I would like to thank Phillip Bantz for the front page article in the Sentinel covering activists in Keene. I would also like to offer some clarification as I feel much of the article can be confusing taken out of context of certain facts. If you aren’t familiar with Free Keene, here are a few points you should be aware of when you read the article.
- The controversial “Free Town Project” website, as I understand it, was never a group project but rather the brainchild of a single individual, an anti-social internet troll, seemingly with a bizarre obsession with cannibalism and bestiality, and that individual never moved to New Hampshire and as the article points out, was in fact banned from any association with the FSP.
- The Free State Project is simply a promotional project to encourage those who love liberty to move to New Hampshire. What those people do when they get here is up to each individual.
- Free Keene is not associated with the Free State Project though there are a number of free staters who are active within it, so some confusion is understandable. Though a number of free staters are active participants of Free Keene, it’s a local voluntary organization which encourages peaceful participation by anyone in Keene who loves liberty, and in fact many locals are doing just that.
- Point in fact, bright young Free Keene blogger, Nick Ryder, is a life-long resident of Keene; not a free stater, so it can be confusing that he is being interviewed in an article focusing on free staters. I suspect Nick was under the impression that the article was going to focus on Free Keene activities.
I don’t want to speak for Nick, and I’m sure he’ll want to expand on that bizarre out of context quote on cannibalism in his own way, but I would like to offer this broader perspective. First bare in mind that at the root of the voluntaryist philosophy is a sincere opposition to violence as a means of addressing society’s ills. Many voluntaryists see violence as destructive and harmful, and therefore an absolute last resort to only be used in response to an aggressive act of violence. A few may even be total pacifists and are even opposed to the use of violence for self defense, and they may take that point of view all the way to their own graves. To a voluntaryist, when you suggest making a certain non-violent activity “illegal”, what that means is you are suggesting that violence be used against the people who engage in that activity. Though one may oppose that violent response, it says nothing about what we personally feel about the activity itself and whether it’s good or bad. In honor of Nick, a devout Christian who I’m confidant does not advocate either cannibalism or bestiality, I present the following for sake of analogy.
Two people, a Catholic and a Baptist, have both agreed that fornication is a sin. Now imagine this exchange.
The Catholic asks the Baptist, “Do you think a person should confess to a priest to gain absolution for the sin of fornicating?”
The Baptists answers “No, that would not be an effective method for absolving a person of his sin of fornication.”
“Aha! Baptists advocate fornication!” shouts the Catholic.
He then tells all his Catholic friends about this outrageous viewpoint of Baptists regarding fornication. The reality is that they both agree about the issue of fornication. What they don’t agree on is the much broader issue of how to deal with sin. Fornication is merely a straw man being used to demonize someone the Catholic disagrees with on a broader issue.
I hope in the future that if the Sentinal decides to cover liberty activism in Keene, that it will tap into the wealth of resources right here at Free Keene to find out what many of the activists here are all about. I suspect that if you did a search for the word “cannibalism” on the Free Keene website, that at least up to now, this would be the only post that comes up. Free Keene activists seem to me a lot more concerned with issues such as civil liberties, property rights violations, and greater transparency in Keene’s justice system.
