Free State Observer

Spring is busting out all over in New Hampshire, but a week ago, we had the “perfect storm”.  I’m not referring to a meteorological phenomenon; rather, several bills that were important to liberty lovers were scheduled for state House or Senate committee hearings on the same day. Due in no small part to incessant nagging by the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance on numerous online discussion groups, I decided to take the day off work in order to stand up and be counted in the state capital.

Here’s the routine of an intrepid liberty lobbyist:  get up before dawn.  Put on ill-fitting uncomfortable business clothing.  Drive 40 miles to Concord.  Park in zany municipal lot with *parking meters*, meaning that if you’re going to be there all day, you need to plan ahead and stash a roll of quarters in your car.  Wend your way down to the bowels of the building with the big gold dome on top (aka “the Capitol”).  Follow the smell of coffee and eggs (passing the smell of cigarettes, where the poor state reps who haven’t kicked their nicotine habit yet must huddle in a small airless room in the dungeon to smoke) to the cafeteria.  Be warmly greeted by DOZENS of other liberty activists.  Put on various motivational pins and badges identifying yourself as one of “that” crowd.  Receive the obligatory pep talk from “the Don” (former State Representative and current Director of Political Action of the NHLA, Don Gorman).  Ready, get set… bum rush the system.

First item on the day’s agenda: SB44.  This bill would make it more difficult for New Hampshire residents to obtain a license to carry a firearm.  Now, if you were raised as I was, you may find the whole “gun thing” hard to wrap your brain around.  Guns are for cops and bad guys, right?  Normal people don’t need guns, and certainly don’t need a whole bunch of them.  That’s just… weird.  If you still feel this way, please check out some of the writings of L. Neil Smith, particularly his excellent essay Suppose You Were Fond of Books.  In any case, the NH Senate clearly underestimated the passions they aroused with SB44.  In addition to the dozens of Free Staters and NHLA members, the NRA turned out a large contingent as well.  Citizens packed the room and at least 50 (myself included) were stuck out in the hall being shushed by a cop (who was nice) and some legislative staff harpie (who was not).  The message apparently got through;  the Senate has since axed the bill.

Next agenda item: HB819.  This bill would make New Hampshire a “Right to Work” state, the gist of which is that there would be no mandatory union membership.  While I tend to think unions do a lot of stinky things these days, I didn’t run with the NHLA crowd on this one; I don’t think it’s the government’s place to insert itself into the working relationships of employers and employees.  So I ducked out of this one early and scampered across the street to the hearing on HB906, the Fully Informed Jury bill.

This hearing was truly sad.  A FIJA bill has been presented to the NH legislature something like 8 times already, and every time it goes down in flames. This year was no exception.  Rep. Ingbretson, who sponsored this year’s bill, spoke eloquently about the benefits of fully informed juries.  When he finished, you could hear crickets chirping; not a single committee member had any questions for him.  He was followed by the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, who said fully informed juries are, and I quote, “a terribly bad idea”.  He freely acknowledged that juries have the legal power to judge the law, but said “we don’t want to encourage them to use it!”  The room was standing room only with onlookers, who were overwhelmingly in favor of the bill.  On the flip side, only 11 of 19 committee members had bothered to show up for their own hearing. The committee members present asked the Chief Justice, and his follow-up speaker from the state Attorney General’s office, several softball questions revealing their negative feelings about the bill. Not a single member of the public spoke against fully informed juries, but at least half a dozen spoke in favor of it.  Clearly a case of the elected representatives not only not listening to the will of their constituents, but sticking their fingers in their ears and saying “nyah nyah nyah I went to law school and I can’t hear you!”

The final hearing I attended that day was for HB685, which would prohibit New Hampshire from participating in “RealID”, the national identification card system.  The crowd of citizens once again completely overwhelmed the available space in the hearing room.  To the committee’s credit, it made arrangements with another committee to take over its larger room, and brought in a couple dozen more chairs, to accommodate the overflow crowd.  Once again the attendees were overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, but this time the committee seemed to be in agreement with the will of the voters. The committee chairman was extremely courteous and allowed every single person who wished to speak their piece to do so. Newly elected State Rep Joel Winters, an early mover of the Free State Project, is a co-sponsor of the bill.  If the rest of the House is as sympathetic as this committee was, the anti-Real ID bill looks like a shoe-in this year (at least in the House).

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[Apologies in advance if this blog entry is too preachy or let-it-all-hang-outy; feel free to surf on over to The Onion if it becomes too much for you.] 

