IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, fear and loathing of the Free State Movement. Plus, a push for “unwelcoming” legislation.

UPDATE: Reader Kristo Miettinen emails:

Your recent link to “Fear and loathing of the Free State movement” brings to the fore a belief that I have held for some time, namely that annoying nanny-state legislation is not intended to promote safety, or health, or any other such objective sort of well-being, rather it is intended to select desirable neighbors (and for Dem politicians, to select a reliable blue electorate).

Thus gun restrictions drive gun owners (and those who sympathize) to move from blue states to red; restrictions on soda serving sizes drive fast-food consumers out of cities whose power class would prefer to associate with more refined palates, etc.

My personal anti-favorite (neologism needed – brother can you spare a term?) is New York’s selective retirement tax exemption, where pensions are tax-free if they were earned working for government (state, local, or federal) but taxed if they were earned in the private sector. Retired schoolteachers are welcome to stay and vote in their sunset years, but
retired engineers are welcome to pack up and leave as soon as their economically productive years are at a close.

It is no accident that as blue states lose population to general internal migration, they also get bluer. It is deliberate demographic tinkering, designed to select for the right sort (i.e. the left sort) of people.

Interesting thesis. By this token, people in red states who don’t want to be flooded by blue-voting refugees from places like Illinois or California should be adopting laws — open carry of firearms, say — that will tend to scare those people away.