http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090725/ap_on_re_us/us_camping_for_freedom

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer Adam Geller, Ap National Writer – 1 hr 12 mins ago

LANCASTER, N.H. – He fled the “People’s Republic of Massachusetts” to escape tyranny. Now he strides the campground in a plaid kilt and mirror shades, an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle across his torso, an immense Scottish sword sheathed between his shoulders.

Out here, though, the only signs of danger are the ones warning drivers to watch out for moose. Could it be he senses a threat we’re not seeing?

“Not expecting,” says the swordsman, who calls himself Doobie, grinning broadly. “Just ready.”

There’s no escaping the long arm of big government — even here at the far edge of a state whose license plate decrees that without freedom from oppressive authority you might as well choose death. But for Doobie and 500 others, this tent colony on this particular weekend is about as close to Libertarian Nirvana as they’re likely to get.

They’ve come for the Porcupine Freedom Festival, four days of beer, burgers and bonfires. But more importantly, they are here to carve out an enclave of less government and more liberty to do as they wish.

They are here to show a lost nation the way back to its political roots.

It hasn’t been an easy message to sell these past few years. Their group, the Free State Project, has struggled to attract followers. But now, with Americans thinking anew about the reach and role of government, Free Staters see at least the hint of an opening.

So this weekend, they drink to the future. Between swigs of a custom brew called Overregulated Ale, they ridicule the Federal Reserve, applaud the defeat of a bill that would have required the wearing of seat belts, bemoan higher taxes and restrictions on gun rights.

“We said bad things are going to happen and they happen,” Jason Sorens, a political science professor, preaching to the crowd clustered around picnic tables. “We say, we told you so.”
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http://keenesentinel.com/…

Published: Saturday, June 13, 2009

For those of you who don’t know me, allow me to introduce myself.

I moved to Keene in 2004 with my wife of 16 years and two children, now 7 and 8.

I have owned the same home in Keene since moving here. I attend Grace Evangelical Free Church in Spofford, am a DC-10 captain for an international charter airline, home-school our active children and play drums and other musical instruments.

I also serve as the president of the Free State Project.

Over the past several weeks, numerous news articles and opinion pieces have mentioned the Free State Project. I’d like to offer facts and opinions that I hope will shed light on the subject from an angle not yet covered.

I am in the unique position of being both a resident of Keene, a focal point of recent local and national press, and an official representative of the Free State Project.

First, as a representative of the Free State Project, I’d like to present several facts that correct or clarify inaccurate and misleading statements that have appeared in The Sentinel and other media outlets lately:

1. The Free State Project is very simple: It seeks 20,000 participants who agree 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 protections of life, liberty and property.

2. The Free State Project does not take positions on specific issues, legislation or candidates for office. It does not specify any area for participants to move to, and it does not specify tactics for achieving a “free state.”

The project itself does not exert the fullest practical effort. Participants in the project do so on their own.

3. The Free State Project does not own or control any radio shows, newspapers or magazines.

4. The Free State Project is funded through donations and does not have members, dues, or shadowy corporate backers. Its budget is small and financial reports are posted on the Web site.

5. The Free State Project’s most visible activity in New Hampshire consists of two events each year: the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, and the Porcupine Freedom Festival.

The 2009 Porcupine Freedom Festival will be June 25-28 in Lancaster. Those interested in learning more about the Free State Project, and meeting some Free State Project participants are encouraged to attend.

Though the project takes no position about the activities that have received so much attention lately, I do have personal opinions as a resident of Keene.

I, too, wish all the antics would stop.

It disappoints me that a mature group of people could be so foolish as to waste tax-funded law enforcement resources by initiating attacks against such nonviolent silliness as giving a manicure, holding a plant, or not meeting someone’s aesthetic preferences for outdoor furnishing.

Then, when performers of such nonviolent acts make audio or video recordings of the taxpayer-funded assaults, or choose not to cooperate with threats, the law enforcers get upset and initiate more acts of physical violence.

All this makes law enforcement look more like a gang of perpetually-adolescent thugs than civilized adults.

All of this generates news and opinion pieces, peppered with factual inaccuracies and slurs, that support the notion that it’s good to spend tax dollars assaulting nonviolent, non-fraudulent behavior, whether it be provocative or just plain goofy.

And that’s just plain goofy, or at least it should seem so to anyone who values liberty.

Maybe the question here is, who values liberty? Will the real liberty lovers please stand up?

VARRIN SWEARINGEN
President
Free State Project
2 Starlight Drive
Keene

Dale Everett, Richard Onley, Ian Freeman, Keith Carlsen, and Patrick Shields (from left) discussed efforts yesterday to obtain the release of fellow Free Stater Sam A. Miller from jail. They were not successful. (Cheryl Senter for The Boston Globe)

By Sarah Schweitzer
Globe Staff / May 29, 2009

KEENE, N.H. – From a jail cell in this rural corner of New Hampshire, Sam A. Miller waged a philosophical battle, one milk carton at a time.

The soft-spoken electrical engineer declined food for nearly a month, save for swigs of milk. To eat, he said, would be caving to the tyrannical government powers that placed him here for illegally filming in a courthouse and refusing to reveal his legal name to jail officials. (He says it’s private; jail officials obtained it from a fingerprint trace.)

His resistance has made him a folk hero among antigovernment types who have been making their way to New Hampshire from points across the country since their leaders put out a clarion call six years ago.

The Free Staters, as they are known, hope to lure thousands of like-minded souls to the state, with the goal of paring government to a bare minimum by eliminating things like taxes, speed limits, and zoning laws.

Thus far, just 427 Free Staters have relocated. Yet, here in Keene and in pockets across New Hampshire, Free Staters are making their case in increasingly provocative ways.

“Like Ghandi, like Martin Luther King, we need to educate and enlighten the public,” said Miller, who joined the Free State movement after breaking up with his fiancée.

The actions have ranged from the odd, such as when Free Staters filed another person’s fingernails without a manicurist’s license on a public sidewalk or held an unlicensed puppet show, to the irksome, as when they tried to dig a garden in a downtown Keene park, to the instigative, such as the day they stood on a street corner with a marijuana bud held aloft. Sometimes, they simply veer toward obstinate, wearing hats in a courtroom after being asked to take them off or refusing to remove a couch from a lawn.

When arrests have followed, Free Staters have sought to film the criminal proceedings from beginning to end, including scenes from courthouse lobbies, where filming is not allowed in some cases, such as in Keene District Court. The lobby filming has yielded more arrests (often, with Free Staters going limp as officers approach) and more footage that Free Staters post on websites such as FreeKeene.com, which has proved an effective recruiting tool.

The so-called liberty actions have been met with some bemusement by residents of this gently tolerant city, population 22,800, home to Keene State College, near the border of Vermont. But some say the tactics have taken on a menacing hue, such as when Free Staters have gathered on the streets of downtown Keene with holstered guns on their waists, visible on their waists.

“When they first came to town, there was a welcoming spirit. A lot of people were like, ‘OK,’ ” said Richard Van Wickler, a Keene resident and superintendent of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections. “But unfortunately what happens is that when [Free Staters] take the radical approach, that invites people to get angry.”
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