PSYCHOSCAPES: The FSP and the tangled web from which it sprung

Copied from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project

The Free State Project (FSP) has been recently in the news for what it accomplished at the last Croydon town meeting, taking down its first public school system by reducing the school budget by more than 50%. The FSP is, of course, the libertarian outfit that voted 15 years ago to come to NH to take us over by abolishing most governmental services.

As Michael Ward, a local author, has written: The FSP “reject the concept of ‘the common good’ as being a socialist principle. In their worldview, you are only responsible for your part of the planet. You have no obligation to pay for anything that you don't directly use or control. In short they embody the state motto, “Live Free or Die” on steroids.”^⁠1

The last column I wrote for the Monitor was about my shipboard life in the ‘brown water navy’ in Vietnam. It was about how a diverse cross-section of Americans were able to bridge our differences to come together as close-knit group. Just as my ship was a vehicle for forming community in Vietnam, our schools are a primary vehicle for creating community in NH.

The FSP knows what it is doing: Demolishing our public schools is the surest way to dismantle our community. Supporting our schools is one of the few times we come together, climbing out of our specialized silos for the sake of our children's future. That is how we come together with other parents, that's how the community comes together by rooting for local school sports, and that's how children come together to become lifelong friends, not enemies, no matter what their differences.

According to their website, over 6000 FSP members have already moved here, and 45 now hold public office. Interestingly enough, FSP specifically listed, as a reason for choosing NH, our state motto, "Live Free or Die.”

Too many folks, including the FSP, have been hornswoggled into believing our motto represents the essence of who we are. But that would be wrong. Essentially the FSP was lured here under false presences.

The truth is that our motto is only a recent afterthought, not adopted until 1945. Before that, we got by perfectly fine without one. When we finally decided to adopt a motto, it was done with the same sense of urgency we brought to bear when we picked the purple finch as our official state bird.

There were several candidates: The "Live Free or Die" entry came from a letter written by General John Stark, revered as our own NH-born war hero who fought the British in our American Revolution. His meaning was crystal clear in the same sense Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, proclaims it today to stiffen his country's spine as it fights for its life against a formidable invader.

It’s not a statement about politics, but war.

NH's motto wouldn't be newsworthy in any state in times of war. Likewise, NH was similar to her neighbors in times of peace: Our joint survival depended on the community working together for the common good by building roads, schools, and libraries. Sometimes NH was even ahead of the pack: Peterborough founded the first public library in 1833, 19 years before Boston established theirs.

After our motto was adopted, it was pretty much ignored until Meldrim Thompson became governor in 1972. Remember him: he was the governor who wanted to arm the NH National Guard with nuclear weapons. Thompson won by pledging to ax any broad-based tax. Backed by the fierce advocacy of William Loeb, the arch-conservative publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader, this pledge has become "a central part of New Hampshire's political lexicon"^⁠2 by merging it with the feel-good patriotism of live-free-or-die.

Combining our state motto with the pledge has created a formidable juggernaut combining two disparate groups into a grand alliance: the business community, who want less regulation, and working people who don’t want to be told what to do. Since then, no governor has been elected without “taking the pledge.”

Therein lies the story of NH's tangled politics, starting with the extremists hijacking our war hero's words and making them into a political cudgel. And then weaponizing "The Pledge" by making it our patriotic duty – like pledging allegiance to the flag – to tax working folks four times more than the rich. All of which was catnip to the FSP.

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