When I first moved to NH and found out about NHFree, I thought the "civil disobedience" crowd were *hurting* the freedom movement more than helping it, buy turning off "average people" who otherwise would be very receptive to pro-freedom messages.
Then as I got active in the NH State House, I saw what an amazing "multiplier" effect these actions have on the elected politicians. Sure, it's the same 20 people over & over again, and only a small handful actually get arrested (Lauren, Mike, Russ), they generate a HUGE amount of media in-state... and that makes the politicians think that NH is veritably swarming with free-staters, even though there are only a few hundred of us.
As such, I've come to conclude that if civil disobedience garners lots of mainstream media attention (perfect example was Mike Fisher's "outlaw manicure", that was brilliant), and gets more people to move to NH for freedom, than
on balance it is a good thing, even though it does turn off other people who I believe are more directly effective in actually making changes happen.
Do keep in mind that:
a) 80% of free-staters are NOT the civil-disobedience types, instead they are more politically-oriented -- running for office, helping people run for office, reading the bills, infiltrating political parties, writing Letters to the Editor, etc, etc
b) some of the "politico" types also post on nhfree.com -- over half of the Board of Directors of the
]NH Liberty Alliance post on NHFree, and none of us are much into Civ Dis.
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Topic: What's the point of the NHFee.com'ers getting arrested all the time? (Read 7523 times)