The refreshing libertarianism of New Hampshire

Crossing a state line on one of the American interstate roads, drivers are normally greeted by a variety of signs. They may advertise the delights awaiting the visitor – ‘10,000 LAKES’ or ‘FAMOUS POTATOES’ plus instructions about local speed limits. And normally, as the coup de grâce, ‘BUCKLE UP’.

Travelling north in New England on the I-95 and passing from Massachusetts into New Hampshire the message is more discreet. A small sign announces ‘Buckle up under 18. Common sense for all’. In other words, in New Hampshire, adults of voting age do not have to wear seat belts. It is the only state in the US where this is not compulsory, perhaps the only place in any mature democracy. Even Russia and China have enshrined buckling up in law. 

The notion of liberty in the US takes different guises in different places. The white South’s concept was to have the freedom to first enslave black people and then segregate them. Western ranchers always demand to be free of the federal government, unless there are subsidies in the offing. New Hampshire’s version is more visceral and philosophical.  

‘Live Free or Die’ is the state motto, popularised by John Stark, the state’s most famous general in the War of Independence. This is sanitised on the road map given away at the I-95 tourist office to ‘Live Free’. ‘Live Free and Die,’ dissidents might say. For this is not just a slogan. 

New Hampshire is long but thin: much bigger than old Hampshire but only just bigger than Wales. Its population is a mere 1.4 million and usually it has only a few weeks in the limelight once in four years – as the setting of the first primary in the nation, in which presidential aspirants trudge through deep snow into steamy small-town diners pretending to listen to the thoughts of chunky men in check lumber jackets.