Free State Project: Amerikkka's lead plumbing?

The Free State Project is an interesting idea run by a bunch of no-government, libertarian, gun freak nutjobs. The plan is to get 20,000 people who share their paranoid world-view to move to one sparsely-populated state, tipping the balance of voters in their direction. Interesting idea, pity about the people pushing it.

The idea is to repeal all those big-government, freedom-infringing laws in the state and re-draft the state constitution in a libertarian frame. Of course, the thing they forget is that most of the bad, freedom-sapping legislation in the USA is imposed by the federal government. So of course the only laws they'll really be able to influence are evil things like welfare, keeping AK-47s out of your neighbour's hands and taxes to pay for terrible things like schools and roads.

If successful, and that's pretty doubtful, the next step is of course to secede from the US. That's just not gonna happen. Any smart federalist would, I imagine, be planning to gently up the number of troops garrisoned in New Hampshire, the libertarian nutjobs' choice of state to invade.

But anyway, my point in all this is that it could be very interesting if it succeeded, even only partially. This is the kinda thing that could well bring the whole empire crashing down, as the wealthy middle classes start resenting more and more the taxes they think go to pay spongers on welfare but are actually funding US military terror and massive subsidies to the rich. If enough middle class yankees got interested in this kinda idea, and it started looking like there might be the chance of success, you can bet the US government will end up with troops out on the streets. Freedom-loving (read: gun nut) Yanks get kinda uppity about that sort of intervention.

Could be interesting. Then again, it could well end in a whole heap of squabbling over tactics, the hard-line libertarians ("my right to bear child porn") versus the pragmatists. Either way, loads of fun for all!

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