Over on the "Have You Noticed Thread" Irish in Baltimore wrote in response to my comment about Chicago"Quote from: Joe, aka, Solitar on November 13, 2002, 02:39:44 pm
Chicago has been broke in many respects for over a hundred years. Yet many still live there in that hive. And people wonder why I abhor large cities and have little respect for the socialist, communitarian, metropolites who live in them.
Et tu, Joe? It seems like I spend a great deal of time responding to your posts about how cities are pits of socialism, yadda yadda yadda, and how everyone should just live in the great wide open where the deer and the antelope roam, where everyone is free...
4.) I've lived in the country (southwestern Pennsylvania). I'm not knocking it, but it's not for everybody. Even the women chewed tobacco, my dog was shot by a drunk hunter while tied up in my yard, and my neighbors were drug addicts that dumped their garbage in the yard and drew rats that found their way even to my home, a quarter-mile away. Here, in the city, we have some of the same problems, but at least here I can walk to a football game or an art museum if I want to.
Irish,
Though you state you are not posting insults specifically insulting rednecks, your paragraph 4 above certainly does imply that and may be some of the basis for an apparent poor view of rural folk...
As to my insult of some of those who live in cities, I specifically wrote:
"I abhor large cities and have little respect for the socialist, communitarian, metropolites who live in them."
I realize that not everyone who lives in cities meets the above description. Sometimes via internet or personally I meet people from large cities who are libertarian or classical liberals or intelligent patriotic gunowners who vote for freedom.... I find myself thinking that it would be a tragedy if those cities were nuked and we lost such people.
Well, at least I would be missed!
The word "some" wasn't in your original post, so it wasn't clear that you were only referring to a segment of American urbanites. I can see how that would happen. For instance, I certainly didn't mean to infer that all rural citizens are ignorant dirty drug addicts. I'm well aware that that's only a segment of the rural population.
And that was my point.
Given the laws and regulations that cities have imposed upon their residents (or, more accurately, the laws that city voters have permitted their governments to impose upon them), I often I wonder why they continue to live there... You can perhaps see that some of us get as exasperated with a city-centered perspective as some of you do with our rural perspective. So what is a reasonable balance? What size cities and how much urbanization would be adequate for you folks? How large can the present cities we are considering be in the Free State without biting off more than this bunch of neophyte activist politicians can deal with?
I have consistently said that I think the state we choose should be a marriage of both rural and urban, for several reasons. One, to show the rest of the nation that libertarian principles are applicable everywhere the state should be representative of America. Two, FSPers have wildly varying preferences, and the state chosen should be able to reasonably accommodate everyone. Three, companies and citizens looking to relocate for freedom will want and expect a city. There's a reason why Boeing relocated from Seattle to Chicago, not from Seattle to Bozeman.
As far as how big cities can be and still be winnable by the FSP, it is my opinion that all cities in the candidate states are winnable. I helped run four campaigns in Baltimore City, with 11,000 per square mile, and won three of them. The secret to winning these campaigns is that, unfortunately, most don't really care how you feel about taxes, or the environment, or farm subsidies. They care about what you can do for them. Can you get their sidewalk fixed? Can you have their alley cleaned? Can you get the dead tree at the corner replaced?
With an army of activists, going door to door and making phone calls and getting the little things done for citizens, winning the cities will be no problem. I gaurantee it.
Yes, I recognize Cheyenne and Boise as cities, but I still wouldn't want to live there. The reason is, in a word, convenience. There's the convenience you can find in any city: close to your neighbors, close to shopping, and basic cultural assets. And then there's the convenience you can only find in a major metropolitan area: major sports teams, symphonies, large art museums, etc. None of the states we are considering contain a major metropolitan area, but three are close enough to easily commute: Delaware, Vermont, and New Hampshire. If I live in Cheyenne, and want to take my kid to a baseball game, how far do I have to drive?
This is obviously a preference, one that if necessary I will waive. I am committed to this project, regardless of where it takes me, and I hope you share this commitment. If we pick Wyoming, I'll be there. If we pick Delaware, I hope you follow through as well.
I think that New Hampshire may be the best compromise for all of us, for reasons that I will shortly post in response to Robert's post at
http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=82Yes, I know you apparently think highly of Hong Kong and Amsterdam. But we are dealing with American cities that have, for the most part, sunk pretty low in the freedom index. Maybe Anchorage or Boise can be saved since they have "only" a quarter million or so people. Maybe increasingly socialist northern Delaware or southern New Hampshire can be turned around even though they each have a half million people or more. Yet many here doubt the FSP can turn around tiny Vermont with only 600,000 people and the Burlington MSA with only 170,000. If the FSP's activists can't handle Vermont, they won't be able to handle northern Delaware or southern New Hampshire.
Your logic is far too simplistic. I think we probably could handle Vermont. The primary problem there isn't the size of the population, it's the political culture there. Vermont was traditionally very freedom-oriented, but it was unfortunately the object of an organized invasion, similar to the FSP, but with very different goals. Hence, the completely inconsistent application of some libertarian principles (guns, gay marriage, pot, school choice) and some socialist ones (taxes, welfare, etc.)
New Hampshire has a larger population, but it's citizens are much more freedom-oriented. It was never the subject of such an ideological invasion, and I think the majority of people who are migrating there now from Taxachusetts are drawn there by the kind of freedom we seek for ourselves. New Hampshire isn't under invasion, it's already a refuge. Again, if you wait until the end of the day I can provide ample evidence for this at the above thread.