The Free State Project celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.
The project is a non-binding agreement among 20,000 like-minded people to move to New Hampshire in an effort to consolidate libertarian ideals in one U.S. state, and in doing so become a beacon of liberty for the nation and the world.
That's the idea, anyway.
Signatories agree to move to the Granite State within five years of the trigger point of getting 20,000 people to join the Free State movement.
At the 10-year mark, 16,086 people have signed on, still short of the magic 20,000.
But a little magic did already happen, with about 10 percent of those people having moved to New Hampshire. They didn't want to wait.
"I think some people thought there is no reason to wait. New Hampshire is already a pretty libertarian state compared to the rest of the country. And I and a lot of other people thought why not move there and take advantage of what New Hampshire has to offer," said Jason Sorens, who started the movement with an essay he wrote as a Yale graduate student in 2001.
Sorens, 37, of West Lebanon now teaches at Dartmouth College.
"I wrote the essay while I was a graduate student, and I proposed it as an idea that I thought would work, attracting libertarian activists to a single state in the country," Sorens said. "The state would become a model for the rest of the country."
After he wrote the essay, about 500 interested libertarians contacted him and the project took off.
Several states were considered. Eventually the Live Free or Die state won out as the ideal libertarian haven.
While some Free Staters have become known as activists or local politicians, most moved here quietly, buying homes, raising families and starting businesses. The movement attracted entrepreneurs as well as people who want to live off the grid and/or homeschool their children.
"There are a lot of people that move here and don't necessarily shout from the roof tops that they are Free Staters cause who wants that to be the first thing that people learn about you," Sorens said.
