“Free State Project: Creating a Libertarian Haven in New Hampshire”

In the United States, in the state of New Hampshire, on the border with Quebec, a group of libertarians intend to carry out the “Free State Project”. They want a region where freedom will reign, far from the pressures and constraints of the government in Washington.

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Libertarians are a political current in the United States, independent of Democrats and Republicans, which puts freedom first. On the social level, they are in favor of the legalization of soft drugs and marriage for all while opposing the regulation of firearms. Economically, their positions are close to the Conservatives: as little government as possible. They abhor taxes, which some of them regard as pure and simple theft.

“Freedom lives in New Hampshire”

Elon Musk is one of the best-known libertarian figures. In 2001, Jason Sorens, a political science student at Yale, a prestigious university, published an essay suggesting that libertarians, whose movement is struggling to take off politically, but also anarcho-capitalists and pacifists to come together in a small state and to gradually take power through local elections. Thus was born the “Free State Project”, in a state of less than a million and a half inhabitants whose motto is perfectly adapted: live free or die.

Twenty-two years later, the “Free State Project” is still in draft form, but we’ve been talking about it for several months. Nearly 6,500 people emigrated to New Hampshire. The ultimate goal of the project is to accommodate 20,000 “Free staters”. On the website of the “Free State Project”, www.fsp.orgwhose home page shows a landscape of mountains and wide open spaces, a symbol of freedom on the horizon, we can read that those who are tired of an ever more imposing government and who have the impression of being the only ones who want living free are actually not alone. “Freedom lives in New Hampshire”, says the site. Each year, the Porcupine Freedom Festival, in the small town of Lancaster, brings together 1,500 people to promote the project and its ideas such as cryptocurrencies or homeschooling.

A bear invasion

It is not a political party, but in 2018 the “Free Staters” had 17 of their members in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Not yet enough, however, to assert their vision of the world.

The main concern triggered by this project in the United States is the risk of secession, a sensitive concept in the country’s history. In his initial essay, Jason Sorens had raised the question before going back on his remarks, but certain “Free staters” would see themselves well in an independent country. The project has relatively few fans at the moment, many do not even know of its existence.

Especially since in Grafton, a small town where the “Free State Project” was tested on a small scale, bears ended up attacking the inhabitants. This episode was even the subject of a book. It’s unclear exactly why these attacks took place, but it’s speculated that it was partly because residents didn’t want to be told by the government where to dump their trash, so they did what they wanted. and the bears have noticed the presence of food.