Unhappy-Past-7923 ask Free State Project supporters:
Why are you trying to make New Hampshire a libertarian kingdom? Is the irony lost on you that you are trying to force your personal beliefs on people who routinely reject them?
Imagine that you were a gay man in 1940's America.
Almost every city outside San Francisco was controlled by violent, aggressive homophobes who would put gay men in a cage if they caught them having sex.
If you ran for office as an openly gay man, you would almost certainly lose.
Kids were indoctrinated with anti-gay messages in school and television programs. Many parents would send their gay kids to torture camps stop them from being gay. (1)
What would you do if you wanted to live peacefully without fear of imprisonment?
Some gay men chose to live closeted lives, revealing their sexual preferences only to their lovers.
Some joined the clergy, and took a vow of celibacy.
Some married lesbian women, so they could pretend to be a heterosexual couple together.
But many gay men resented being forced to closet themselves. They wanted to live their lives openly, in peace.
But how could they? Gay men only make up around 5% of the population.
By historical chance, gay men became concentrated in San Francisco.
The gold rush intially brought a mostly male population to San Francisco. Then, following WWI, the US Navy would dump gay sailors off in San Francisco.
Some of those gay men settled down, bought houses, and started night club and bars.
San Francisco became a beacon for gay men, drawing them from all over the US.
And, of course, as the gay population increased, gay men used their political power to repeal any anti-gay laws on the books.
No doubt the homophobic natives of San Francisco were dismayed by the increasing population of gay men. They didn't sign up for this!
But should the gay men have done something different? How else were they supposed to create a sanctuary where they could live in peace?
How much welcoming do you think gays should've been for the homophobic SF natives who threatened to re-impose anti-gay laws on them?
After all, the homophobes could've moved almost anywhere else in the US and found laws and culture welcoming to homophobes.
Whereas San Francisco was almost the only place where gay men could live in peace.
New Hampshire is San Francisco for libertarians.
Almost every state has many anti-libertarian laws on the books. And they are vigorously enforced, with harsh punishments for the libertarians caught violating them.
For example:
Ian Freeman is serving 8 years for unwittingly selling no-KYC Bitcoin to romance scammers. (3)
Dexter Taylor is serving a ten year sentence for 3d printing guns. (4)
Ross Ulbricht is serving two life sentences for running a web site (which mostly sold weed). (2)
Duncan Lemp was murdered by police while enforcing an anti-gun 'red flag' law. (5)
As we speak, 74 year old Backpage founder Michael Lacey was just been sentenced to 5 years (nominally for money laundering, but actually for publishing escort ads). (6) His business partner, Jim Larkin, committed suicide rather than face trial. (7)
Conservatively, libertarians make up about 5% of the US population. This is about 15 million people, or about the same number of people as the total combined population of:
Wyoming
Vermont
Alaska
North Dakota
South Dakota
Delaware
Rhode Island
Montana
Maine
New Hampshire
Hawaii
West Virginia
Idaho
Yet, despite 50 years of effort, libertarians have almost no power anywhere outside of New Hampshire.
There has never been single libertarian elected as a Libertarian Party member to US Congress.
Nor has a Libertarian Party member ever been elected to a state governor's seat, nor the mayoral office of any city with a population over 100 K.
Some of the reasons include:
Since libertarians only make up 5% of the population and are evenly diffused across the US, they almost always lose elections.
The duopoly parties have rigged the system to favor themselves. They impose onerous barriers to third parties trying to get on the ballot, (9) and openly try force libertarians off the ballot. (8)
Authoritarians increase their money and power after they win office, which they share with cronies and other supporters. Principled libertarians cut government power and taxes Therefore, they have little patronage to offer to supporters. At best, they can offer their supporters lower taxes and regulatory relief.
Even if they win office, Libertarian politicians can't get pro-liberty passed because they're typically overwhelmed by the other authoritarians in office.
If you're a Democrat, imagine that 5% of the population identified as Democrat, but all of the US states were controlled by Republicans. Wouldn't you want at least one state where Democrats were in control?
Likewise, the Free State Project aims to give libertarians one state (out of 50) where libertarian views are dominant.
And New Hampshire is that state.
It's only by concentrating in NH that libertarians have achieved a modicum of power. It's only by attracting more libertarians (and keeping out authoritarians), that NH libertarians be able to maintain and expand pro-liberty reforms.
Therefore, should NH libertarians be friendly to authoritarian NH natives just because they plopped out of their Mom's vagina inside NH's borders?
Should we welcome authoritarian newcomers who want to re-impose the anti-libertarian laws we fled to New Hampshire to escape?
IMO, the authoritarians of New Hampshire deserve no more friendliness than the homophobes of San Francisco.
That said, I would agree that some libertarians overshoot the mark. I think it's both morally unethical and tactically stupid to threaten to kill or forcibly deport people simply for advocating for authoritarian policies.
It's morally unethical because libertarians claim to support freedom of speech, due process, and private property rights. Thought police and deportation squads violate all three principles.
It's tactically stupid, because libertarians are still vastly outnumbered by authoritarians in New Hampshire. If we make violent threats, it allows our enemies to paint us as crazy terrorists. That makes it harder for pro-liberty advocates to get elected.
And if libertarians ever did establish thought police, they would quickly be turned against libertarians. It's flabbergasting to me that some libertarian loudmouths think they wouldn't be the first to be pushed out of the helicopters.
The libertarian way is peaceful persuasion, voluntary trade, and self-defense (not offense). To the extent that libertarian violate these principles, we become the evil we fight against.
(1) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shock-the-gay-away-secrets-of-early-gay-aversion-therapy-revealed_b_3497435
(2) https://freeross.org/case-overview/
(3) https://www.justice.gov/usao-nh/pr/ian-freeman-sentenced-8-years-prison-operating-bitcoin-money-laundering-scheme
(4) https://reason.com/2024/05/15/he-was-sentenced-to-a-decade-in-prison-for-having-unlicensed-weapons/
(5) https://jimbovard.com/blog/2024/03/01/biden-and-the-ghost-of-duncan-lemp/
(6) https://x.com/ENBrown/status/1828544136586359170
(7) https://reason.com/2023/08/02/backpage-publisher-alt-weekly-entrepreneur-and-free-speech-warrior-james-larkin-has-died/
(8) https://www.opb.org/article/2024/08/23/oregon-libertarians-ballot/
(9) https://www.ocregister.com/2024/05/12/the-ballot-access-protection-racket/