I like getting emails related to the blog. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Someone wanted to know my thoughts on the Free State Project. He’s taken the First 1000 pledge. I’ve got a couple of close friends who’ve signed up to be part of the Free State Project, so I was passably familiar with it. But for some reason I’d always thought it was about secession. Which it isn’t.

What they are:

The Free State Project is an effort to recruit 20,000 liberty-loving people to move to New Hampshire. We are looking for neighborly, productive, tolerant folks from all walks of life, of all ages, creeds, and colors who agree to the political philosophy expressed in our Statement of Intent, that government exists at most to protect people’s rights, and should neither provide for people nor punish them for activities that interfere with no one else.

Sounds like all you could ask for in an activist group. And I think it’s an awesome first step. Some may call them optimistic, but I think those 20,000 could serve as the catalyst for something big.

New Hampshire is a great place to start; it’s already one of the most minarchist states in the union:

…it has the lowest state and local tax burden in the continental U.S., the second-lowest level of dependence on federal spending in the U.S., a citizen legislature where state house representatives have not raised their $100 per year salary since 1889, the lowest crime levels in the U.S., a dynamic economy with plenty of jobs and investment, and a culture of individual responsibility indicated by, for example, an absence of seatbelt and helmet requirements for adults.

The lack of federal support they receive is quite important. Federal funding is quite often used as a tool to twist a state’s arm into doing something they don’t like. Remember when Montana changed its speed limits to ‘Whatever Prudent’? Despite a lack of increase in crashes or fatalities, it wasn’t long until the Federal Government turned the thumbscrews on Montana, threatening to cut off their interstate funding unless they brought the limit down to 80. It was a similar situation when MADD railroaded through the increase in legal drinking age to 21.

I also like the fact that the Free State Project is not affiliated with any party. I’m not a big fan of the Libertarian Party. If anyone thought that the Anti-Federalists were out of touch with reality, they’d be dumbfounded at how insulated from the real world the LP’s positions seem to be. In my opinion, they’re only one step away from leftists in the naivete exhibited by their world view.

Personally, I think what we need is a return to the first principles of liberalism: Life, Liberty, Property. How best to protect those rights is a matter for intelligent debate. But it’s a debate that can only happen if people agree on the meanings of those words and on the fundamentally oppressive nature of the state.

And this is precisely what the Free State Project pledges to give us. Some might find their mission and goals somewhat optimistic, and they are. But it’s pessimism as much as anything that has allowed liberty to wane these past two centuries. 20,000 people moving into one state might not sound like a lot. But this is a state that is already predisposed to classical liberalism. And 20,000 activists who have gone so far as to uproot themselves and relocate to a new part of the country for the sole purpose of political change is another story entirely.

New Hampshire could become a beacon of hope to libertarian-leaning people everywhere. Even now a paragon of state and local government restraint, it would gain the label it already epitomizes. It could become a state in which the classical liberals debate the libertarians who debate the anarcho-capitalists in a situation not so far removed from that our Founding Fathers found themselves in.

The situation and the publicity it would engender might be the hot iron that libertarian-leaning conservatives and fiscally-conservative democrats have needed to campaign against the party line…and win. Bush’s dismal approval ratings–much of it due to conservative disfavor with the growth of government spending and federal power–weren’t enough. Neither is the economic and social implosion Europe is starting to go through due to the untenable nature of their ’social model’ democracies.

My one worry is that the federal government would resent New Hampshire’s independence. And as they’ve already shown in their proclivity for (so far) nonviolent blackmail and bribery, the fed is quite willing to trample all over states even when there is no benefit to doing so. And as federal power is ever on the increase, it may not be too long before we end up in a situation much like Thomas Kratmann’s State of Disobedience. But then again, I’ve been claiming for the past 5 years that the United States would fall into civil war between the statists and the libertarians sometime before 2025.

Unfortunately, while I’d love to pledge I don’t see it happening for at least 10 years. I want to be a specialist in a small field and be in academia. My career dictates where I move. Unless of course I screw up on the boards and don’t get the specialty I want. In which case, sign me up!