I was at a recent travel show, and one of the booths was promoting New Hampshire. Thete were several signs reading “Live Free!” (without “or die” at the end to complete the state’s motto).
Does anyone know if they are phasing out the complete motto (violence, etc)? I don’t think it appears on their license plates anymore. Maybe this was simply a politically correct way of displaying the motto without upsetting anyone? I can’t really see the whole motto being displayed in large letters at a family-oriented event.
For obvious reasons, in its marketing campaigns the New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism Development prefers to focus on the first half of the State’s motto. Too much reflection on the second half is not conducive to encouraging people to visit NH. Nor is there any desire to encourage people to approach the motto as a multiple-choice question.
I don’t think we can draw any wider conclusions about the official motto of the State from this.
Live with some reasonable state imposed restrictions to your actions and lifestyle and perhaps some social restrictions to your speech and behavior or die?
In liberal MA, the NH motto, which reflects the libertarian crappy social net and laissez-faire capitalism of their neighboring state, is sometimes referred to a “Live Free and Die.”
Could be worse. I think it was Saskatchewan years ago looked for submissions for the provincial motto and one of the more popular was"Saskatchewan - Gateway to Alberta".
I prefer the policies we have where I live. For reasons relating to why license plates are issued in the first place, it’s illegal to obscure or deface any part of a license plate. For reasons relating to a reassuring absence of lunatics running our governments, we don’t have crazy slogans on our plates that we may wish to cover up.
Former NH resident here with some historical context - I lived in NH for real from 1969 (age 11) to 1976 (when I graduated high school) and it was still my “home base” for many years afterward, as my parents continued to live there and it was my anchor during my peripatetic college/grad school years.
Back in the days of Gov. Mel Thompson and William Loeb (editor of the local paper, the Union Leader), you could choose your license plate: it either said “Live free or die” or “Scenic New Hampshire.”
“Live Free or Die” was the choice of all right-thinking residents. Those who chose “Scenic New Hampshire” (my late parents, among a few others) were considered to be weenie leftists, objects of scorn for most residents.
In a way, the divide over license plates was a harbinger of the extreme divides we see across the US today.
I might add that one of the more tragically ridiculous Mel Thompson pronouncements was the proposition that NH should have its own nuclear arsenal. Probably to protect the state from those socialists in Massachusetts.
I don’t pay a great deal of attention to NH politics since the state receded farther and farther into the rear view mirror of my life, but AIUI, things are still distressingly conservative there, but nothing like it was in the 1970s.