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Lived in Nh 20+ years and have not noticed anything related to the free state project at all.... NH has 1,370,000 or so people so 20,000 is not really going to make much of an impact....
Not just 20,000 new residents.... 20,000 politically active voters.
Gov. Maggie Hassan won the last gubernatorial election by a margin of ~20K votes.
Kelly Ayotte won the 2010 Republican primary by a margin of less than 2K.
Cynthia Chase defeated the Republican candidate to win her seat (Keene Ward 5) by just 51 votes.
FSP participants currently hold 16 state representative seats, running as both (D) and (R). They may not be the biggest threat to the state, but Free Staters may pose a great threat to state representatives like Cynthia and Katherine, both of whom are accustomed to running unopposed in their primaries.
IMO the free state project is a great concept. As a libertarian minded individual myself I agree with many of their principals.
Problem is it attracts too many people who are not libertarian at all. It's full of folks who just want pot legalized thinking that issue itself is a libertarian movement. It's not.
Problem is it attracts too many people who are not libertarian at all. It's full of folks who just want pot legalized thinking that issue itself is a libertarian movement. It's not.
I'm not entirely sure what your dispeasure is.
Like any broad political philosophy there will be disagreement about which issues and elements are in/out, and even of the ones that are in, which are the most important.
There will be people drawn to the libertarian party because of a single issue they're passionate about, sure. Even within the Republican party there are social liberals who stay with the party because tax policy is their main concern, etc.
Are they not Republicans if they don't agree with every plank the party leadership sets out? Likewise there are democrats who are strong 2nd amendment supporters but favor the party for its labor policies, etc.
On the marijuana issue, it happens to be one where there's a lot of overlap between liberals/independents/libertarians [and conflict with evangelicals and other conservatives]. But sure there will be libertarians who for whatever reason don't agree and think one of the few functions appropriate for small government is enforcing a ban on a plant. Why not?
In any case, I'm not sure why it would make you upset.
Perhaps this is the manner in which marijuana really is the gateway drug - a way to draw like-minded liberals and independents into seeing the value of other tenets of libertarianism.
Marijuana doesn't upset me in the slightest. Not sure how you got that from my post.
My point was big goverment control freaks who are libertarian ONLY about drugs are not libertarian at all. If you join the free state movement to legalize drugs and want Bernie to give free college and free health care you are not a libertarian, period.
I welcome anyone who wants to move to NH for the FSP. Need more people like that to counter the people who move here and make NH less free.
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NHPR: What's Next for N.H.'s Free State Project?
NH is the last New England state where possession of even small amounts of marijuana remains a crime
