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10/01/2003 Archived Entry: "FSP: "And the winner is ...""

AND THE WINNER IS ...

The official announcement came from the Free State Project at 11:00 a.m. EDT today. But the news was scooped by the British publication The Guardian hours earlier. (Apparently the fedgov isn't the only leak-prone organization.) Free-Market.net carries a less sensationalized version of the voting results.

Congrats New Hampshire backers. You did an excellent job of promoting your state of choice. Those who favored the west split their votes between Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Alaska. So there we have it.

Regrets, regrets, regrets that the state of the free won't be beautiful, wide-open Montana, where there's room -- and the inclination -- for freedom to spread throughout the U.S. and Canadian west. Or even Alaska (always a long shot) or Wyoming (which came in second). I fear feeling cramped and surrounded by statism in tiny New Hampshire, despite assurances by friendly New Hampshirites that vast stretches of the state are as empty as any hermit could wish.

More troubling still is the disdain some eastern FSP backers have shown for those of us in the west who, it seems, express too much of a desire for freedom. One New Hampshirite posted publicly that he thought the well-known membership of people like me, Vin Suprynowicz, J.J. Johnson, and Boston T. Party did the FSP "irreparable damage." Another said the FSP should not speak publicly of Boston's concept of a "rifle culture."

Wow. I feel so free around folks like that. Well, let's hope those aren't typical sentiments. Or if they are, let's hope us anarchic and scruffy westerners can be a really baaaaaad (good) influence on the east. The FSP remains the greatest pro-freedom effort to come along in decades. And without doubt New Hampshire is a great and stubborn American state whose supporters deserve their victory. I'm eager to be proven wrong in all my fears about the east. (A few hours after I posted this, one free soul from NH invited me for a home-grown rabbit dinner. So I'm already starting to see a brighter picture.)

Next FSP goal: Get 20,000 members by September 2006. It's at the 20,000 goal where we're all required to fulfill our pledges to migrate.

Meantime, I'll be reading up on how to tap maple trees. And when the FSP gets its 20,000, I'll gladly go (along with the other "glasseaters" who said they would move to any chosen state -- that they'd eat glass if that's what it took to live in greater freedom). Until then, I'm staying put.

Posted by Claire @ 09:59 AM CST
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