The Free State Project in the Washington Post
The Free State Project's "Porc Fest" gets written up by Associated Press in the as printed in the Washington Post. Some excerpts on how this attempt to centralize libertarians in one state (New Hampshire) in order to more swiftly move it in a libertarian direction is handled by AP. the Post:
The group now has 9,400 participants. About 450 have moved to New Hampshire, joining 250 already there.
The small band of Free Staters in New Hampshire has been trying both conventional and more novel strategies to curtail it government's role.
A number have run for office. Four have won seats in the 400-member state House of Representatives, the largest in the country. Free State activists have campaigned furiously against measures perceived as emblematic of excessive government, like a mandatory seatbelt bill and budget hikes.
Meanwhile, a group of mostly younger Free Staters have decided the best way to keep government in its place is to needle it.
One Free Stater spent 58 days in jail after filming in a courthouse lobby and refusing to give police his name. Behind bars, he preached the message of less government to fellow inmates.
Others have organized a crew to pick up garbage around a Manchester playground with handguns strapped to their hips, to test the right to bear arms. They've filmed police officers on patrol and judges on the bench.
They've even filed each other's nails on a public sidewalk, defying state requirements that manicurists be licensed, their cuticles defying the heavy hand of government.
The piece ends with a deadpan bit that seems to me clearly designed to make the typical American newspaper reader Post reader a little nervous about Free Staters, though reasonable folk I suppose could disagree:
Down to her last target, shooter Alicia Lekas nails it, although she seems an unlikely citizen soldier. Lekas makes a living teaching Scottish folk dancing. Her America is embodied in a story of the time a tree fell on a friend's house near Concord and, instead of waiting for government, neighbors responded with their own chain saws.
She says she can't imagine shooting a living creature, but she'll do it if the need arises.
"A bad guy might be the individual crook," the new rifleman says, "Or it might be somebody who's taken over government."
Either way, she's ready.
My December 2004 Reason magazine feature on the Free State Project.
UPDATED to reflect that it was not copy unique to the Post, but an AP story the Post ran.
