“Freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be.”

James Baldwin

For decades, New Hampshire residents have prided themselves on being a population of contrarian individualists, bucking such trends as implementing a state sales or income tax.  Local and national pols have been quick to laud the down-home, common sense and fiscal temperance of Granite Staters. 

The mere failure to take the anti-tax “pledge” has spelled doom for countless candidates for statewide office.  Consistently, the tax-and-spend crowd has been resoundingly rebuffed by angry voters disgusted with ever increasing taxes.  For the state’s conservative majority, a bloc to which most Republicans pledge allegiance, these victories are living examples of New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” motto.

Yet, while state tax burdens are low, local property taxes are among the nation’s highest and continue to grow.  Once rural towns, now havens for urban and suburban refugees seeking to avoid the problems plaguing former neighborhoods have escalated demands for more and improved municipal and educational services and driven tax rates skyward.  Perennial rhetoric over local tax revolts, while making good press, rarely spawn promised draconian cuts,  because the votes simply aren’t there!

Granite Staters, like their fellow Americans, have accepted the spiraling erosion of their incomes as an acceptable price of “living free” … none having opted to actually fight the system.

However, submission to growing tax burdens to satiate the government’s virtually limitless appetite for the public’s money is mild when compared to the massive assault federal, state, and local governmental bodies have launched on the freedoms of Americans. 

Under the guise of combating a variety of real and perceived social ills, Americans have been seduced into ceding any number of constitutionally protected rights.  Primary justifications have included the need to save the planet, get tough on crime and permit government efficiency … both pet causes of conservatives and liberal alike.

Unfortunately, the good folks in New Hampshire, like their counterparts across the nation, have caved in and become willing accomplices in this tragedy, permitting planning boards to strip property owners of the property rights in the name of environmental protection; allowing police departments to abrogate Fourth Amendment search and seizure projections to fight an unwinnable drug war; tolerating the collection, processing and dissemination of information on private individuals by nameless and unaccountable private and public reporting entities; accepting restrictions on freedom of speech simply to appease the sensitivities of the advocates of a politically correct society … and the list continues endlessly.

The same Granite Staters who vehemently protest replacing the state’s motto on license plates see no hypocrisy in limiting the permitted activities of others.  Rather they cheer loudly when local police authorities squander massive on fruitless attempts to prosecute participants in such victimless crimes as prostitution, gambling when not run by religious or community service organizations, and even the recreational use of substances like marijuana.

As with all attempts to reign in personal behavior, advocates of restricting individual liberties are amply armed with a litany of  justifications as to why their fellow citizens need to be protected from themselves.   Liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats all share the same dangerous vision of a society in which it is incumbent on government to undertake an increasing paternalistic role in regulating the lives of its citizens.

Within the past month, yet another example of  “the ends justify the means” mentality surfaced in Hanover … where a local ordinance permits local police to “pull over” a pedestrians they believe may be less than twenty-one years old and whom they suspected of  having alcohol in their “bellies”.  These apprehended suspects can then be forced into submitting to a breathalyzer test to see if they are drunk.  If so, the offending students can be charged with the criminal offense of internal possession of alcohol. 

Once again, the Fourth Amendment is in jeopardy!

Are New Hampshire “Live Free of Die” champions outraged.  Hell, no!  First, Hanover’s ordinance doesn’t affect them  and second, most still accept the fantasy teenagers can be prevented from drinking if the authorities simply get tough with them.  Sounds surprisingly like the clean out the prostitutes, just say no to drugs and eliminate the sins of wagering campaigns … which have all been notable for their civil rights abuses and complete ineffectiveness.

Almost alone in condemning such abuses of individual freedoms has been the often maligned NH-ACLU.  It would be wise for the state’s citizens to listen to their concerns.  Today’s underage college students with a couple of beers in their belly could easily become tomorrow’s innocent homeowners or even political dissenters. 

While Marx may have overstated the case, “While the state exists there can be no freedom”; it is indisputable that, “people are as free as they want to be.”  Regretfully, Granite Staters are increasingly neither free nor ready to die to to protect their liberties!