“It is striking that some of the most Republican states are the most free and all the least free are Democrat states, isn’t it?”

Rhetorical question right?

What drives me crazy is the locust like behavior of Liberals. They destroy their home states and then leave to more friendly, and free, Conservative states and then continue to vote for politicians of a type that were responsible for the problems they fled! Just look at NC, CO, NV, et al. We COnservatives create business-friendly climates that attract business and labor from all over the US but the workers that move to Red states never seem to make the connection to business success and Conservatism.

between states with more freedom and lower overall population density across total area. Could be sociologically related like the more rats you pack in a cage, the more you need to do to keep them from killing each other.

I’ve lived in South Dakota, Colorado, Idaho, and Texas, liked them all and considered staying in each .. especially Idaho. (amazingly beautiful state with really great people) But, I kept going back to my home state, California. Can’t beat the weather, beaches, mountains, skiing, and tech job opportunities. Looks like I sold out some freedom for comfort.. Maybe this is an insight to my liberal mind set.

Unfortunately, New Hampshire is quickly becoming New Massachusetts and will soon be racing off that list. In this legislative session alone our esteemed house has passed a seat belt law, the transgender bathroom bill and homosexual marriage. They took 4 hours debating the “bathroom bill” on the last day the budget needed to be passed. The budget was rushed through and punted to the senate as an incomplete work. We are now starting to hear the rumblings of an income or sales tax being implemented.

From the study: “Regression analysis demonstrates that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration.”

Liberalism has been compared to the swine flu or another virus on here before. I think this is empirical confirmation of that. Can you imagine just enough of TheOne’s Hope army fleeing the oppressive laws they created in. say, NY, so that instead of having 70% of NY and 40% of Kansas, he has 51% of each?

As a silver lining, one they saturate the entire country, there’ll be no free states left to move to, so they may have to start governing based on reality as opposed to their ideas on how humanity can be perfected.

who live in the states with the least amount of freedom. It has been this way for awhile and yet they keep electing people that keep them in that condition. You get what you get.

I only hope that they do a follow up, comparing liberalism to whether or not states are becoming more or less free in addition to their current level of freedom.

I raise this point, because I strongly suspect that liberal states are becoming even less free as they incerasingly attack religious freedom by legalizing gay marriage and further denying our Christian heritage.

as a 15 year resident of Chicago (prior to that my entire life was spent in the late great state of CA), IL is a joke, extremely high taxes (including 10.25% sales tax in Chicago alone), extreme corruption and waste, not to mention worthless urban public schools. The one bright side, as a former homeschooling parent, is that IL has absolutely no restrictions on homeschooling. I can take my child out of public school tomorrow if I decided to homeschool again, with absolutely no interference from city/county/or state. That is one freedom I appreciate.

Trying to directly correlate liberalism with anti-freedom by citing this study is a bit weak- there are plenty of other things that could correlate these anti freedom metrics the study uses.

As another poster already stated, population density might have more of an impact on how restrictive a local government may be. Demographics, education levels, and geographics could all also play a role.

Aside from that, I’d take exception with the idea that the metrics this study uses to define “anti freedom” are necessarily bad. For instance- the level of taxes of a local government do not follow a simplistic high=bad, low=good model. Take Maryland vs Alabama, for example. Maryland may have higher local taxes, but perhaps the reason for that is to support the superior public education system in Maryland (2 of the counties in Maryland are top10 in public education while Alabama as a state is pretty close to last). This model says that higher taxes = less freedom, and the conclusion from there is that Maryland is worse off. However, if you ask Marylanders you will likely find that they feel the education they received offsets any freedom lost from the increase in taxes needed to pay for it. In effect, higher taxes may mean less freedom but they still might be a good thing if they pay for something worthwhile. A similar argument could be made for restrictive gun control laws vs population density.

Also, to all the commenters upset about liberals moving into their states and turning them purple/blue- I don’t think mass migrations are the real cause here. The last two elections saw huge numbers of Republicans actually changing party identification to Democrat. Perhaps your neighbor who just moved in is a migrated Democrat, but your neighbor on the other side probably changed his party identification.

Last, would it be fair for a liberal blog to point to a study ranking education systems in states vs Political party identification and draw the conclusion that conservatives favor stupidity? I’m sure many on this board would take offense at such a claim- but why use the same logic to paint the other side as “anti freedom”?

are very different than what goes on in the county. If the local district wants to give someone a hard time they can find some kind of truancy charge for them and also sick social services on them. TX which is not liberal and has great homeschool laws on paper has had horrible cases of problems from the local districts. These are small disctircts too not the big ones. I’m sure it’s driven by money. I know people in NE states with pain in the arm laws on paper that have no problems as long as their ducks are in a row in the disricts filing cabinet. If you are in any state and have a child with special needs you should expect a hard time, the money for a child with a label is just to big for them not to try and get some.
Republicans/conservatives are often part of the school district too unlike maybe other state departments where we expect them to be dems or very liberal anti-family types. This harrassment is done by republicans not just dems.

I’m sure there is some type of word for the law on paper for the state vs how things are done in a specific county, I don’t know what it is though.

I have lived in California, Colorado, Tennessee, New Hampshire, a few other states and most of my life in my home state of Wyoming. There is something seriously wrong with the study if it ranks Wyoming, with zero State Income Taxes and low sales taxes, behind Colorado which has both a sales tax and a substantial income tax. Having experienced both, I will take Wyoming every single time in terms of freedom.

Wyoming does have fairly high taxes but they are all aimed at one industry: mineral extraction. I happen to be in that business and it makes me one of Wyoming’s heavy taxpayers that carries the load for the rest of the people in the state. Most of Wyoming’s people understand that they are getting a better deal than almost everybody else but they only have a dim understanding of why.

But in fairness, mineral extraction taxes are a completely different animal from almost every other kind of tax. First, unlike other types of property which is assessed and taxed every year, mineral property is not taxed while it is in the ground. My family has owned coal and oil and gas minerals for over 100 years and never paid any taxes on them while other tax payers who owned property of similar value have paid taxes. It makes a certain amount of sense to even the ledger and play catch-up when the minerals are finally extracted. The second reason is that when minerals are extracted and shipped away, the state is permanently diminished. Most property is very persistant and can be taxed year after year but when a million tons of coal gets loaded on a train it is gone for good. It makes sense for the State to make hay while the sun is shining and they have done a fair (but not great) job of capturing this value for posterity in the form of a permanent mineral trust fund that will pay interest to future generations.

In short, comparing Wyoming’s extraction taxes to Colorado’s income taxes is an apples for oranges comparison. The average Wyomingite has a far lower tax burden then the average Coloradan.

In short, I think this study is GREAT. Let the liberal locusts flood Colorado! We don’t want them here.