InDepthNH just ran a hit piece by Garry Rayno on the Free State Project (FSP).
As with the New York Times, I doubt that InDepthNH will run my response, but I thought I’d include it here, as I did with my response to the Times’s hit piece by Dan Barry.
Not long ago, a father and daughter, both participants in the Free State Project (FSP), were elected to the New Hampshire state legislature.
One ran as a Republican, the other as a Democrat.
During one session, they voted against each other 70 percent of the time.
If you ask what Free Staters believe, that’s the wrong question.
The right question is: What does a Free Stater believe? And the answer is: It depends which one you’re talking about.
The only way to find out is to ask. Just like with anyone else.
One gets the idea that Garry Rayno, along with others around the state who are peddling the same anti-FSP line, has never actually spoken with a Free Stater.
I say this because it’s been my experience that when someone in Croydon approaches me with genuine curiosity about my views as a Free Stater, I tell them that — speaking just for myself — I prefer to have less government interference, rather than more, in my life.
And I say that — speaking just for myself — I believe that I should (1) respect the property and autonomy of others, (2) pay for the services I use, and (3) let others decide for themselves which charities to support, and how much support to offer.
And I think I should be a good neighbor — helping out when I’m asked to, and keeping my nose out of other people’s business when I’m not.
When I ask people which of those they disagree with, most walk away thinking: Huh, I guess I could be a Free Stater too.
The problem is, people seem to be afraid of having this kind of conversation.
The whole structure of modern political discourse has been simplified into this: Figure out who the bad guys are. Once you’ve done that, you don’t have to pay any attention to what they say.
You can just call them some name — racist, white supremacist, transphobe, Free Stater — and proceed to ignore them. Or shout them down. Or censor them. Because they’re bad guys.
But suppose you learn that someone you were told was a bad guy turns out to be a good guy — for example, because he’s actually trying to get your kids a better education than the one they’re getting now, but without taxing the elderly and disabled out of their homes.
Well, then you have to start listening to what people are actually saying — looking beyond the labels being attached to them — and thinking for yourself.
It’s much simpler just to take Animal Farm approach: Four legs good, two legs bad.
If you’d like to see the other side of his mischaracterization of the Croydon school budget issue, you can find that here.
If you’d like to see the pamphlet that I handed out at our annual district meeting, you can find that here.
But just to clear up a few facts that he got wrong about Croydon:
First, I didn’t move to ‘cut the budget’. I moved to replace a ransom demand with a budget. Those are two very, very different things. The whole idea, as explained in the pamphlet, was to require the school board to build something new from the ground up — which would require them to consider fundamental questions, and set serious priorities — instead of trying to rehabilitate a systemically-flawed and historically-failed system by trimming around the edges.
Second, the school board’s plan explicitly called for keeping the town’s school house open, something that anyone who was paying attention at school board meetings would know.
Third, the learning pods proposed by the school board were, in fact, to be supervised by certified teachers — also something that was repeated ad nauseam at school board meetings.
(Of course, having said that, it’s worth noting that the current public school system, which requires certified teachers and administrators, is producing pretty dismal results — with only about 40 percent of NH students performing at the most basic level of proficiency by the time that they graduate. So perhaps certification isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.)
Fourth, the 377-2 vote at the special meeting ignores the 300-plus registered voters who stayed home as a protest, because they wanted the smaller budget. So the final ‘vote’ was more like 377-300.
Still a solid majority, but not anything like what it’s being portrayed as. It’s 55% of the registered voters using the homes of the other 45% as ATMs.
Also, when asked after the vote, many of the 377 indicated that they had cast their votes because they had accepted the kinds of misstatements put forth by Mr. Rayno and others: that the school house would be closed, that lower spending would somehow lead to higher taxes, that lower tax rates would somehow lead to lower home values, and so on.
You have to wonder whether he got those wrong because he didn’t bother to check them, or because they conflicted with his narrative.
Mr. Rayno started his hit piece by quoting Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Well, he just showed you who he is. Believe him.
