The Porcupine Freedom Festival,or PorcFest, is a yearly gathering in Lancaster, New Hampshire organised by the Free State Project. The mission statement of the Free State Project, adopted in 2005, is:
The Free State Project is an agreement among 20,000 pro-liberty activists to move to New Hampshire, where they will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property. The success of the Project would likely entail reductions in taxation and regulation, reforms at all levels of government to expand individual rights and free markets, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world.
The pop-up did not appear when I viewed the video. I was logged in to a YouTube premium account via Google Chrome. (Interestingly, when I launch YouTube, it warns me that YouTube GB may show adverts because my premium account is registered with YouTube CH. I have not, however, yet seen an ad inserted by YouTube.)
Reminiscent of the plan (back long ago when San Francisco was cool) by hippies to move en mass to low population Wyoming and democratically vote in a hippie state government. Apparently the project initially was going fine – and then came Winter.
At the origin of the Free State Project (FSP), the founders and initial members did not specify a state, but rather criteria of a total population of less than 1.5 million and total combined spending in 2000 by the Republican and Democrat parties less than national spending by the Libertarian party in that year (US$ 5.2 million). In September 2003, the state was chosen in a vote, which was closely split between New Hampshire (57%) and Wyoming (43%), Many people, including me, considered the Project to have beclowned itself by this choice, as a New England, East Coast (yes, it has an Atlantic coast—check the map!) state would have an inescapable tilt toward collectivism—just look at bordering states Massachusetts and Vermont, while Wyoming’s tradition is much more gun totin’ individualism. But the FSP seems to have achieved many of their goals, probably aided by the ability of those who have migrated to the state and telecommute to jobs elsewhere, which was not foreseen in the early 2000s.
My main criticism was not the choice of state but rather the belief that a state could withstand the power of Leviathan when the latter has gone absolutely mad and admits no constraints on its power. About that I remain highly sceptical.
My identical critique. Basically the 14th Amendment has been interpreted in such a manner as to effectively nullify the 10th Amendment entirely. It is entirely a matter of the Supreme Court’s whims unhinged from anything less than the threat of violent revolt. In the current situation this would probably mean shutting off the life support systems for the urban areas and killing people as they flee.
This is why I try to warn people about the rhyme with the 30 Years War that seems to be the primary agenda for the West. I seem to be the only guy talking about this and offering specific proposals about what to do to mitigate the loss of life in advance and recover with a fix to the Treaty of Westphalia once the Bloodshed is over.
Talking divorce, eh? More like dreaming of divorce. It ain’t gonna happen. Last time anyone tried to leave, it was called the Civil War and the leavers lost. Doing it via Article IV is even less likely.
The real divorce is progressing via self-segregation. Once that gets farther along, secession is possible, though it might involve some violence. The optimistic scenario is that the central government is so corrupt, disorganized, incompetent that it just lets it happen. That’s a reason to celebrate DEI at the federal level.
These United States will not be united forever. All empires fall and the GAE will be no exception. The interesting questions are when and how.
David Mamet is a great playwright and a level-headed guy but he got this one wrong. Trump will not save the GAE because liberal democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. This passage is okay except for the very end. Sure, not today, but sooner than you think, David.
Rome, Greece, Nineveh and Tyre, Babylon, Nazi Germany—all were eventually returned to dust. I saw the irreversible decline of the U.S. and took comfort in the scripture. The Old Testament is a record of decline of those civilizations which fall away from God; and promises that a return to his precepts will restore his grace. We know that one day America, as all things, will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today.
David Mamet is a great playwright and a level-headed guy but he got this one wrong. Trump will not save the GAE because liberal democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. This passage is okay except for the very end. Sure, not today, but sooner than you think, David.
Rome, Greece, Nineveh and Tyre, Babylon, Nazi Germany—all were eventually returned to dust. I saw the irreversible decline of the U.S. and took comfort in the scripture. The Old Testament is a record of decline of those civilizations which fall away from God; and promises that a return to his precepts will restore his grace. We know that one day America, as all things, will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today.
And yet, and yet, …?who would have predicted this GAE would last almost 250 years. So while your comment may be a relatively simple way to cover the table, perhaps there’s more to here than catches your eye.
Well, according to John Glubb’s Fate of Empires, 250 years is just about how long they last. Kinda eerie, if you ask me. Maybe a bit too on-the-nose. It’s a much shorter read than Spengler or Toynbee, while covering much of the same ground.
I was finally convinced to plug yet another of those holes in my education by reading Polybius’s “The Histories” – the 2010 translation by Robin Waterfield. Part of Polybius’s aim was to explain why Rome beat out Carthage. Short version is that all human polities grow, stagnate, and die; the Punic Wars occurred at a time when Rome was on the upswing and Carthage was on the downswing – too much of a difference even for a military genius like Hannibal to overcome.
Polybius lays out his historical pattern of political development – chaos sets the stage for kingship which degrades to tyranny, to be replaced by aristocracy which degrades to oligarchy, and finally leads to the establishment of democracy which eventually descends into ochlocracy (mob rule), and chaos returns.
One sentence really caught my attention: And in due course of time, once democracy turns to violating and breaking the law, mob-rule arises and completes the series.
Are we there yet?
