Independence Day

by Peter Saint-Andre

2002-07-14

I just found a good article on pursuing more realistic strategies for freedom. The first half of the article contains some sound reasoning that led me to think the author was going to talk about the Free State Project. He comes tantalizingly close, but in the second half of his article he showed that he is still tied to pursuing national goals through the Libertarian Party, which I consider wrongheaded given the fact that the LP has been essentially feckless since its founding 30 years ago.

The author's reasoning about electing a small number of freedom-oriented legislators in order to tip the balance in a specific legislative body makes sense. And he seems to assume (realistically enough) that such a legislative body could not be the U.S. House or Senate, but rather a legislature in "a small to medium state". Makes sense to me. However, one problem with past and present LP efforts, at least as far as I can see, is that they have not targetted any specific state. Rather, the LP has pursued a scattershot approach, with a few good candidates running in any one state in any one year. It would be more productive to run a number of strong candidates in each state. Unfortunately, freedom-minded people (or at least freedom-minded activists) are spread so thinly throughout the United States that the LP is never able to find enough strong candidates in any one state to have a chance of tipping the balance. One solution would be for a relatively large number of freedom-minded people to relocate to one state. This state could then serve as an example to other states, or as a refuge of last resort should the national government turn even more strongly authoritarian. Such a strategy is a logical extension of the reasoning in this article, and is a probably the most realistic strategy for liberty in our lifetimes (try to turn around a small state first, not the QE2 of federal government). Happily, the FSP is a thriving movement that is directed at just such a goal. Whether it turns out to be successful is another matter, but at this point it's starting to shake things up and at least has the advantage of pursuing a realistic strategy, rather than the failed strategies of the LP.


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