Ten years ago, libertarian activists hatched a crazy plan to colonize New Hampshire. It’s kind of working.
Free State legislators are currently pushing to decriminalize marijuana, permit the video recording of law enforcement officers, legalize the use of deadly force in self-defense, nullify health care reform, slash taxes, deregulate barbershops, and ban vaccinations in public schools. This isn’t the corporate-driven cutback crusade of Gov. Scott Walker’s Wisconsin; it’s closer to a Ron Paul revolution.
Dan and Carol McGuire relocated to the Shire from Washington in 2005. “We decided if the Free State Project failed and we hadn’t moved, we couldn’t live with ourselves,” Carol says. Political novices, they both won seats in the House of Representatives (Carol in 2008, Dan in 2010)…
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In addition to the political successes, you can’t overlook the civil-disobedience activism that is also pushing the envelope of freedom. And in tandem, the political and apolitical are really making a haven for liberty lovers.
Go to FreeKeene.com for more details. (Shameless plug by someone who isn’t signed up for the FSP and lives elsewhere but really appreciates the efforts and watches intently)
The comments on that article are a good place to see how disinformed people are about Libertarians.
It is, after all, _Mother Jones_.
It’s bad enough among the general populace, but in a left/establishment liberal camping ground, what would one expect?
Having read this: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/charts-economic-myths-jobs-deficit-taxes I can now see how foolish I was to expect any different.
Yes, I saw that too.I thought about blogging about the nonsense espoused, but it causes my mind too much distress.
It’s difficult to convince people that have been lied to their entire lives that they have been lied to for their entire lives.
and calling those who have been lied to their entire lives “thieves”, “violent criminals” and “lackeys of the state”, as I sometimes see on this and other libertarian blogs certainly doesn’t help us bring people over to our side.
I believe now more than ever that the only solution is for Atlas to shrug. Start from scratch. The looters of Mother Jones will starve before anything is rebuilt.
To all those opposed to the idea or implementation of a free state, how is the present slave state working out for you? I am all for giving it a try and as I stand to inherit property in New Hampshire, maybe join the cause. Bravo! Onward to freedom I say.
To all those opposed to the idea or implementation of a free state, how is the present slave state working out for you? I am all for giving it a try and as I stand to inherit property in New Hampshire, maybe join the cause. Bravo! Onward to freedom I say.
I’m afraid they will say “it’s working pretty well for me–I have mah TV and mah AC and mah truck” and bromides like “we ain’t perfect but you show me–YEW SHOW MEE–uh country that’s better. Uh-merka, pal–luvv it er leev it!!”
Some things in that poll are really strange:
“54%
support legalizing pot.”
Why only such a low number? Because they are against legalizing anything? Does someone care to explain?
“60%
say we shouldn’t give up privacy to be safer from terrorism.”
What about the rest?
“71%
say homosexuality should be accepted,”
What about the rest?
First and foremost, of course – it’s a poll. Numbers can vary due to method, who/how questions are being asked to, etc. There’s a million things that can distort stats like that. You can’t take the numbers seriously because they often barely translate to reality.
Secondly, (and this is another potential poll flaw) the libertarians polled are surely self-identified. That means that a Bush worshiper AND a Chomsky worshiper can end up in the same libertarian church together. Most people don’t take their ideology very seriously. Most people think they can believe anything under the sun at the same time and still label it whatever they want. I know a great many Obama Big-Gov statists who call themselves anarchists, of all things.
Thanks Jim for your insights.
One thing I don’t get is the ban on vaccination on school property, from the (proposed?) law: “Vaccinations, including flu vaccinations, are hereby prohibited in public schools, on school property, and by school personnel.”
Perhaps it is something to do with it being publicly funded? In any case if I were to run a private school I would require all children and staff to be vaccinated, barring medical issues. I would also allow religious and other exemptions assuming that it would not bring the vaccination rate below (or close to the level of) herd immunity, otherwise I would refuse to enroll students without current vaccinations. In that case all the irrational people could choose a school who did not require vaccinations and all get sick together. When they came to their senses they would be welcome to enroll. I would likely even have the yearly flu vaccinations at school to make things easier, the direct opposite of what the law proposed for public schools.
Shaun, if the vaccines work so well, then how will even the unvaccinated kids be a problem? If you’re “protected” by the vaccine, fine. Rest easy. If you’re not, perhaps you’ll get sick and perhaps not. It still doesn’t affect all those kids you call rational.
The point is that a medical procedure is a personal choice, not a societal duty, and not within any conceivable libertarian definition of the proper role of government.
Firstly the law did not prohibit requiring having current vaccinations to attend a public school – this would still be perfectly legal under that law – only giving the vaccinations was prohibited “in public schools, on school property, and by school personnel.”
Being vaccinated not only makes it less likely that you will catch the disease (though not 100%), it also makes it likely that if you do catch it you will have a less severe reaction and spread it much less easily. Adding this all up, once you have enough of a certain population vaccinated you reach what is called “herd immunity” where it becomes almost impossible for the disease to spread to to the few who are not vaccinated (for whatever reason) or whose immune systems did not react as strongly to the vaccine as is usual.
The real problem here is not the vaccinations so much as the “public” schools, heck “public” anything. My previous idea with purely private, completely unregulated private schools would solve much of the issue, but having parents deliberately expose their children to such danger is still a problem.
How children fit into a libertarian framework is a hard problem, most would agree that a parent who starves and beats their child has given up their rights to raise that child, even if the child has been convinced that they deserve such treatment and accept it. This is a boundary problem, where do you draw the line? Fraud is certainly a problem, such as lying to teenagers about the effectiveness of birth control (some schools and homeschooling texts teach that sperm and the AIDS virus pass straight through condoms) as is refusing to allow your children to be vaccinated, but when is it too much?
One thing that would help is recognizing that children are not slaves, are not their parents property and as such must not be forcibly prevented from running away from home nor forcibly returned to their parents if they do so. Then to what extent should parents have the right to prevent others from presenting the option to their children of running away, and even providing support towards this end? Certainly a parent can stop their 5 year old from getting into a van with the man giving away free lollipops to the kids but again where is that line?
It may be that such issues cannot be resolved completely in theory and will need that libertarian society to arise before society and courts can solve them, it just doesn’t feel satisfying to say so.
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