“St. Patrick was a gentleman who through strategy and stealth, drove all the snakes from Ireland, Here’s toasting to his health; But not too many toastings lest you lose yourself and then forget the good St. Patrick and see all those snakes again.”
-Traditional Irish Toast

Today is St. Patrick’s Day.  In the U.S. this day should really be called “Celebrate Your Irish Heritage Day”.  Supposedly 1 in 5 white Americans are of Irish descent, and for reasons I have never fully understood, many seem to be inordinately proud of that fact.  I think I have discovered the true meaning of St. Patrick’s Day, but it’s not what you think.

The traditional manner in which Americans celebrate SPD is by eating corned beef hash and boiled cabbage, and getting blind drunk.   Actually, the hash and cabbage are optional.  Like many Americans, I’ve always enjoyed this day, and have taken pride in (part of) my ancestry.  One year I even pranced down the main downtown thoroughfare of San Francisco with an Irish dance troupe in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.  I wear the traditional green, listen to bagpipes (it’s OK, I’m part Scottish, too), and drink myself stupid.

I’m going to have to find a new way to celebrate this holiday.  I hate to break with tradition, but you see, I’m an alcoholic.  I drink on St. Patty’s Day, and on all the other holidays, and heck, on a lot of the normal days, too.

Freedom, like charity, begins at home.  Even if I achieved my wildest anarchocapitalist fantasies with regard to the political system of the state of New Hampshire (didn’t think I was ever going to bring this back on topic, didja!), it wouldn’t mean jack if I remained enslaved to the little voice inside my head that can think of 1000 different excuses to piss away another evening. I’d just wake up the next day sweaty, smelly and ashamed of myself, feeling very far from “free”. As much as I long to have a pint of Guinness in my hand right now, I don’t. Like every other human being, I have free will. I believe I am responsible for my own actions, that I choose them freely, and that I am *not* powerless (which is why you won’t find me at any AA meetings; the first of the “Twelve Steps” is acknowledging your own powerlessness over alcohol).

Tonight, wearing the traditional green, I sit down to a “feast” of corned beef hash (cooked in broth) and “fried” (in broth) cabbage, with U2’s War album blaring for added ambience.  Why do I eat this, when there are so many lovely things I’d rather be eating (like sushi, or duck, or pepperoni pizza)?  To REMEMBER.  To remember my ancestors who would gladly have eaten this crap to survive, under the yoke of British imperialism.  To remember my brethren who have blown each other, and innocent bystanders, up for decades, arguing about flavors of Christianity (how easy to forget that brown-skinned Muslims hold no monopoly on brutal acts of religious terrorism).  To remember the great risk many thousands of Irish undertook to come to America with little more than the clothes on their backs, hoping to make better lives for themselves in a land of opportunity (how easy to forget that brown-skinned Mexicans hold no monopoly on “invading” the U.S. with their families and suffering racist discrimination for it).  To remember my great-grandmother Brennan, whom I never actually met, but I’m glad she stuck around to raise me mum through a difficult childhood of broken homes and alcoholism.  I remember all these things so that I don’t repeat them, or support governmental or social policies that repeat them. 

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  Please take a moment from today’s merrymaking to remember.  And if you are struggling with any variety of monkey on your back, remember that you are always free to choose. (I threw my monkey off 7 days ago, and if you happen to run into the little bugger, please kick him in the nuts for me.) You might also find this website helpful: Rational Recovery 

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As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin’ for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There’s one thing I wanna know:
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away, just makes me wanna cry.
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding?

So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away, just makes me wanna cry.
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What’s so funny ’bout peace love & understanding?
  — Nick Lowe, as performed by Elvis Costello, Bill Murray et al

I’ve been in a funk.  Like the Stranger in a Strange Land, I’ve been curled up in the fetal position, lips pressed tightly to a bottle of ripple, listening to Elvis Costello (the only musician to ever make me weep [twice!] during a concert) obsessively while trying to ride out the end of winter and mentally grok conflicting opinions, tactics, goals and visions of the future. 

I didn’t think anyone would notice or care if I stopped blogging.  But I’m highly gruntled to say that numerous people, some of whom I barely know, have let me know they miss my blathering, even months after the fact.  And the worm is turning.  Spring is almost here. Time for a young (OK, not old, then) person’s fancy to lightly turn to thoughts of struggle, sedition, mad rushes at windmills… Watch this space for the continuing adventures of a weird California chick fighting for truth, justice and the American way, LIVE… from the Free State of New Hampshire.

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