Wes Dull: Be wary of returning Free Staters to office this election

To The Daily Sun,

In a letter written to The Sun on Sept. 2, Rep. Glen Aldrich claims he has never denied being an active member of the Free State Project, but in my opinion neither has he been very open about that affiliation. Here are some facts: The free staters are registered as a nonprofit 503(c)(3) educational organization. They trace their origins to an essay submitted in 2001 to an online journal called the “Libertarian Enterprise”. The essay was written by Jason Sorens, a political science student and Libertarian at Yale. Today Jason is director of the Center for Ethics in Society at St. Anselm College.

When Free Staters seek office, they don’t openly run under that banner. Since their umbrella organization is a 503(c)(3) organization, donations are tax deductible — those funds cannot be used for campaigning. They likely don’t run under the Libertarian banner because that party rarely manages to elect candidates to any office. So they masquerade as either Republicans or Democrats. In Republican areas of the state, they run as Republicans. In Democratic areas of the state, they run as Democrats. This last fact serves no purpose other than deceiving the voters.

Objectives of the Free State Project: get 20,000 interested participants to move to a low population state, take over the state government through the electoral process, eliminate or slash government functions and services to the bone, and secede from the union.

Granite Staters are therefore the guinea pigs in a political science project cooked up in the vacuum of an academic ivory tower. If that is what you want, then vote to return Michael Sylvia and Glen Aldrich to office. If that is not what you want, then vote for somebody else.

Wes Dull

Gilford