NH Legislator: "We Need To 'Restrict Freedoms' Of Conservatives"

A New Hampshire legislator wants her constituents to know that she feels conservatives are the “single biggest threat” her state faces today, and she wants to use her powers to legislate to “pass measures that will restrict” the freedoms of  Granite State conservatives.

In a blog post made last month on the left-wing site Blue Hampshire, 3rd District State Representative Democrat Cynthia Chase advised her fellow legislators to use their positions to make New Hampshire less welcoming to any conservative or libertarian planning on moving to her state—not to mention those already in residence.

For those unaware, a conservative project of sorts has been underway in New Hampshire since 2001. The idea is that Americans of conservative ideals are to move to New Hampshire, gather in communities, run for office, and work to drive the state toward libertarianism and conservatism. It is called the “Free State Project” and adherents are called “Free Staters.”

These Free Staters figure that the state’s motto, “Live Free or Die,” should really mean something and it is these citizens whose freedoms legislator Chase wants to oppress.

In her December 21 post, Chase wrote that, “Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today.”

“In the opinion of this Democrat, Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today. There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal. In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will find here. Another is to shine the bright light of publicity on who they are and why they are coming.”

Of course, it is one thing to be a proponent of laws that might have theunintended consequences of restricting others’ freedoms. If one truly believes in such policies, well, they may be disastrously wrong, but at least they’d be honestly wrong. A fine point, to be sure.

But here we have a legislator that doesn’t just want to pass laws that are tangentially restrictive. She wants to purposefully use her powers to write laws to target individuals with whom she disagrees, take away their freedoms and liberties, and all in the hopes that the citizens she is oppressing might move away from her state.

As New Hampshirite Steve MacDonald notes, “this sounds like tyranny.”

Imagine if a legislator had written a blog post targeting the freedoms of gays, or women, or some other minority? One would think that the media would go wild with such a story. But here we have an elected official suggesting that government be used in the United States of America to eliminate freedoms for certain citizens in order to gain political control and the media is silent.

Sounds like tyranny, indeed.