I just finished watching a little scare session conducted by former NH state senator Jeanne Dietsch, which you can find here.
I should start by saying that, in my experience, when NH residents actually talk to Free Staters to find out what they believe, more often than not, they end up realizing that those beliefs are close to their own beliefs. So, Free Staters welcome anyone who expresses an interest in finding out more about them.
But if you want to learn more about Catholics, should you ask a member of the KKK about them? Or should you talk to some Catholics? If you want to learn more about the FSP, you should talk to some Free Staters instead of listening to someone like Dietsch talk about them.
But you’d better talk to more than one. Because thinking that all Free Staters believe, or want, the same things makes as little sense as thinking that all Catholics (or all Democrats, or all Republicans) believe, or want, the same things.
In fact, not so long ago, two Free Staters — a father and daughter — were elected as state representatives at the same time. One was a Republican, the other a Democrat. When their voting records were compared, it turned out that they voted against each other 70% of the time.
So, what does a particular Free Stater believe? You’d have to ask him.
But generally, we might summarize ‘What Free Staters believe’ in this way: When you have a problem, you should try to solve it yourself, then get help from your relatives and friends, and only as a last resort, turn to government.
Or we could summarize it by saying that Free Staters believe they should
1. Respect the property and autonomy of others.
2. Pay for the services they use.
3. Let others decide for themselves which charities to support, and how much support to offer.
If you, like Dietsch, are afraid of Free Staters, you might ask yourself which of those ideas you disagree with.
A longtime state representative (and native of New Hampshire) once told me that there is really only one political party in our county: Fix my roads and leave me the hell alone.
If you’re ever curious about how the FSP came to choose New Hampshire, it’s because it was already filled with natives like this.
Dietsch says that the purpose of her talk is to “reveal the Free State Project’s ultimate goals.” Her premise is that even Free Staters don’t know as much about their project as she does.
Unfortunately, right off the bat, she reveals the quality of her research by misstating virtually every fact that she lays out about the collection of signatures, the selection of New Hampshire, and the movement of people to the state whose culture and political system most closely matched their own beliefs and desires.
To Dietsch, people who want to take responsibility for their own lives, and the lives of their children; and who want to belong to communities that operate out of mutual respect and tolerance rather than out of political coercion; are “21st century hippies, who just want to smoke their weed, and shoot their guns.”
It’s reminiscent of Barack Obama’s dismissal of people who disagreed with him as ‘bitter clingers’, or Hillary Clinton’s dismissal of people who disagreed with her as ‘deplorables’. It’s name-calling as a substitute for substantive discussion of ideas.
She says that Carla Gericke is a state representative. I can’t wait to tell Carla about that. She’ll be delighted to find out!
She says that the Liberty Alliance is “the political arm of the FSP,” which would come as surprise to them, since they were here first. They would also be surprised to learn that they ‘primary’ people who disagree with them. All they do is publish explanations of the likely effects of bills before the legislature, and track which representatives vote for what.
Is that useful to Free Staters who want to vote for people with track records of supporting liberty? Sure. But it’s just as useful for people like Dietsch, who prefer to vote for people with track records of opposing it. It’s odd that someone like Dietsch, who claims to love ‘democracy’, could oppose a group whose purpose is to provide the information that voters need to participate in it.
She says, with sinister overtones, that the FSP ‘gives tax write-offs to donors’. Well, sure. So does Planned Parenthood. So does New Hampshire Public Radio. That’s how non-profit organizations work.
Much of her presentation depends on the kinds of logical fallacies that you’re supposed to be able to detect before you get to high school. For example, if a person P belongs to groups A and B, that means that the groups are affiliated.
She makes a big deal of how the libertarians she’s criticizing are ‘not Reagan conservatives’. Did they ever say they were?
The really interesting question is: Does Dietsch not understand that she’s talking nonsense? Or does she understand it, but hope that her listeners won’t?
She seems to think it’s a problem when a group is supported by billionaires with agendas. Does she not realize that this is true for the Democratic and Republican parties?
She complains about Young Americans for Liberty sending out 22,000 mailers in NH. But during the Q&A session, she brags about sending out more than 100,000 mailers herself.
And so on. What’s bad when it’s done by people who want more liberty seems to be good when it’s done by people who want less liberty. Why is that?
To give her some credit, she does occasionally say something that is in the neighborhood of truth. For example, she is correct in noting that many (although not all) Free Staters believe that majority rule is a form of coercion. But of course, anyone who reads Article V of the federal constitution — or the Bill of Rights — can see that the framers thought the same thing.
She claims that libertarians are trying to “convert the Republican platform of Reagan into the libertarian platform of the Kochs.” But if you look at the platforms of the GOP from 1854 through now — as I do in my book Indigenous Republicans — you will find that the only thing that has been consistent over that whole interval is the libertarian view that the central mission of the party is to preserve the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, uncompromised, for future generations. Which is the view endorsed by Reagan when he was speaking for himself, and not his party.
But again, why would you go to someone like Dietsch if you want to know something about the Republican Party? Or about Ronald Reagan? Or about libertarians, or Free Staters?
She is shocked — shocked! — that wealthy donors give money to people who agree with their beliefs, that think tanks provide legislative templates to legislators, and so on. Again, does she not realize that this is standard operating procedure for both major parties? Or does she just hope that her listeners will think it’s something particular to the libertarians?
She has a lot to say about events in Croydon, which is something I happen to know something about.
She claims that libertarians got Croydon to close its library. I was on the select board there when she claims that this happened, and I was surprised to learn from Dietsch that we ever had a library, let alone that we closed it.
Similarly, she claims that libertarians got Croydon to eliminate its police force. Again, I was on the select board when that happened, and it had nothing to do with Free Staters or any other political group. It was done by the select board in response to twenty years of people complaining about the police chief.
Finally, she claims that the town replaced its traditional school budget during a meeting that was ‘poorly attended’, that happened ‘during a blizzard’, and so on. If by poorly attended she means ‘attended by the same number of people who showed up every year for the twenty preceding years’, and if by blizzard she means two inches of snow, then I guess she’s right.
We could go on, and on, and on. But who has that kind of time?
Taken individually, none of these misstatements or mischaracterizations is a big deal. People make mistakes. But when someone makes so many misstatements in such a short amount of time, for your own protection, you probably should stop listening. If this presentation had occurred in a court, the judge would have stepped in after a few minutes to instruct the jury to disregard anything said by the witness.
In the end, Dietsch has a clear goal, which is to lead us even further down the road we’ve been traveling for a while now, on which substantive discussions of issues and ideas are replaced with name-calling and fear-mongering.
In fact, the advice she gives near the end of the presentation plays directly into this: “The more points you bring up, the less powerful your message.” The way you win hearts, in her playbook, is to get people to stop using their minds.
