It was the major question on my mind. I was looking forward
to putting the notion on the table. I wanted to canvass a
representative cross section of folks who are members and
organizers of the (http://www.freestateproject.org) Free State
Project and live in the state of New Hampshire. I got the chance
to see New Hampshire and mingle with the local FSPers on Friday,
August 5th at a barbeque thrown by Margot Keyes, the FSP Welcome
Wagon Coordinator. It was wonderful to find myself in the middle
of a crowd that valued individual Freedom as much as I do.
These are the kind of people who walk their talk. They’ve pull up
their stakes, packed up their families and moved across the
country to live in a tiny little burg on the East Coast simply
because they hunger to be…FREE! Think about that for a minute –
people in America are picking up and moving somewhere else
because they want to be FREE!
I know that feeling well.
I’m one of those people that feel the chains of oppression
quickly tightening around the throat of Lady Liberty. And I will
be moving to New Hampshire in the spring of 2006. I’m in the
middle of shifting my livelihood from a military/government based
career to a private practice in transpersonal hypnosis.
I’ve been eager to see New Hampshire for a long time now. And in
view of everything going on with the acceleration of draconian
police powers in this country since 9-11, I’ve been eager to
corner the locals here and pop the question. This is what I’ve
wanted to know: if "terrorist" nukes go off in this country, the
next 9-11, and the White House makes good on its new love affair
with coast-to-coast martial law – how will New Hampshire react?
Will the New Hampshire state legislature play ball? Will they
march lock-step with all the other state governments down the
primrose path to the New World Order? Or will they keep their
cools? Will they refuse to recognize the Feds authority to place
New Hampshire under martial law?
Which way will this tiny, rascally New England state sway?
Everybody I presented this scenario to didn’t hesitate to offer
their opinion on what the outcome of such an event would be.
New Hampshire will tell the Federal Government to go pound sand.
And that was music to my ears.
The words "freedom" and "America" have become an oxymoron when
combined together for no longer are the one synonymous with the
other. Freedom is a buzzword politicians use to describe a
cascading consolidation into collectivist tyranny that more
resembles Orwellian doublespeak than accurate communication.
I have spent the last 18 months living in Arlington, Virginia and
working in the Pentagon at the Army Operations Center in support
of ONE/OIF/OEF. I've spent my off time venturing into the
District of Corruption to observe the national monuments, take in
the Smithsonian and quietly...keep an eye on the emerging Total
Surveillance Society.
Honestly, I couldn’t spit in any direction anywhere in this town
and not hit some cop in a Darth Vader uniform toting an MP-5 or a
surveillance camera or both. I was sitting on the waterfront in
Georgetown with friends I work with from Crisis Action Team 4, it
was early on a Friday evening in June and the sky was literally
swarming overhead with police helicopters -- not Bell Jet
Rangers, no. These cops are flying military Blackhawk helicopters
with "POLICE" in yellow lettering on the tail boom. The
establishment we were at was a very popular gathering spot for
the Beautiful People in D.C. There were several private yachts
tied up to the pier, the money and booze was flowing, the women
looked like extremely high-priced call girls or Hollywood
actresses -- there really isn't a difference anymore. They were
all laughing and laying that plastic phony friendship act on each
other and they were all completely oblivious to the obvious.
There are surveillance cameras everywhere watching them.
Military hardware was orbiting overhead manned by cops with
gunners standing in the open doors. On the river, extremely high
powered speedboats with POLICE painted prominently on both sides
of the hull race up and down the waterway with cops and machine
guns eying everyone and everything like a target, like raw meat.
And these people on the waterfront, in their trendy clothes and
fake tans, were partying.
The Police State is no longer an event that might transpire in
the near future. It is here now. The Rubicon has been crossed.
America is no longer a free country. America is occupied.
By cops and spies and corporate criminals getting rich off the
sellout.
And yet, in the midst of this birthing of the United Police
States of America, surrounded on all sides by bastions of Leftist
Commie Liberalism sits the tiny red-headed stepchild of the East
Coast: New Hampshire.
I have been observing New Hampshire from afar ever since I joined
up with the Free State Project as a member right after New
Hampshire was chosen as the libertarian migration state of choice
out of a ballot numbering 10 states. I was in Colorado at the
time and Wyoming was the number two runner up in the vote. The
libertarian writer and publisher known as Boston Tea Party
(Kenneth Royce) was originally a strong endorser of the Free
State Project before the membership put the state to migrate to
to a vote. New Hampshire won out by 266 votes over second place
holder Wyoming -- Kenneth Royce’s ideal spot for libertarian
migration.
