According to a new study released by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, some of the most liberal U.S. states rank lowest when it comes to personal and economic freedom.

The study, which calls itself the “first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres,” had several key findings:

• The freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism.

• New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland.
• On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear.

• As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom.

The authors of the study note improvements on past attempts to score personal freedom in three main ways: (1) it includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens’ rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure; (2) it includes far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable; and (3) it uses new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.

“We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s ability to do the same.”

The results of this study should really come as no surprise. Areas of the nation dominated by liberal politics would naturally have less freedom. So-called progressives are all about control; from the foods you eat, to the light bulbs you use, to public schools, to social security, to whether you can own or carry a gun, to health care, energy, private property, and just about everything else in life. Freedom isn’t exactly high on their list.

Time to pack the bags and move to a freer state…