Q: Does NH have the right to peacefully declare our independence?

A:  The Declaration of Independence reminds us that self-determination is a basic right, and that no one — not even the King of a world-spanning empire — can take it away.  No one seriously denies that the people of New Hampshire had the right to declare our independence from a corrupt, distant, and overbearing government in 1776.  It’s equally undeniable that NH has that same right today.

Q: How would an independent New Hampshire govern itself?

A: New Hampshire’s own Constitution has governed our state wisely and well since 1784 – three years before the United States even existed.  In addition to laying out the structure of New Hampshire’s government, it contains strong, time-tested safeguards protecting all of the individual rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.

That’s why the Foundation supports independence under the terms and authority of our present Constitution.  It’s hard to improve on nearly 230 years of peace, prosperity, and freedom.

Q: Can New Hampshire survive without money from Washington?

A: Not only will the people of NH survive, we will thrive! For each dollar the people of New Hampshire send to Washington, we get about seventy cents back.  This dismal return on our hard-earned money has placed New Hampshire among the nation’s top five “donor states” — states that send more money to Washington than they receive — for over twenty years.

Worse yet, the Federal government isn’t content to merely bleed us of our wealth.  They demand that New Hampshire enact statewide policies to suit Washington’s tastes before they will graciously agree to send us pennies in return for our dollars.  Their dictates are expensive, poorly conceived, and repugnant to New Hampshire’s most dearly held values — but the government in Washington will withhold our own money from us if we do not obey them.

An independent New Hampshire could keep the millions of hard-earned dollars that currently melt across the border each year and disappear forever into Washington’s coffers.  We could invest our money to solve our most pressing problems here at home, and we could set policies that reflect our national values without fearing impoverishment at the hands of Washington’s paymasters.  As an independent nation, New Hampshire will be even wealthier and more resilient than we are today.

Q: Isn’t NH better off as part of a bigger country?

A: There was a time when New Hampshire and Washington DC shared the same interests and stood for the same values.  Sadly, that time is past.  Today, DC is a government of midnight raids, warrantless searches, confiscatory taxation, and an insatiable appetite for power and control.  They’ll continue trying to erode New Hampshire’s culture of peace and freedom as long as we allow them to.

Fortunately, New Hampshire has all the makings of a prosperous and successful country.  Of the ten richest countries in the world, five are geographically smaller than New Hampshire.  As an independent nation, NH would instantly take our place as the 12th richest country in the world.*

Furthermore, our strong, diversified economy, our border with Canada, and our commercial shipping ports make us ideally situated for international trade — including trade with the United States.  As an independent nation, New Hampshire could continue to trade with the US in peace and friendship, much as the United States and Britain did after the end of the American Revolution.

* – Source: Wikipedia, “List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita”

Q: Will New Hampshire have to create a military?

A: The Foundation takes no official position on this — we’ll leave it to the people of New Hampshire and our elected representatives to decide how we should defend ourselves against the threat of foreign invasion. However, it’s important to note that most countries don’t need large militaries to defend themselves, and many don’t have militaries at all.

Switzerland, for instance, has never had a large military, and yet they remained secure from invasion and attack even with the conflict of two world wars raging all around them.  Their success is largely due to their traditions of private gun ownership and vigilant neutrality.  The Swiss model is just one of many successful approaches that New Hampshire could consider when developing a strategy for its national defense.

Q: What about programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security?  Will I still be able to receive US benefits after New Hampshire declares independence?

A:  US citizens who retire abroad are fully eligible for Social Security.  If you retire in an independent New Hampshire, current US law allows you to receive Social Security benefits as long as you maintain your United States citizenship.  However, you won’t be eligible for Medicare or Medicaid unless you choose to move back to the United States.

More importantly, though, the sad truth is that these programs can’t be sustained.  There is no Social Security trust fund, and never was; Medicare and Medicaid drive the Federal government deeper into debt every year.  For generations, the government in Washington has forced us to entrust them with our financial security, and for generations they’ve defrauded us by running a nation-wide Ponzi scheme that would land any private insurer in prison.  Now the fraud is collapsing, and unless we take action our retirees will soon be crushed under its weight.

As an independent nation, we in New Hampshire would have no need to chain our citizens to the mistakes of the past.  We could work to ensure access to quality medical care for New Hampshire citizens young and old.  We could take care of our current retirees more humanely and effectively than the government in Washington ever has.  Most importantly, we could give our young people renewed confidence that their own retirement years will be worth saving for.

Our future, and our children’s future, is too important to entrust to the government in Washington.  We in New Hampshire can do better.

Q: Couldn’t this turn violent?  Won’t the United States military bomb and invade if NH peacefully declares its independence?

A: The Foundation is absolutely committed to a peaceful separation from the United States.  We firmly believe that there is no room for a civilized, modern Western nation to resort to violence simply because some of its people choose to peacefully go their separate ways.

It’s true that convincing the government in Washington of this may take some work.  Fortunately, history is on our side.  In 1991, the Soviet Union — a brutal Communist dictatorship that ruthlessly murdered millions of its own citizens — watched fourteen of its member states repudiate the Soviet ideology and declare their independence.  There was no bloodshed and no attempt to re-conquer the newly free nations.

Furthermore, the same pattern has played out across the globe for the past hundred years.  In 1900, there were between fifty and sixty sovereign nations in the world.*  Today, there are about two hundred.  The great centralizing trends before the 20th century have been completely reversed. Today, the future belongs to smaller nations and local control.

The Foundation believes that the time is ripe for this decentralizing trend to take root in the United States.  Now more than ever, American citizens in New Hampshire and elsewhere distrust the Federal government and understand that bureaucrats in Washington are ill-equipped to micromanage the lives of free people.

When the time comes for us to peacefully assert our independence, this understanding will gain us the support and sympathy of open-minded Americans throughout the nation.  Ultimately, the government in Washington will have no choice but to recognize our rightful status as a sovereign nation — not because it wishes to do so, but because its own citizens will demand nothing less.

Many more questions are answered in works such as ‘Articles of Secession‘ by Alu Axelman and ‘Texit‘ by Daniel Miller.

*  – Source: Guinness Book of Answers, 1976