Manifesto  

Reclaiming the American Frontier

by Tim Condon

It's time for a new generation of pioneers to claim their heritage as free people.

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Americans, remember your history! If you love liberty, if you see our traditional freedoms being whittled away, join us in the Free State! Think of where we came from, both as a people and a country. There is a crisis coming. We Americans are on the verge of losing something historical, something precious, something real.

More than 100 years ago a University of Wisconsin history professor presented a paper at a meeting of the American Historical Society in Chicago. The monograph presented a new and controversial theory of American development which sparked a debate that continues to this day. The paper: "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" by Frederick Jackson Turner. The theory: Americans are fundamentally different from their European forebears; they are a new and special people, molded by the American frontier experience.

The fulcrum of Professor Turner's thesis was the availability of inexpensive or free land for all. Never in modern history, he noted, had a people had access to "land for the taking." The frontier experience of abundant land, he argued, had made Americans independent, restless, individualistic, inventive, exuberant; the first "authentically free" people. If the frontier experience, with land for the taking at its center, had somehow made Americans into a new and different people, reasoned Turner, then the end of the American frontier — announced by the office of the U.S. Census in 1890 — was occasion for pause and consideration, if not outright alarm.

In placing land at the center of his theory, however, Turner made a crucial mistake. His observation that the New World had produced an exceptional and unusual people — with their bravery, their hard-nosed practicality, their vivacity, and their disdain for class distinctions — was accurate, but his assertion that the American frontier itself "created" this new American was inaccurate. Rather, the American frontier had empowered such people, where before they had been powerless, marginalized, and ignored in the still-feudal precincts of the Old World.

Eric Hoffer, the "longshoreman philosopher" who penned "The True Believer," wrote that: "This vast continent with its towns, farms, factories, dams, aqueducts, docks, railroads, highways, powerhouses, schools, and parks is the product of the common folk from the Old World, where for centuries men of their kind had been beasts of burden, the property of their masters — kings, nobles, and priests — and with no will and no aspirations of their own. . . . Only here, in America, were the common folk of the Old World given a chance to show what they could do on their own, without a master to push and order them about. History contrived an earth-shaking joke when it lifted by the nape of the neck lowly peasants, shopkeepers, laborers, paupers, jailbirds, and drunks from the midst of Europe, dumped them on a vast, virgin continent and said: "Go to it; it is yours!" And the lowly were not awed by the magnitude of the task. A hunger for action, pent up for centuries, found an outlet. They went into it with ax, pick, shovel, plow, and rifle; on foot, on horse, in wagons, and on flatboats. They went into it praying, howling, singing, brawling, drinking, and fighting."

Thus, it wasn't the frontier that had created a radically new kind of people, as Professor Turner asserted. The new Americans — a rigorously selected subset of the European population — were already extraordinary. Karl Hess, a libertarian luminary who wrote prolifically and passionately about individual freedom, was once asked what he thought had made America so spectacularly successful as a nation. "That's easy," he replied. "We got the best people."

Does this mean that Americans are unique in the annals of human history? Not at all. In fact, wherever governments smother a people and destroy their right to live peaceably as they see fit, any alternative will be seized upon, even if it is dangerous, difficult, and fraught with chance. Who is willing to risk that? Only those who can't "get with the program." The misfits, nonconformists, and rule-breakers who refuse to accommodate themselves to injustice and tyranny. The 20th century alone is rife with examples. Cubans fled Castro's communist dictatorship for Miami, in the process turning all of south Florida into an international multicultural metropolis. The Chinese who fled communist China landed on a few square miles of rocky coastline of few natural resources; by the 1970s they had made Hong Kong's economy one of the largest in the world. And then there was Vietnam. As George Gilder explained, in the wake of the war in Vietnam "The United States won the only valuable remaining resource of Indochina: the boat people. All the land and slaves they left behind are next to worthless."

In light of Frederick Jackson Turner's thesis, the question then is not "What happens when the frontier closes?" but rather what can endanger and threaten the liberties that the new Americans created for themselves and us. The answer comes from Thomas Jefferson, who warned, "The natural order of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." Governments, more than any other institution in history, have been the handmaidens of oppression, war, slavery, injustice, and inequality. Periods of relative freedom in history, with their associated peace and prosperity, are rare exceptions to rule by governments run amok. George Washington warned similarly, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

In light of these warnings, let us examine the condition of America today. We Americans are in the process of losing many of our long-held freedoms and God-given rights. The frontier that lives on in our hearts is increasingly being strangled by ever-expanding government.

Paul Craig Roberts of the Hoover Institution — former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal and former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury — wrote this in early 2004: "The protective principles in law that ensure our civil liberties — no crime without intent, no bills of attainder, no retroactive law, the attorney-client privilege, no self-incrimination — have been eroded beyond recognition. Wars against the Mafia, drug dealers, child abusers, and terrorists — accused whose convictions are thought necessary at all costs — have eviscerated the Bill of Rights. Today not even multi-billionaires can fight off prosecutorial frame-ups."

Thomas G. West, professor of politics at the University of Dallas, observed also in early 2004 that, "America has less freedom of speech today than it has ever had in its history." As just one of several examples, Prof. West noted that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (the McCain-Feingold bill) placed "substantial limits on the right of political parties and nonprofit organizations to publicize their views on candidates during election campaigns." Furthermore, in December 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law and "saw no conflict with the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and of the press. Yet it is impossible to imagine a more obvious violation of the First Amendment."

Our constitutional freedoms are today under very serious and widespread assault, possibly more so than at any other time in our history. The Free State Project is an effort to meet and reverse this degenerating situation. Despite the fact that the frontier spirit of individualism and freedom now resides only in our hearts, there is still value in having a geographic home for those who value the Constitution and freedom above all else. The Free State Project is creating that new home, a place for today's "misfits and non-conformers" who refuse to accept the attenuation of heretofore untouchable American individual rights.

A single low-population state was chosen by a vote of the Free State Project membership and announced to the world on Oct. 1, 2003. This state, New Hampshire, is blessed with great beauty, a strong economy, and a population already disposed toward low taxes, small government, and individual freedom. For those who uphold the system of constitutional federalism bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers, for those who would resist the further encroachments of an ever-expanding federal government, the Free State is our natural home. We are creating an authentically and traditionally free geographic entity in the midst of an increasingly unfree polity. We will demonstrate to the world the benefits of small government, low taxes, privatization, decentralization, and individual rights that may not be transgressed.

The Free State Project is the reopening of the American frontier. The migration is already beginning.

Join us.

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

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