LANCASTER, N.H.—As its motto suggests, the “Live Free or Die” state is already pretty friendly to liberty-minded Americans—enough that the Free State Project has enticed scads of libertarians to move there.
It’s also one of the few places where a critical mass of Free Staters could influence politics. The population, though fast-growing, remains low, and its state legislature is a sprawling 400-member body, making entryism a viable strategy.
Throw in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, still the reality for Republicans though not Democrats, and Northwoods libertarians suddenly matter on the national stage.
That thought may have drawn Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Larry Elder, and Vivek Ramaswamy to the Free State Project’s Porcupine Freedom Festival, a yearly libertarian Woodstock held at a campground in the White Mountains.
Ramaswamy spoke with the individualist masses on a gray, rainy Saturday.
Distant green peaks framed the thicket of tents, RVs, and people; closer up, posters advertising cryptocurrency and detailing market concentration in the meatpacking industry shared a crowded space with peace sign flags, anti-Federal Reserve bumper stickers, and a small outdoor gym–the Free State Barbell Club.
Scattered here and there, even in bunches along the road to and from the campground, were signs emblazoned with Vivek’s motto: “Truth,” not to be confused with former President Donald J. Trump’s Truth Social.
Late in the morning on June 24, tech CEO Ramaswamy was fielding questions from the audience after talking to economist Matt Kibbe.
One man asked the GOP’s 2024 contender about his proposal to raise the voting age to 25 for young Americans who don’t pass a civics test or perform some form of national service. Would non-voters under 25 shoulder the same tax burden as their peers with the franchise?
“I think that’s actually a very good argument. I hadn’t thought of that dimension of that,” he answered, before pointing out that legal immigrants still pay taxes in the U.S. before earning citizenship.
Ramaswamy told the libertarians they agree with him on “85–I actually think it’s a lot closer to 90 percent” of issues.
Outside, a steady drizzle intensified into a storm. The GOP hopeful’s voice grew louder to compete.
“Where my parents come from, halfway around the world, this is a good sign from the heavens telling us we’re doing something right in this room,” he declared. His parents migrated from India to the United States over 40 years ago.
Skepticism from Some on Foreign Policy, Pro-Churchill Comments
Ramaswamy repeatedly promised the libertarians at PorcFest that he will take the presidency if he wins the New Hampshire primary.
“We will follow through on everything we laid out here,” the candidate promised a crowd who’d thronged a tent near his bus soon after he spoke in the pavilion.
Yet, some at PorcFest were less than excited about Ramaswamy’s pledges. The crux of the issue is foreign policy.
“He is better than some of the other candidates on Ukraine. He does seem to want to stay out of getting involved in World War III,” said Reed Coverdale, who leads the Free State Based project, in an interview with The Epoch Times.
“But even though he would deny wanting war with China, all of his policies that he’s pushing for would lead to a similar situation that we have in Ukraine with China or Taiwan,” Coverdale continued. He added that he doesn’t think the U.S. should economically decouple from China.
Coverdale argued that the tightening relationship between Beijing and Kabul following the United States’ Afghanistan withdrawal is symptomatic of misplaced American priorities when it comes to foreign policy.
“They [the Chinese] are fighting a different battle. We’re approaching it as a military conflict when it’s really not even a conflict. It’s a competition through economics,” Coverdale said.
To Keith Knight of the Libertarian Institute, Ramasamy’s comments about World War II-era British Prime Minister Winston Churchill reflect what he sees as a dangerous view of history–one that could incline the United States to unwarranted aggression abroad.
“We must prepare to defeat China both economically and militarily,” Ramaswamy said during a speech earlier this year.
An accompanying caption on Ramaswamy’s Twitter post with that clip stated, “We need Churchill, not Chamberlain.” He used a similar line on podcaster Michael Knowles’ show.
That rhetoric is in keeping with the popular understanding of Churchill and his predecessor, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain is portrayed as an appeaser of the rising National Socialist regime in Germany. Churchill is portrayed as a virtuous wartime leader who rose to the occasion in fighting it.
Flanked by two other wise men of the Libertarian Institute–foreign policy experts Kyle Anzalone and Connor Freeman–Knight smoked a tobacco vape as he told The Epoch Times what he thinks is missing from the conventional narrative.
