted strongly for Benson - so much for the theory of Massachusetts transplants.
In fact, the Mass. transplants are moving to New Hampshire for exactly the same reasons the Free Staters are.
Benson lost by about 13,000 votes statewide, but he lost by about 14,000 votes in Concord alone - he upset too many featherbeds and shut down too many gold brick factories, so he pissed off the entrenched bureacracy and motivated all the laid-off leeches to vote against him.
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