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The world would be a much
better place if only everyone thought the same way I do.
Come on, admit it; everyone
thinks that from time to time. As popular as the notion of
diversity is, deep down most of us believe we’d be a lot happier if
everyone saw things our way.
Though there are questions of
good and evil, of truth and untruth, for which there is only one
answer, many of the issues we debate are simply matters of opinion.
The extremes can make it seem that there are no reasonable people,
but the interplay of viewpoints, bolstered by the right to peaceably
advance and promote those views, results in a reasonable society.
Reasonably reasonable, anyway.
Though apparently not enough
for the Free State Project. FSP, a nonprofit organization founded
by Libertarian Party activists, is making plans to target a small
state, move there, and take it over at the ballot box. While FSP is
not officially connected with the Libertarian Party, its goal is to
scrape together enough like-minded folks to remake an entire state
in its image.
Separatism
for philosophical reasons is not without precedent. In the early
1970s, gay activists launched an effort to persuade homosexuals to
move to lightly populated Alpine County, California, in order to
stage
an electoral coup. They
failed. About a decade later, followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
moved to a ranch near tiny Antelope, Oregon, eventually controlling
the city’s government. Racial separatist groups, both black and
white, have blustered about much the same thing as the Free State
Project, albeit with considerably less noble objectives.
According to its
website,
“The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more
liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S. to
secure there a free society. We will accomplish this by first
reforming state law, opting out of federal mandates, and finally
negotiating directly with the federal government for appropriate
political autonomy. We will be a community of freedom-loving
individuals and families, and create a shining example of liberty
for the rest of the nation and the world.”
While they’re at it maybe
they can bring about world peace and do something about those
itty-bitty paper napkins you get at fast food restaurants. In
reality, political parties are notoriously hard to lead. Democrats
and Republicans spend about as much time carping at themselves as
each other; a state full of Libertarians would be as hard to govern
as a pack of cats.
Twenty thousand people may
not sound like enough to conquer even a small state, but attorney
and FSP advocate
Jan Helfield
believes “If 20,000 Libertarian activists
moved to Delaware, they would already have between 11 and 17 percent
of the necessary votes in a three-way race. Twenty thousand
Libertarian activists should be able to persuade the remaining
necessary voters to vote for a Libertarian candidate.”
The other “candidate states”
are Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota,
South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. Those wishing to commit to the
Free State Project can vote their preference at the website, but
they better bring a parka; those places get darned cold.
Forty below might keep the
riffraff out, as the saying goes, but it can’t be good for
recruiting. Still, those who don’t think the movement has a chance
should consider the state of Utah, the Free State Project of its
day.
Being governed by like-minded
folks has its appeal, but I suspect it may not turn out to be quite
the utopia FSP backers envision. For those passionate about any
cause, the higher calling might be to stay in the world as it is
while living to make it as it should be.
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