“It was actually Neville Chamberlain who on September 3, 1939 declared war against Germany for invading Danzig. And this was a result of a war guarantee that they gave to Poland,” he said. He believes President Biden’s guarantees to Taiwan similarly commit the United States to future war with China.
“This leads to a foreign policy bankruptcy–that you just don’t have the ability to bring peace and stability to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, South Phoenix, and they want to bring it to Kyiv and Taipei and Tehran. It’s extremely costly, and it’s done under the guise of, ‘We’re going to protect these people,’” Knight continued.
While Chamberlain is criticized for allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland of interwar Czechoslovakia, Knight pointed out that the territory wasn’t exactly independent once Allied intervention played out.
Thanks in part to Churchill’s momentous negotiations with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet General Secretary Josef Stalin, a different authoritarian regime came out ahead in Eastern Europe.
“The cost of the Second World War was tens of millions of deaths, [and] Stalin got all of Czechoslovakia,” Knight said.
Additionally, while many know of the German Blitz of British cities that began in September 1940, Great Britain under Churchill initiated its own civilian bombings in May 1940, targeting critical heavy industry in Germany’s Ruhr region during Germany’s rapid invasion of Western Europe.
In 1944’s “Bombing Vindicated,” the British Air Ministry’s J.M. Spaight acknowledged that the war’s many deadly strategic bombing campaigns began with a precedent set by the Royal Air Force.
“There was no certainty, but there was a reasonable probability, that our capital and our industrial [centers] would not have been attacked if we had continued to refrain from attacking those of Germany,” Spaight wrote.
“Spaight believed British cities might have been spared had Churchill not first resorted to city bombing,” Pat Buchanan wrote in his book “Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War,” quoting this passage.
In 1945, with Germany on the verge of defeat, Churchill and the Allies carried out what The Associated Press characterized as “deliberate terror bombings of German populated [centers],” at a time when ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, some settled there for centuries, were being expelled and killed in massive numbers.
“As much as I hate Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, these people don’t usually have to bear the cost. It’s the civilians,” Knight said.
Some have also blamed Churchill’s wartime policies for the 1943 famine in Bengal. Up to several million Bengalis died in connection with that event.
“Churchill is not necessarily someone we should admire at all,” Knight said.
In a subsequent interview, The Epoch Times asked Ramaswamy about his anti-Chamberlain and pro-Churchill comments.
“There’s some nuance there, but I’m using it to more stand for an emphasis on the Churchill part,” he said.
“I think that each circumstance is different, but I think the guide that he gives us is fortitude grounded in who the nation actually is, and pride in standing up for that principle,” he added.
Ramaswamy’s explanation didn’t persuade Knight.
“As far as protecting the country, at what cost, we need to ask,” he told The Epoch Times in a follow-up interview.
“As great as it is for people to have heroes, too often, this hero is invoked to justify mass murder campaigns,” he added.
‘Better Than What We Have Right Now’
While Coverdale, Knight, and others have concerns about Ramaswamy, others at PorcFest were more positive.
“I think he’s a great candidate. He’s a lot better than what we have right now,” said Evan Morgan, who spoke with The Epoch Times after asking Ramaswamy a few questions near his campaign bus.
Morgan, who described himself as an anarchocapitalist, said he agrees with Ramaswamy about the need to scale back the government.
“I’m somebody who thinks the proper place of government is non-existent, you know, zero. I’m sure Vivek himself would not necessarily agree with that sentiment,” he added.
He prefers Ramaswamy to both Elder and Kennedy.
Like Morgan, Aubrey Freedman said Ramaswamy is “better than what we have right now.”
He spoke with The Epoch Times as Ramaswamy was speaking in the pavilion.
“I don’t agree with him on the anti-China thing, so that kind of turns me off, to be honest,” Freedman added.
He thinks stoking opposition to another rival abroad could fuel the military-industrial complex.
“I might be a little bit more in favor of RFK–a little bit,” he added.
The anti-woke entrepreneur’s message met with more support from Luke Saul, an audience member who raised his fist in support during Ramaswamy’s pavilion talk.
Why the gesture of solidarity?
“He was saying we need to go back to the three branches of government and [describing] the problems with the medical-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, and the fourth branch of government itself,” Saul told The Epoch TImes.
