Skate to Where the Puck is Going

As you’re no doubt aware, the U.S. just had “the most important election of our lifetime”. What happened in New Hampshire? And what does it mean for New Hampshire secession?

New Hampshire was, and remains, neither a “red” state nor a “blue” state. It’s a deeply divided state, much like the United States as a whole. According to Ballotpedia.org, this is how New Hampshire residents are registered to vote:

• Democrat – 31.29%
• Republican – 29.62%
• Independent/Undeclared – 39.09%

In the 2022 midterm election, New Hampshire voters voted for the status quo. They reelected all of the following:

• Governor Chris Sununu – Republican
• Senator Maggie Hassan – Democrat
• U.S. Representative Chris Pappas – Democrat
• U.S. Representative Annie Kuster – Democrat

Each incumbent defeated their opponent(s) by a wide margin.

New Hampshire voters also rejected two ballot measures. One would have made a minor amendment to the state constitution. The other was to hold a state constitutional convention.

Lessons Learned

What lessons can we learn from this election?

The majority of New Hampshire voters are either satisfied with the status quo, or weren’t impressed enough by any of the new candidates to take a chance on a new person.

In light of these results, it seems clear that a vote for independence from the U.S. would fail by a wide margin if held today. In a time of the highest inflation rate in decades, a lot of anger about the way the COVID-19 pandemic was handled, increasing social fragmentation and identity politics, a majority of New Hampshire voters shrugged their shoulders and said “Meh. It’s not that bad.”

Skate to Where the Puck is Going

When I launched this website in the spring of 2022, I had no illusions that New Hampshire was going to secede any time soon. It’s a crazy idea to most people. It was a crazy idea to ME not that long ago.
But, as the great Peter Diamandis, Founder & Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, said: you don’t launch a business using technology that’s available today. If you do, then by the time your product is ready to hit the market, it will already be obsolete. Instead, you launch a business with an eye to the technology that will be available in two to five years. Or, to put it in sports terms…

“Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

Wayne Gretzky

The puck, in this string of metaphors, is the mindset of the average American. How is the average American going to feel about the status quo in two to five years?

My prediction is “not good. Not good at all.” And the primary reason for that will be the state of the U.S. economy.

“It’s the Economy, Stupid”

I’m not going to get into a lengthy discussion of the national debt, interest rates, inflation, etc in this article. There are many places to get informed about those things. However, the U.S. economy is clearly unsustainable. Whether we’re going to experience hyperinflation, depression, or a hideous combo of both, no one can say for sure at this point. But most people who aren’t blatantly lying agree: America is rapidly approaching an economic day of reckoning, and times are going to get tough.

And tough times are often what it takes to push people out of their complacency, to stop just saying “meh” and voting for the same old same old.

Tough times are what will make more and more people who value independence and resent ever higher taxes relocate to more liberty-friendly, low tax states. And according to Freedom in the 50 States, well, New Hampshire is #1 in that regard!

And REALLY tough times are what will make a significant portion of the New Hampshire population finally decide that enough is enough, and it’s time to seriously considering leaving the sinking ship of the U.S. Titanic. What might that trigger be? Here are just a few possibilities:

—Rolling out a Central Bank Digital Currency and making cash illegal
—Another pandemic response where people are forced to stay at home and watch their businesses be destroyed
—Unfunded pension plans and Social Security system, and millions of people discovering they’re not going to get the money they were counting on for their retirement
—Nationalization of 401k plans (Will the Feds really be able to keep their hands off this honeypot when the payments on the national debt exceed the budget?)
—Elon Musk’s brave release of the “Twitter Files”, and political leaders on both sides saying “the Bill of Rights is not absolute” (Democrats in email to Twitter) or “…allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” (Trump)?

Only time will tell. But it WILL tell. More and more Americans are going to reach their personal breaking point. And, thanks to the beacon of liberty held aloft by the Free State Project over the past twenty years, more and more of them will eventually make their way to… New Hampshire. And then, an increasing number of New Hampshire residents are going to be open to the possibility of peaceful secession.

One more thing: almost no one saw the collapse of the U.S.S.R. coming. One year it was there, as it had been for generations, and the next year it just collapsed under the weight of its own internal social, political, and economic conflicts. Think it can’t happen here? I don’t know about you, but we’ve already had a whole BUNCH of things happen that I never thought would happen here.