Featuring FK’s Ian and Ademo:
Here’s the original report in German, and the translation below thanks to Rochelle Pitkäniemi:
How big should the influence of government be? This question dominates the election campaign in the USA. For the Republican presidential candidates it’s clear: as small as possible. They are currently outdoing each other with savings proposals. Going the farthest are the representatives of the libertarian movement. They want to get rid of all taxes, the central bank, and the Department of Education. Health insurance and social security should be a completely private matter and American troops should be pulled out of foreign countries.
In New Hampshire, a state way in the Northeast of the USA, the libertarians are especially strong. the so-called “Free Staters” are even working there for a peaceful take-over of the state. Max Akermann visited some of them.
Whoever visits the government building in Concord, New Hampshire can experience a big surprise: a group of kids is currently holding a special civics lesson. Gov. John Lynch is personally explaining to a school group why the Chinook he declared the official state dog of New Hampshire. At the same time one floor higher, a self-appointed presidential candidate is introducing his platform. (English bit here).
Political activist or third grader, everyone has the right to enter here. The guard at the entrance holds no one back:
Guard (presumably): Good day, my name is Stanley Koliniky (?) and I am (didn’t catch this bit, sounds like Polynesian?) security for the State House in Concord.
Stanley was once called Stanislov and is from the area around Danzig, but also has connections to Switzerland.
Guard: I have a grandfather buried in Sonneswald (?). He was interned there in the second world war from the Polish Army.
Stan likes to tell his family story. The people friendly man is anyways more of a museum guide than a security guard. In the Capitol of Concord, many old pictures hang on the walls and battle flags, but there is neither a metal detector nor body searches and that’s the way it should be according to one representative, Seth Cohn. Here the citizens have more direct access to the government than anywhere else. (English bit)
Cohn was elected to the House of Representatives last year, carried on the wave of Republican success. In his bulging suit and his shoes , his long hair and bushy beard, Rep. Cohn doesn’t exactly look like a typical Republican and he isn’t either. Although computer geek Rep. Cohn is a member of the Republican Party, above all he is a Free Stater.
(English bit)
Free Staters are a type of refugee, jokes Cohn and New Hampshire is their land of asylum.
(English bit)
Here frugality and self-responsibility have always been important. The state involves itself less in the lives of individual citizens than in New York or Oregon, where Cohn lived earlier.
(English bit)
New Hampshire has no seat belt or helmet law, neither income nor sales tax. That’s perfect for Libertarian Free State activists. The want to limit the influence of the government on people’s lives as much as possible. 20,000 convinced Free Staters could turn New Hampshire into an exemplary Libertarian state, one of their masterminds figured and encouraged them to move to New Hampshire. 4,000 have so far committed themselves to do so; 1,000 have actually come. One of them is Ian Freeman, 31 years old from Sarasota, FL.
(English bit.)
5 years ago, Ian chose Keene, NH as his place of asylum, a pretty little New England town with typical little brick houses, a small university, a few cafes and bars. A nice place to live, even though the early outbreak of winter is hard for Ian, who is accustomed to the warmth of Florida, to bear.
(English bit)
If he wants to be a real revolutionary, he happily accepts the harsh weather of New Hampshire as up here in Keene, a group of similarly-minded people work together to create a new, freer society.
(English bit)
Even Ademo Freeman—up here, many people call themselves “Free man” –is a newly moved Libertarian—one of the radicals. He would say an uncompromising type. Oppression is supposedly* the main goal of today’s state.
(English bit)
Away with the state, therefore, is Ademo’s solution and he always fights for that when and where he can with civil disobedience, on worn-out missions of death (?) with his Liberty on Tour bus or with electronic media.
English bit
Copblock.org is a website founded by Ademo, where supposed police abuses are documented. Via 411, one can report radar traps or police roadblocks. Nevertakeaplea.org will be traversed by those aiming to paralyze the courts with willfully complicated trials and so forth. All of this are like little pin pricks against the authorities. Pin pricks for which Ademo was arrested 7 times last year.
(English bit)
In jail, the solidarity of his comrades-in-arms (comrades of conviction) helped him keep his head above water, raved Ademo, and he received hundreds of letters organized by “Mail to Jail,” another organization founded in Keene.
The motto of New Hampshire still stands, opines colleague Ian: “Live Free or Die”
(English bit)
“Live Free or Die” is on every car’s license plate in New Hampshire, though that doesn’t mean much. New Hampshire is still more of a conservative state than a Libertarian state and recently strengthened the abortion law and is attempting to abolish homosexual marriage again. Regrettably, according to Rep. Cohn as well as both Freemans in Keene. The march of the institutions and the way of the extra-parliamentary radical opposition is long at, at times, arduous.
(English bit)
At the governmental level, there have been no fundamental changes but in people’s heads, much has happened and, in New Hampshire, one has created an attractive environment for freedom loving people.
(English bit)
Now just more of them have to come.
(English bit)
Radio free Keene knows the access number to the libertarian paradise on earth or else look it up on the internet.