While Saul doesn’t want war between the United States and China, Ramaswamy’s talk of economic decoupling resonated with him.
“We’ve got to fight the economic war. I think he’s right about that,” he said.
‘I Think He’s Sincere’
Anarchists, Misesians, Objectivists (and so on and so forth, in various permutations) may, under certain circumstances, make sacrifices and cut deals to advance their political aims. Generally speaking, however, compromise isn’t in their nature.
It’s only fitting that the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is currently overseen by a very gentle and nonaggressive figure capable of herding cats, Robley Hall.
Hall, a tall, bearded man with long blonde hair, sat down to talk with The Epoch Times in his party’s tent, not far from the Free State Based tent.
“I’m a lifelong libertarian,” he said.
As one of the earliest Free State Project signatories, Hall’s been in the Granite State for over two decades now. But he only stepped up his engagement recently.
“I’ve mostly been doing my own thing. I started really getting involved in libertarian politics during COVID times, because things looked desperate,” he said.
Hall stressed that libertarians, though frequently aligned with the GOP, can work with either or both major parties.
“We want liberty. We want less intrusive government. Frankly, I don’t care which party anybody is in that’s doing that,” he said.
And what does he think of Vivek?
“I think he’s sincere. I think he has some good ideas–certainly, his work, or his stated intention, to tear down the administrative state is something we all agree with. Whether he can pull it off is another question because people have tried,” Hall said.
Live from @PorcFest
📍Lancaster, New Hampshire pic.twitter.com/pvWia7D9wd— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) June 24, 2023
He pointed out that Trump had attempted to rein in the agencies by creating the Schedule F employee category via executive order. Schedule F, which would have made it easier to fire many federal bureaucrats, was struck down by President Biden the day after his inauguration, also by executive order.
Reigning in Ever-Expanding Government
Ramaswamy has argued he can end the administrative state through existing law.
“I cannot promise to reform it. I can promise to shut it down on strong statutory authority, starting with 5 U.S.C. 3302, which sets the guidelines for the federal government’s hiring policies, to the 1977 Presidential Reorganization Act. I have the best understanding of anyone who’s run in modern history of how to actually do it,” he told The Epoch Times at PorcFest.
The first statute, 5 U.S.C. 3302, states that “the president may prescribe rules governing the competitive service.”
The Presidential Reorganization Act lets the president prepare reorganization plans for agencies. Yet, it explicitly forbids the president from creating or totally eliminating specific agencies through those plans.
“I don’t know that he [Ramaswamy] grasps how entrenched the administrative state is and how hard they’re going to fight him. You can see what they’re doing to Trump even now–and you can see what they did for Biden, with his son,” Hall said, alluding to Hunter Biden’s recent plea deal.
The libertarian party leader told The Epoch Times that Ramaswamy won some support in his camp through his promises to pardon Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht is serving a double life sentence plus forty years with no possibility of parole for operating the darkweb hidden service on the Tor network.
“It’s low-hanging fruit if you want to appeal to libertarians at PorcFest,” Hall said.
Ramaswamy has also promised to pardon Douglass Mackey, known online as “Ricky Vaughn” in reference to the sports comedy film “Major League.” Mackey could face up to 10 years in prison for spreading a satirical vote-by-phone meme as Vaughn during the 2016 election season.
When it comes to fentanyl and other drugs, Ramaswamy and Hall stand further apart.
Hall doesn’t believe America’s drug problem would be solved through more aggressive border enforcement.
“People have been smuggling drugs across borders forever,” he said.
On the other hand, and unlike some other libertarians, Hall doesn’t see Ramaswamy’s rhetoric on foreign policy as overly aggressive.
“I haven’t heard him say anything that makes me think he’s hot to start a war with China. If he did, that’s obviously a no-go zone, because we’re all going to die. He has talked about trying to diminish the interest or influence of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] in the U.S.—that’s probably good,” he said.
In the end, Hall’s views on Ramaswamy are tempered by a sense of what’s possible in the United States of America circa 2023, or ’24.
“I don’t think he’s lying. I don’t think he’s just pandering; I think he wants to do this. Whether he grasps the scope of the challenge, I don’t know,” he said.
