Grafton residents right to worry about libertarian invasion.
Monitor editorial
June 25. 2004 8:31AM
No one likes being invaded. So we sympathize with the people of Grafton, the tiny New Hampshire town targeted for takeover by the libertarian Free Town Project.
The project is an offshoot of the Free State Project, an internet-based attempt launched last year to convince 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire. Once here, their goal is to minimize government by doing away with frills like public education.
This weekend, the group is holding its "Porcupine Freedom Fest and Night on the Barricades"at a Lancaster campground. The keynote speaker at tonight's Porcupine dinner in Plymouth will be none other than Gov. Craig Benson. His speech will be followed by a campfire at which, we suspect, happy Porcupines will dance around a flaming pile of zoning ordinances.
Judging by their writings, these hard-core libertarians have elevated a belief in personal responsibility, individual liberty and minimal government to religious status. What's missing from their credo, however, is an appreciation of the social contract. They also fail to see that the government's role is often to protect personal liberty.
The Free Towners say they chose Grafton, a town of 1,200, because it is small, secluded yet near amenities, home to state Libertarian Party Chairman John Babiarz and his wife, and without zoning laws.
"The Free Town Project intends to liberate Grafton . . . by moving in enough libertarians and Free State Project members to outvote the authoritarians and statists in the town and remove offensive regulations such as planning, mandatory recycling, and building code enforcement," the group's Web site announces.
Their goal is to get 200 to 400 like-minded people move to Grafton over the next two years. It wouldn't, John Babiarz told the group, take more than 25 extra votes to start winning offices and cleansing the town of needless boards and regulations.
Last year, when Benson urged the Free Staters to move to New Hampshire, we made light of the effort. We thought it unlikely that 20,000 people would pack up and move in pursuit of an iffy pseudo-utopian dream. We still think that's true. And even if they did, New Hampshire would probably change them rather than the other way around.
Nonetheless, the good people of Grafton are right to worry about the coup planned for their community. Crazier things have happened.
In the 1980s, followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian holy man, moved to the tiny town of Antelope, Ore. They used the power of the ballot box to take over the government and rename the town Rajneesh. Voters changed the name back some years later after Rajneesh was indicted on immigration charges and deported to India.
A Free Towner who purchased several hundred acres of land in Grafton says he plans to build condominiums that would be rented cheaply to fellow travelers. That naturally caused some alarm and led 200 residents to pack a town hall meeting to hear what were largely platitudes from Free Town representatives. An opposition group has formed, and judging by harsh words and profane email exchanges, hostility is growing.
The libertarians involved in the free-this-or-that project are frustrated because they have not been able to achieve any real degree of political power on their home turf. That's because they have been unable to convince more than a tiny percentage of voters that their paranoid and antisocial ideas make sense. And unlike Benson, they can't afford to spend $11 million in their first run for office. So they plan to pack one small community and impose their will on its residents. We hope they fail.
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********
***********