Posted on 03/05/2003 5:26:10 AM PST by Katya
Edited on 03/05/2003 11:14:36 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
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 bloodless coup in the making. Within the next several years, according to plan, 20,000 Libertarians would move to a single state and begin infiltrating. They'd find jobs, join civic groups, get elected and take a hatchet to taxes and laws.
If that's the case, then I don't think that you will be able to find 20,000. Most of the members of the Libertarian Party (and, thus, I do differentiate them from lower-case "l" libertarians), as reflected by most Libertarian advocates on FreeRepublic, are all-or-nothing kind of people. If you don't agree with them on every little aspect of their agenda .. and that means down to the dotting of the "i's" and the crossing of the "t's" .. then you're a statist, a jack-booted thug, or a Republicrat/Demopublican.
There is no give to be gotten; half-measures are like no measures at all. To a Libertarian of this ilk, a Bush administration is the same as a Gore administration. Two steps forward and one step back is viewed as a retreat.
Theoretically, it sounds good. But, then, theoretically, so does communism. It's just that it is unworkable in the world of imperfect humans.
First off, getting the majority of a state's population to agree on anything, including the name of the state, is a lot harder than you'd think. Second, there's this little matter of the federal government. Third, the governments of surrounding states would feel quite threatened by such a development as well, and would surely do what they could to frustrate it.
Take differences in taxation between two neighboring states as an example. When the differences are large, they cause the more heavily taxed state to lose business and population to the less heavily taxed one, over time. That's one of the original features of federalism -- but in this day and age, it gives rise to vicious fights over cross-border commerce and employment in which everyone loses. Take New York and New Jersey as an example. Washington would surely use its influence if the contest became ugly enough -- and Washington would probably side, de facto if not de jure, with the more heavily-taxed state.
Ultimately, the persons involved in such a project would have to be willing to close themselves off from the surrounding Union. Washington hasn't looked favorably on that idea, either.
The most reliable route toward improvements in freedom is the steady pursuit of citizen education -- the penetration of the idea that freedom works best into the minds of the electorate. We seek the solid longevity of the oak tree, not the evanescence of the mushroom.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com
The idea that people who believe in libertarian principles are actually going to start trying to make a change, instead of just being an irrelevant political party, scares the crap out of the anti-freedom party line types. This is shown by the typical responses everytime an article about a "Free State Project" is posted.
That is because you are searching in the wrong place. These sorts of smelly ideologue fringe nutcase discussions are found in the Smoking Lemmings' Backroom where they belong, not in News/Activism.
Edited (Other) on 02/23/2003 7:57 AM PST by Admin Moderator
Reason: Baltimore Sun properties must be excerpted.
If they move from the other 49 states to one state, they become the 50 Percent Party - and win.
You wrote the following about libertarians:
"Hey dude, hand me the pipe and say that again about the take over. OOOOHHH WWWOW dude I can't make it then I've got a mensa meeting and I'm doing a prostitute then man."
Now since "bible" is in your moniker how would like people to jump all over you as being a fanatically, fascistic Taliban type of person every time you post? How about remembering the "do unto others..." admonition and that little bit about not bearing false witness which a smear of an entire group of people is.
Nothing personal mind you but your name indicates that you should know better where some of the other detracting posters here, the usual suspects on libertarian threads, are hopeless.
cordially,
OK, I voted Libertarian in the last congressional election. Still it's funny how many Libertarians come to FR seeking validation; instead they just get the "smurf" kicked out of 'em.
It enrages them that someone may get out from under their authoritarian control.
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