'FREE STATERS' PICK NEW HAMPSHIRE TO LIBERATE FOR SEX, GUNS AND DRUGS

Fringe Activists Hope To Infiltrate Vote And Set Up A Breakaway Minimalist
Government

A libertarian movement promoting "minimalist government", the free market,
drugs, prostitution and gun ownership plans to infiltrate New Hampshire to
create a breakaway American regime, its leaders will announce today.

The Free State Project, which has supporters in the UK and worldwide, will
reveal today at a meeting in New York that its members have voted for the small
but highly-symbolic north-eastern state as its target to win power.

Project chiefs will now try to persuade 20,000 people to move to New Hampshire
and sway the electorate towards blocking federal "nanny" laws and social
restrictions.

Jason Sorens, a lecturer in political science at Yale University and president
of the project, said he wants to create an "autocratic territory" and the Free
State Project will follow the examples of the Mormons in Utah, the French
separatists in Quebec, Canada, and the conservative Amish religious
communities.

Political sceptics have dismissed the project as the fringe cult fantasies of a
disorganised shower of anarchists and internet geeks.

But Professor Sorens claims membership is soaring as people become angry over
increasing restrictions on personal freedom, government surveillance of private
individuals and greater state power in the justice system.

Membership of the Free State Project rocketed after an article in Playboy this
year.

"I think that was a good place to find people who are socially tolerant and
wary of government regulation over private behaviour," Prof Sorens said
yesterday.

The FSP argues that civil government should exist only to protect life,
liberty, and property. Individuals are free to do as they please, provided it
does not harm others.

In a "Free State", that would translate as a green light for casinos, brothels,
cocaine farms and gun supermarkets. Leaders would also do away with seatbelt
laws, limits on gay marriage and most taxes.

"The classical liberal philosophy has a long and respectable pedigree. We see
ourselves as a kind of chamber of commerce, promoting the state as somewhere
where people will come and live freely and do business," he said.

Schools and hospitals would be entirely privatised. Prof Sorens sees new New
Hampshire as having economic parallels with Singapore and Hong Kong, and social
parallels to the tolerant Netherlands.

New Hampshire's state motto is already "Live free or die".

A ballot last week had members choosing from a shortlist of 10 states, each
chosen on the basis that the FSP had calculated the populations were low enough
and federal influence weak enough that moving 20,000 members there would give
enough leverage to sway the state legislature.

Wyoming came second in the ballot. Other states on the list included Alaska,
Idaho, Montana, Vermont and the Dakotas.

Members must agree to move to the chosen state.

But the New Hampshire Democratic chairwoman, Kathy Sullivan, said she
considered the project "sort of a very fringe group that can best be described
as anarchists".

A British member, Matthew Hurry, a 24-year-old computer technician from
Brighton, was already preparing to move to the chosen state.

"It's one of the few good ideas I've seen actually put into practice with a
good chance of success. Freedom is important for people, and the western world
is severely lacking in it," he said.

But Francis Tyers, a 20-year-old University of Wales student, who studies in
Aberystwyth but is currently on placement with the computer giant Hewlett
Packard in Ireland, said Alaska would have been his first choice. "I specified
on my membership form that I would move when they had legalised the cultivation
of marijuana. I'm hoping that this will be one of the first things on their
agenda. And secession from the United States would be great," he said.

It is this kind of radical idea that Prof Sorens emphasises is not the FSP's
main thrust. "We have no wish to alienate the people of New Hampshire. We want
to win them over," he said.

James Maynard, one of 150 project members who already live in New Hampshire, is
currently campaigning as a Libertarian to try to win a council seat in the
Keene city elections in November.

"The FSP is a mix of common sense ideas and "thinking out of the box". Within
the framework of a real-life state and local politics, a group will not be
afraid to try new things and take lessons from the business world to bring New
Hampshire a smaller, less expensive, more accountable government," he said.

Project members are mostly men and in their 20s and 30s. Many own small
businesses and half of them have a university degree, with 18% possessing
doctorates and 40% earning more than UKP40,000 a year.