Editorial: Living free is just too costly

Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005 | 8:17 a.m.

The problem with uniting people who aren't joiners is, well, they aren't joiners.

And so it is with members of the Free State Project, who have ditched their self-imposed 2006 deadline to move 20,000 like-minded libertarians to New Hampshire. They planned to take over the legislature and create a veritable promised land devoid of government's constraints -- and, presumably, its services.

But it seems these spirited sprites of free will won't move. Only 130 free-staters have actually relocated to New Hampshire. That's a fraction of the project's 6,800 members, which is a fraction of the 20,000 they say they need to influence the ballot box.

Leaders of the Free State Project, founded in 2001, announced in 2003 that they were considering 10 states for their move. Surprisingly, and mercifully, Nevada was not among the contenders. It had too many people. All praise the Californians who moved here to buy cheap.

The free-staters settled on -- but evidently not in -- New Hampshire because it lacks state sales and income taxes and typically defers to local control.

But Amanda Phillips, Free State president, says the 2006 goal to attract 20,000 members wasn't an actual deadline kind of deadline. It was more of a best-guess kind of deadline. "No one's ever done this before, so you can't predict things," she said in published reports last week.

Oh, but we could have predicted such things. It seemed almost comical that a large group of libertarians, who value individual choice over group-think, could band together in such a massive movement. They're too busy living free to Live Free or Die.