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 5 of 5)

Still, history is not always predictable, and funny things can happen when people have something specific to rally round. The FSP experiment is opening up paths of communication to, and between, people who have not normally been likely to embrace the libertarian political message. Ryan Lazarotta, a gay man and a personal stylist, is the FSP coordinator for the Las Vegas area. He and his partner already have their New Hampshire move mapped out. Lazarotta, who had never had anything to do with libertarianism, stumbled upon the FSP on the Web and found it made sense of a lot of things.

Lazarotta had been on his own since age 14, his unpleasant experience in public schools "100 percent" responsible for his leaving home so young. Now he wants to tell his fellow gays that they don't need to be slaves on a Democratic plantation. "I want to spread the idea of freedom among my peers," he says. "As far as FSP is concerned, [gay men] should be a great target. They are mobile, often self-generate their income, don't necessarily want to have to pay to educate other people's children," and when it comes to the legal status of their intimate relationships, are faced daily with insults based on unequal legal treatment.

"I'm new to this whole frame of thought," Lazarotta says, "and through personal meetings I'm building comfort levels and trust between groups that don't necessarily encounter each other on a regular basis. As Democratic-leaning as I'd been, I wasn't comfortable, say, with gun rights people. But when we all meet at a table we realize we all can get along great and have a common denominator in what we are trying to achieve. Our special interests might be related to our personal lives, but our greater ambitions and fates have us wrapped up together."

That sort of common understanding might not be as romantic as life on a liberated oil platform, free as the sea breezes that blow. But it's a vital step toward making the many sorts of people who are disenchanted with statism realize that they already live together on an island, one that will be liberated only if they fight together.