Meet the implacable, off-the-grid libertarian working to energize Congress
By George F. Will
June 21, 2023
At the pandemic’s beginning, members of Congress dispersed, and both parties’ leaders in the House of Representatives agreed, as rules permit, to pass the Cares Act without a quorum or roll call if no one objected. Thomas Massie objected to spending $2.1 trillion that way.
Having forced Congress to reconvene, the Kentucky Republican drove all night to get to the Capitol, where the House was united in bipartisan fury against him. To spite him, House leaders passed the bill on a voice vote. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Massie a “dangerous nuisance.” He would, he says, have been offended if she had not appended the adjective, which affirmed him as consequential.
Now in his seventh term, the libertarian does not always play well with others. He usually thinks like — but is too much an individualist to be a member of — the obstreperous Freedom Caucus. Prickly independence comes naturally to someone from a county south of the Mason-Dixon Line that has a monument to Union Civil War soldiers. One-hundred and seven of them from the county died for the Union.
His grandmother, sharp as a tack at 96, is the granddaughter of a Union soldier. She vetted at Sunday dinners all those who wanted to become spouses of her seven children. None are married to secessionists, a.k.a. Democrats.
Massie, 52, lives on his farm in an off-the-grid, solar-powered timber house he built using pegs, not nails. He and his wife, Rhonda, his high school sweetheart, graduated from MIT, where he earned two engineering degrees (electrical and mechanical); while students, they started a technology business. Massie made his first primitive robot in seventh grade.
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