Revolt of the Porcupines!

The Free State Project wants libertarians to take over New Hampshire. Is this a revolutionary plan or a pipe dream?

Brian Doherty from the December 2004 issue

(Page 3 of 5)

The state's gun policies are relatively libertarian: Open carry is legal without a permit, and concealed carry requires a permit that is easy to get, with localities forbidden to impose tougher rules. There is no legal requirement for automotive liability insurance, though New Hampshire does have government-enforced "community rating" for health insurance. The state lacks annoying bits of nanny statism such as seat belt and helmet laws for adults.

Free Stater Keith Murphy, an urban studies graduate student at the University of Maryland, tells me that on his visit to New Hampshire to scout it out, he did something every day that would have been against the law in his home state. These exercises of freedom included driving without a seat belt, buying fireworks and shooting them, and even the humble but profound act of buying beer at a grocery store.

New Hampshire boasts a median household income of $53,910, more than 20 percent above the national median, making it fourth-ranked of all states by that measure. It also has the lowest percentage of population below the poverty line of any state. It has a healthy high-tech economy, which is important for the types of jobs that attract people who will be able to easily move to the Free State. One Porcupine, Robert Gibson, is already moving his computerized process-serving corporation, Corbadex, up to Manchester and offering jobs to fellow Free Staters.

For libertarians who crave genuine political influence, perhaps the most encouraging thing about New Hampshire is that it has the largest state legislature in the country: 400 representatives, most with constituencies smaller than 3,000. (The downside of this is that each legislator is commensurately rather powerless to get things done.) You could realistically shake hands with every single voter in your district, and probably have a cup of coffee with every voter you'd need to win. House members are paid a pittance of $100 a year, making government in New Hampshire a game for enthusiastic amateurs and the retired. And ballot fusion is legal there, so Libertarian Party types could conceivably also win major-party nominations and gain straight party votes.

At the Free State gathering in Danbury I met Henry McElroy, a charming and dedicatedly anti-state Republican state representative whose libertarianism is so radical that it's difficult to imagine him holding office anywhere else. McElroy thinks he's making some headway with a bill that would return New Hampshire to the gold standard. Other bills introduced in the New Hampshire legislature (all unlikely to become law) would nullify the 16th amendment, reduce the business profits tax by half over five years, and make jury nullification an established legal right.

Another advantage of New Hampshire--which has some sea coast, lots of mountains, lots of small rural towns, and a few sizable metropolises--is how well suited it seems to philosopher Robert Nozick's vision of a libertarian utopia as a framework for lots of different mini-utopias. There are many different ways for Free Staters to build their dreams in New Hampshire. They could live in the snowy mountains or in a big city within an hour's drive of Boston; run for state legislature or join the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; fight to loosen homeschooling requirements or to lower property taxes; live in an anarchist commune in the woods or in a downtown apartment.

New Hampshire's libertarian-leaning governor, Craig Benson, even signed on as a friend of the FSP. "Come on up," he has told the Porcupines. "We'd love to have you. You're active, you want to make the state or the towns and cities you hope to live in a better place." The chairwoman of the state Democratic Party predictably complained (even as she ticked off three good reasons to join the movement), "Why is Governor Benson supporting a group that wants to legalize prostitution, legalize drugs, and eliminate public schools?"

In mid-April, the Concord Monitor reported that "a panel authorized by the governor to find inefficiencies in the state health and transportation departments is composed almost entirely of members of the Free State Project." Gov. Benson had befriended Libertarian Party state chair John Babiarz while running against him for governor in 2002; they discovered they had some common attitudes toward the size and inefficiency of state government. Benson appointed Babiarz to a state commission seeking out government inefficiencies, and Babiarz brought on a bunch of Free Staters to assist him in that role. Babiarz tells me he has his eye on cutting state spending on transportation and child services, and has already advised the state to cut or curtail its role in running plant nurseries and prisons. Unusual as this might be on the national level, the head of the state Libertarian Party is a serious political player in New Hampshire.

Despite any head start they might have, Sorens recommends that Porcupines take things slowly upon moving to New Hampshire. He writes that "we will have to do our best to blend in, lay down roots in the community...If we come in trumpeting an 'abolish everything' platform, we will make enemies out of people who might otherwise be sympathetic to us." Some heated opposition to the FSP is already evident, provoked by a splinter group called the Free Town Project.

The Free Town Project advocates that Porcupines concentrate themselves in Babiarz's home of Grafton, which already lacks most local regulations. Radical talk on Web sites and listservs associated with the Free Town Project got some locals riled enough that one mailed an anti-FSP flier to everyone in Grafton. This was followed by the June town meeting, at which FSP representatives were asked to explain themselves. FSP organizer Tim Condon tells me he got a lynch mob feeling from many of the Graftonites. Condon came up from his Florida home to defend the project's honor against what he considered the "libertarian exhibitionism" of a few outliers who were talking up Grafton as a home for freewheeling dueling, bums fighting in the streets as low-paid entertainers, and bestiality.

Sorens' expressed wishes are less extreme but still radical. He speculates about ordering federal law enforcement agents out of localities, for example. But unlike in Grafton, which has a population of only 1,000 or so, there is little risk that the FSP will "flood" the whole state. It plans an influx of 20,000 over several years; lately, New Hampshire has been gaining about that many newcomers every year.

"I Can't Sit by and Watch It Happen Without Me"

The Free Staters earned a major bit of local media attention the weekend I was with them in February. We all gathered in a friendly Irish pub to watch the Massachusetts-based TV newsmagazine Chronicle dedicate a half-hour to the FSP. Prominently featured was FSP's current president, Amanda Phillips. Phillips is a single mother in her early 30s, a former Air Force special investigator turned accounting supervisor, currently living in Massachusetts. She is an anarchist, a matter of some controversy among Free Staters, though it didn't seem to faze the TV reporters.

The TV cameras showed Phillips curled up with David Friedman's anarcho-capitalist classic The Machinery of Freedom and spotlighted her sneakers emblazoned with the circle-A anarchy symbol. Most Porcupines were delighted with the piece, but certain touches clearly were intended to make Free Staters seem a little silly, if not bordering on lunatic and dangerous. A fair amount of screen time was given to the Dalton Gang, a group of cowboy-emulating vintage weapon enthusiasts exercising their liberty to openly carry their guns. Also featured was a Porcupine tooling down the street in his smoke-belching Unimog, a bizarre, hulking German military vehicle. Ultimately, the anchors of the show concluded that the FSP is an "interesting" development, as opposed to an alarming one.

Which is good, Phillips thinks. While she knows people like the Daltons probably seemed like comic-relief freaks to most viewers, right now her audience is not a standard TV audience. It is fellow libertarians, the ones she is trying to convince to move. And they will be aware that if people want to carry their old guns or drive German military vehicles, that's just fine.