My parents wanted my brothers and me to have a better education than they did. Learning about a world beyond the one we grew up in was the key to opportunity, the American Dream.

Now, parents are told children should only learn what their parents understand and choose. This is “liberty.”

During the 2021-22 biennium, the New Hampshire House GOP was dominated by the “Liberty Alliance.” These libertarians did not prioritize careful, conservative, effective budgeting. Instead, they emphasized “freedom.” They created an educational voucher bill that ran millions over budget. Then they expanded it to cost tens of millions more. They gave COVID money to charter schools and for-profit companies instead of public schools, which could have lowered property taxes.

But worst of all, they banned metrics to monitor the effectiveness of their taxpayer-funded subsidies. The state may not ask what voucher recipients are teaching, nor how well their students are learning!

Libertarians are not conservatives.

Why are libertarians determined to abolish public education? Public schools teach students to value democracy. Libertarians believe that majority rule is “a soft form of communism.” Educated people cost more to hire; they are more difficult to take advantage of. Teacher unions oppose most libertarian goals. If parents can be convinced to trade their children’s constitutional right to an education for a modest voucher, taxes will lessen.

Who are these libertarians? Many are Free Staters, called to move to New Hampshire and run for office. Their founder, Jason Sorens, solicited 20,000 movers in 2001. He wanted to show the national Libertarian Party that focusing on one small state would speed libertarian takeover.

Libertarians had been working to gain national control since 1980. Nixon’s new Environmental Protection Agency was hounding Koch Industries. OSHA and the IRS were fining them. David Koch decided to run for vice president. His Libertarian Party Platform called for closing nearly every federal agency, Social Security and the public schools.

Voters disagreed. Koch and his running mate lost 99% of the vote. So David and Charles Koch engineered a complex network of nonprofits, think tanks and political action committees (PACs) to change American laws, courts and educational systems.

But the Kochs also listened to Sorens. They made him a fellow at their libertarian Mercatus Center in 2008. They donated $1 million to St. Anselm College. It then made Sorens director of the “Center for Ethics in Society.”

The vice president of the Charles Koch Foundation collaborated with Sorens to name New Hampshire “freest of the 50 states.” The Kochs’ “Make Liberty Win” PAC endorsed 235 candidates nationally; 113 of them were in New Hampshire.

Late last month, the Koch’s Young Americans for Liberty PAC sponsored a no-cost “Liberty Candidate Academy” in Knoxville, Tenn. It taught legislators how to support the interests of fossil fuel billionaires and large corporations under the mantle of “liberty.”

Watch for “liberty” legislators in upcoming town and state elections. They will seek to defund nursing homes, public services and libraries. They will defund, disparage and further handcuff public schools, even though the AP just announced that New Hampshire seniors were top scorers in the nation.

In 2022, the Liberty Alliance lost New Hampshire House control. The national publicity from libertarian attempts to defund the Croydon school district and the Gunstock Ski Area woke people up to the threat. Will enough people stay awake to keep them out, despite the Kochs spending $1.4 million on New Hampshire elections?

Former New Hampshire State Sen. Jeanne Dietsch is giving webinars about the report “New Hampshire: Battleground in the Fight to Dismantle Democracy.” See granitestatematters.org for information.