Sometimes, I am looking for a quick solution to a problem–like someone asked for a head shot, and I think, Oh, I’ll just pull that from online, and then I Google myself, and then I’m like, Huh, WTF is dat!?! Here are a few of those…
Granite Grok Micro-Interview:
From a few years ago, but I give a shout out to Porcupine Real Estate, Ian Underwood and Bare , Granite Grok, and the Free State Project in THIS VIDEO.
The Leader of Sons of Liberty During the Second American Civil War?!?
The Fire Rises Wiki is a collaborative wiki with the goal of informing and documenting the Hearts of Iron 4 mod The Fire Rises and its submods.
International article from Switzerland: The American Libertarian movement aligns nudists, gun lovers, vaccine skeptics, and enemies of the state…
In 2023, NZZ came to PorcFest: American libertarians want to establish their own state in New Hampshire. Every year, thousands of supporters meet at the Porcupine Freedom Festival to discuss progress. But are their ideas of freedom just another form of authoritarianism?
“The ecstatic pessimist Carla Gericke
The same goes for Carla Gericke. The 52-year-old is a lawyer, real estate dealer, author of «The Ecstatic Pessimist» and former president of the Free State Project. She moved from New York’s Chinatown to New Hampshire in 2008. She likes the fact that one doesn’t have to pay income or wealth taxes here and that the state has only 1.3 million inhabitants. For her,libertarian philosophy can be summed up with the words: «Do not hurt anyone, do not take anything away from anyone.»
Gericke grew up in South Africa. «I’ve always been a rebel,» she says. «When you grow up in a repressive apartheid state and you are a bit awake, you inevitably begin to question what is given.» This skeptical attitude remains, even if one is somewhere else, she says. Out of outrage at injustice, she became a lawyer, and in 1996 she won a green card in the lottery and came to the United States.
Asked about the many gunmen at Porc Festival, Gericke, whose hobbies are yoga and shooting, says it’s worth remembering that there are many guns in New Hampshire, but the state ranks the lowest in gun-related deaths in America, only 0.9 per 100,000 people. California however, with the strictest gun laws in the United States, has an average of 6.1 gun-related deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
In the end, isn’t libertarian aversion to taxes simply selfish and antisocial – the ideology of rich people who only look out for themselves? «It is more that the current system is unfair,» she says. «Only the wealthy can afford a good education and health care in the U.S., and the police are primarily targeting the poor. Is the current school curriculum up to date? In the age of the internet, should teachers be the gatekeepers of knowledge and continue to break the will of students and demand obedience?» She also doesn’t have an ideal solution, but feels that alternatives to the ruling institutions must be considered, more choices and a free market with incentives – that is, with diversity, breaking the monopoly of bureaucratic institutions.
In 2010, she faced a 7-year prison sentence for filming an officer who stopped her car for a police check. What is now commonplace thanks to smartphones was still a novelty at the time. After a long battle with the authorities, she was finally acquitted in a spectacular court case in 2014.
Dressed only with a weapon
Gericke generally advocates decentralization, which is why she is also working towards the secession of New Hampshire. «The U.S. will fall apart like the British Empire,» she says. Gericke, who hitchhiked through Africa and Asia for a long time, is a refreshingly creative, spontaneous, vibrant woman who simply wants to be free. Any dogma is alien to her and she sees the Free State Project as a playground, an experimental field.
Many others, however, alienate with their fanatical or freaky nature; they do a disservice to the advocacy of self-responsibility and anti-paternalism. This also includes people in the movement who talk in authoritarian terms, but claim to advocate freedom. For example, 38-year-old Jeremy Kauffman is a tech entrepreneur who launched the blockchain-based network LBRY to share documents and movies, making him one of the remarkably many libertarians in the internet and crypto scene. Last year, he ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat. With his eloquent manner, he is ubiquitous at the lectures and panels at the Porc Festival. At first glance he seems likeable, open and intelligent; but for years he has been irritating others with statements that don’t fit the propagated love of freedom.
At first glance he seems likeable, open and intelligent; but for years he has been irritating others with statements that don’t fit the propagated love of freedom…” READ MORE…
NH Progressive Jon Hopwood inadvertently makes me sound like the coolest ancap alive in THIS HIT PIECE…