In the wake of New Hampshire’s win, Royce became a venomous
critic of the Free State Project, its leadership, and called into
question its voting methods for determining a winner --
insinuating that New Hampshire was always the target state of
choice and that voting tallies were somehow rigged to guarantee a
New Hampshire win.
I have read Royce’s lengthy essay on why Wyoming is the better
choice than New Hampshire for the Free State Project and was
almost persuaded to see it his way. But then I realized that
within the same time frame Royce was pushing his new "novel"
about a Free State style revolution that used Wyoming as its base
-- New Hampshire had beat out Wyoming fair and square in a vote
among libertarians.
I monitor Royce’s Free State Wyoming page from time to time and
nothing ever seems to change or update there. The home page now
sports a new announcement for the month of August, 2005. Prior to
that, the last update was some time in early 2004. There is no
real news about the project on this page. No head counts. No
organization per se -- beyond that of the great founder of the
movement itself, Boston T. Party and, of course, his ever
faithful web mistress, Lady Liberty. The most pressing order of
business at the FSW right now is admonishing visitors to buy a
Free State Wyoming silver coin! There are only 40 left! And, of
course, Molan Labe! -- the novel that started it all is now being
considered with 12 other libertarian sci-fi novels for the
Prometheus Award. This page is all about Boston T. Party. There
is no movement beyond the fictional one in his novel. There is no
forward momentum. Nothing is moving forward. Wyoming is a dead
duck on a motionless pond. With a hell wind blowing through its
entire southern region.
Royce exemplifies to a tee what is wrong with libertarian
politics on the whole and why libertarians can’t seem to elect
the local dog catcher to office let alone a governor or
president.
Libertarians are like herding cats. And as long as they insist
upon being so darned independent that nothing can get done, the
collectivists will continually out flank them.
The libertarians need to learn how to stop endlessly whining
about non-issues, figure out what they all have in common, and
work as teams in making that happen. Until that happens,
libertarians will be the third largest political party in America
without even a local dog catcher to show for their efforts.
I know that is a kick in the teeth but, hey, it has to be said.
It’s ironic or maybe its destiny, the tendency for things to come
full circle, that the first piece of ground taken and secured
again in the name of Liberty is right smack in the middle of
where it all began 229 years ago, in the heart of New England --
that tiny, rascally independent state of New Hampshire. A place
where the peoples’ right to revolution is enshrined in the state
constitution. A place where the proud tradition of local control
in the form of town hall meetings has continued in an unbroken
chain since Colonial times to the present. A place where the tax
collector gets beat like a gong and run out of the state on a
rail. A place where the state legislature is run by civilians,
not career politicians -- paid a mere $200 a year for their
services. That’s a pay scale that needs to be put into effect
immediately at the national level.
Just being in New Hampshire was being zapped to another universe,
a universe where people come and go as they please, do as they
please, where there isn’t a cop everywhere you look and you
aren’t under surveillance from every street corner. I stayed in
Concord, the state capital, during my quick visit to meet up with
members of the FSP. I went to visit the capital building while I
was taking in the sites.
Imagine my shock when I walked in the front door of the CAPITAL
BUILDING and wasn’t immediately surrounded by black-clad storm
troopers with badges, forced to empty my pockets for search,
having my body probed with metal detector wands and having my
picture taken for computer biometric comparison to known "enemies
of the State." There were NO metal detectors. NO cops. Just an
elderly retiree security guard who was eager to tell me about the
unique place the state of New Hampshire occupies in Revolutionary
American history.
Wow.
I then proceeded to wander around the capital building, touring
the chambers of the senate and the representatives – all without
once being stopped, questioned, photographed or prevented from
proceeding at all. Here, the government is the property of the
people! Imagine that! What a subversive idea! I saw the
governor’s office and if the man had been in the office at the
time, I probably could have walked right in and had a little chit
chat with the guy.
Try doing that ANYWHERE outside of New Hampshire. But to do that,
you’d have to get into the state capital building first and
getting in without being bodily violated by members of law
enforcement would be unheard of.
As a writer, a soldier sworn to defend the U.S. Constitution from
all enemies foreign or domestic, and an American citizen, I am
very gravely concerned with the direction this country is taking.
Trust me, if you live outside of New Hampshire, you really don’t
know what being free feels like.
The police state isn’t coming. It’s already here.
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