LANCASTER, N.H.—As the sun goes down north of the White Mountains, lasers flare on and Buzz’s Big Gay Dance Party begins. It’s the end-of-week blow-out for the 2,000-odd people who have been at Roger’s Family Camping Resort and Motel for the festival affectionately termed “the Burning Man for libertarians.” Inside, as true dark falls, flushed bodies move below the winking disco lights, surrounded by brilliant strobes, a whomp-whomp beat, enough haze to make you think this is already a dream.
Mark Warden, State Representative of New Hampshire, District 39, is dancing in a red boa and man-skirt. Michael Sylvia, New Hampshire District 6, is there too, and both former senator Robert C. Smith and Andrew Hemingway, candidate for New Hampshire governor, have been seen floating around camp, looking to pick up libertarian votes.
[As were 2 candidates for President, 2 other candidates for US Senate and a candidate for US House.]
This is the 11th summer “liberty-minded” folks have ventured into the mountains for the bacchanalia of the
Porcupine Freedom Festival. Nights can get rowdy at PorcFest, but under clear summer skies, vendors’ tents cluster near maple trees and families fire up grills or listen to clean-cut kids play kickass bluegrass in the shade. Ashes from several bonfires smolder in the main meadow. The only thing separating PorcFest from any other summer festival are the guns, bristling from thigh holsters and slung casually across sunburned shoulders.
PorcFest is the largest and most visible program of the
Free State Project, which started in 2001 when a 24-year-old Yale grad student wrote a manifesto suggesting that people stop complaining about mainstream politics and do something about their fears: “establish residence in a small state and take over the state government.” By 2003, the F.S.P. was recruiting members and voting on which state should be home base for the “libertarianvasion”
[That word has nothing to do with what the FSP is about. It is a slur and an insult.] that was scheduled to launch once 20,000 people signed on to move. (While the “Live Free or Die” state might seem like the obvious choice, Wyoming was actually a close runner-up.
[For 1st place votes, the results were 60% for NH and 40% for WY.] ) Several thousand members have already moved to New Hampshire, and the F.S.P. says it's only 4,000 signatures shy of setting the move-date for the rest of the members.
As Free Staters trickle into New Hampshire, they’ve begun to make their mark on local culture. It’s no longer unusual to see Bitcoin ATMs and 3-D printers here, 3,165 miles from Silicon Valley. PorcFest sponsors have included such tech-notables as Bitcoin big-shot Eric Voorhees, and from the Satoshi Salon to Bitcoin Not Bombs and the Liberty Hackathon, the tech world is inescapable at PorcFest.
As high-tech meets rural New England, the state has become an interesting proving ground. Despite the irony inherent in a community of isolationists, F.S.P. has gathered some of the country’s brightest minds in the pursuit of a do-it-yourself life philosophy, a quest that has led to the cutting edge of both politics and technology.
PorcFest
About 2,000 people paid $45-100 dollars in order to camp out for the week at PorcFest. The festival has been held here for the last 11 summers.
Internet Cowboys, Bang-Bang
Cody Wilson has a cleft chin and a jawline prone to stubble. He spent his childhood in Little Rock, Arkansas, and told the Guardian he was named for a town in Wyoming, a sort of nomenclature-as-manifest-destiny. Cody, the town, was named after William Frederick Cody, more commonly known as Buffalo Bill, and Cody, the person, certainly embodies the Wild West spirit. A self-identified “crypto-anarchist,” Wilson’s an Internet cowboy who made headlines last year by releasing the first plans for a 3-D printed gun. Before the State Department took the file down, one hundred thousand copies were downloaded within two days.
Bill Domenico was one of the F.S.P. members
[The FSP doesn't have members. The FSP has participants and I am not aware if Bill is a participant or not.] who got a copy of Wilson’s file. “I spend every day of my life with electronics in a 4,000-square-foot lab,” Domenico says. A compact man with wire glasses, he built a 3-D printer of his own design last spring in Manchester, mostly with parts he already had on a shelf. “You start out getting blobs,” he says. “The first thing you try to print is anything.” By chance, the same week Domenico got his printer working, Wilson released his CAD files. Seven days later, Domenico had successfully printed a copy of Wilson’s gun.
He thinks he’s the first to have done so. He hasn’t fired it. The point seems to be that he should be allowed to print whatever he is able to innovate.
For Domenico, his technologist's outlook meshes well with Ayn Rand's argument that individuals should act in their own self-interest, unbounded by government. “I’ve asked myself why this is such a technology-heavy crowd. The number of software engineers is off the charts,” he says. “When you think about things from a cause-and-effect vantage point, you see, wow, this [mainstream government] isn’t working out the way it’s supposed to.”
3-D Printed Liberator
Bill Domenico's 3-D printed gun
Mark Warden—who, when he’s not wearing a boa, splits his time between a real estate office and the New Hampshire legislature—also noted F.S.P’s tech-heavy demographic. “A larger than normal percentage of libertarians are tech-savvy,” Warden says. Known as the Free State Realtor, he has a broad perspective on who’s actually moving to the Live Free or Die state. “It’s easier for [tech people] to relocate because they can work remotely or from home,” Warden says, “but secondarily, Free Staters are generally tech-savvy because they’re very rational creatures. There’s quite a bit of natural overlap between the liberty mindset, which is empirical, and IT people.”
According to Warden, increasing gun legislation in the aftermath of a tragedy like Sandy Hook is “hysteria.” Bearing arms is important for many libertarians, and the idea of restricting personal choice, even to increase safety, is a tough sell. 3-D guns is just a fresh head on an old argument. As the price of printers plummets, the technology is becoming fairly accessible, even for non-geeks. A basic 3-D printer now retails for around $500, and while a gun is just one of many shapes, as Wilson’s fond of putting it, for those worried about gun safety it’s a frightening trend.
While Domenico can’t legally transfer—sell, trade, or give away—guns, he’s had several potential buyers, and it irks him on principle to have to turn them down. To what extent the rights of an individual like Domenico should be protected as they come into conflict with societal goals (like school safety) is the unanswered question at the core of most of our recent national controversies, underlying the debate on everything from the Hobby Lobby decision to Obamacare to marijuana legalization. Forget red or blue. In terms of the zeros and ones of politics, there are those who think the building block of society is individual action—and those who don’t.
