By KATHARINE WEBSTER, InDepthNH.org

WEARE, N.H. – Remarkably, not a single person checked their cellphone during a three-hour “Dialogue on Liberty and Virtue” hosted by the Free State Stoics in Weare on Tuesday.

Instead, they passed around books about stoicism, encouraged journaling for goal-setting and self-reflection, and discussed how to incorporate the virtues promoted by stoicism – temperance, wisdom, justice and courage – with libertarian political philosophy, which they summarized as “Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.”

“Libertarianism is a very big umbrella, not a complete philosophy for life,” said Eric Brakey, executive director of the Free State Project, a nonprofit that aims to persuade 20,000 “liberty-minded” people to move to New Hampshire and influence both state and local governments and laws.

Brakey, who led the discussion, said that he studies and practices both stoicism and Taoism, which build on the libertarian principles of non-aggression, minimal government, personal freedom and property rights to help people “live a good life.”

The discussion of stoicism was part of the Porcupine Freedom Festival – PorcFest for short – an annual, week-long gathering of libertarians hosted by the Free State Project that has attracted as many as 2,000 people in years past to a campground in the White Mountains. Many of those who attend are considering a move to New Hampshire. The event has also been a big fundraiser for the Free State Project.

But this year’s festival is a much more modest affair, after PorcFest outgrew the campground in Lancaster and failing to find another venue to host an event featuring open carry of firearms, open use of marijuana and psychedelics, sales booths for small businesses, and an area for nudists.

PorcFest 2026 includes 10 mini-festivals and events scattered across the state, ranging from “ManCamp,” where people can learn chicken and hog butchering and blacksmithing, to candidate workshops, rucking, music, discussions about cryptocurrency and family activities.

A pine tree flag, a symbol of the American Revolution adopted by many Free Staters is pictured on the lawn at Wearehouse. KATHARINE WEBSTER photo

Why Libertarianism and Stoicism?

Although the Free State Stoics discussion was small, it did attract people who are considering moving to New Hampshire from Florida, the Midwest and Maine. Some have come to PorcFest for several years running.

It also demonstrated how large an umbrella the Free State Project has become. While virtually all of the Free Staters in the state legislature – including House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, who announced his campaign to become House Speaker earlier this week – are Republicans, the non-politicians range from self-described anarchists, anti-racists and atheists to anti-communists, conservatives and Christians.

Elliot Boutin, an Air Force veteran from Vermont who attended the University of New Hampshire, said he learned about the Free State Project after he joined Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian-conservative youth organization whose standard-bearer at UNH was Rep. Sam Farrington, R-Rochester. Farrington’s signature issue this year was a “campus carry” bill that would permit students to bring guns onto the state’s public college campuses.

Boutin said his libertarian beliefs are grounded in his study of the U.S. Constitution and Vermont’s history during the Revolutionary War. And he came to stoicism after growing up in a “very splintered family,” with one “get stuff done” parent and another “very emotional” parent.

“I’m very anti-communist, and communists want you to be as emotional as possible,” he told the group. “I trained my mind to look for logic. Over time, libertarianism and the non-aggression principle make the most sense and bring prosperity, [and] stoicism is the backbone to enforce that philosophy. … If you can control your emotion, you’re far less likely to do bad things to people.”

Zoë Bode, who introduced herself next, argued that the modern conception of stoicism is truncated. The founding philosophers did not advocate suppressing emotion, but instead “alchemizing it into something productive.”

“A lot of the modern stoicism tends to be about optimization at any cost. It’s about making yourself an unfeeling robot that doesn’t get affected by anything,” she said. “One of the biggest issues in the liberty movement is so many of us are obsessed with our ideals and our virtues and what we consider liberty, and we’re not willing to meet in the messy middle of life” and take positive action together.

Stickers at the entrance to Wearehouse. KATHARINE WEBSTER photo

Divergence from Republican Politics

A core practice of stoicism, Brakey said, is discerning what you, as an individual, can and cannot control. You cannot control world events, or the president and Congress, or even your own health – you might get cancer, for example – but you can control your own attitude toward those events, as well as your actions, he said.

What the Free State Project seeks to influence is the Statehouse and local government. On that front, it has been hugely successful. A closely allied organization, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, said in its 2025 “Liberty Rating” that more than 200 of 400 state representatives voted pro-liberty at least 67 percent of the time, as did 16 of 24 senators.  

All of them are Republicans. That’s a long way from the state of affairs in 2002, when then-Gov. Craig Benson, a Republican, welcomed the Free State Project with open arms – and the state Republican Party turned against him. Because of that, he lost re-election.

“We are the Republicans now,” Brakey said.

Although many libertarians agree with Democrats on issues such as decriminalization of marijuana, reproductive rights, freedom from government surveillance and equal rights for LGBTQ people, Democrats in New Hampshire vehemently oppose the Free State movement, Brakey said.

“People pursuing more direct political action have found that the Republican Party was the place to do it,” he said.

While they support drastic tax cuts, a strong military and Second Amendment gun rights, the Free State Project also has major differences with the Republican Party, both the neo-conservative wing – and now with President Trump.

Brakey said the state could experience “a huge blue wave” during the midterm elections, “because Donald Trump decided to start a war with Iran, very stupidly, and a lot of reasonable people say, ‘Boy, I don’t want to be associated with that.’

“Even I at times think, ‘Do I want to vote for Republicans this go-round, because of what they’re doing on the national level?’ Of course, I know the liberty Republicans in New Hampshire have nothing to do with what the national Republicans are doing.”

Recent Controversies

Brakey said that, by some counts, 10,000 Free Staters have now relocated to New Hampshire. But even as the movement has grown, so have the rifts within it, he said – perhaps an inevitable result of humans’ tendency toward tribalism.

That has been most evident in the past five years. In 2021, a group of Free Staters took over the New Hampshire Libertarian Party, and in 2022, one of them, Jeremy Kauffman, ran for U.S. Senate on the Libertarian ticket.

In 2023, Kauffman was kicked out of the Free State Project over his racist, homophobic and anti-Jewish social media posts. In 2024, the state Libertarian Party endorsed Donald Trump for president instead of the national Libertarian Party candidate. State party tweets also declared that anyone who assassinated Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, would be hailed as “an American hero.”

Likewise, earlier this year, the state party was investigated after posting that it would be “ethical” to kill New Hampshire lawyer and activist Andru Volinsky for proposing a state income tax to fund public schools.

In March, Kauffman was elected chair of the state party, and in April he was arrested after fighting with people after a car crash in a grocery store parking lot, during which he reportedly yelled racist epithets at one bystander. He faces two misdemeanor charges.

And last month, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party was kicked out of the national party for violating principles of non-aggression and personal liberty, as well as by-laws that forbid endorsing candidates of other parties.

Still, two months ago, rumors spread on social media that longtime Free State Project board member and former president Carla Gericke, an anti-racist lawyer who grew up in South Africa, had stepped down because of the board’s refusal to uphold the ban on Kauffman’s participation. Gericke did not return a phone message Thursday seeking comment.

On Tuesday, Brakey declined to criticize Kauffman, although he acknowledged “areas of disagreement within Free State circles” that have “caused some confusion.”

That was in reference to Kauffman’s latest venture: the Free State Party, which, according to the Independent Political Report, is a network of Free Staters who hold “nationalist, pro-natal or right-wing views.” Osborne is reportedly a supporter.

Brakey said that he would appreciate the group clarifying that it is not affiliated with the Free State Project. Still, he said, he cannot control other people’s actions.

“Part of the impetus for things like the Free State Stoics … is to build a positive vision” instead, he said.