Two hundred years ago — July 31, 1809 — General Stark wrote the words that are now New Hampshire’s state motto.

As an immigrant to the Granite State, I was born in a jurisdiction whose license plates bear the stirring exhortation “Yours to discover,” so I certainly appreciate getting to drive around with John Stark’s battle cry on my rig. I reflected a little on the motto in this speech at Hillsdale College. Its lesson for our time is this:

It’s a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.

Death doesn’t always come in one fell blow. Sometimes freedom dies in a thousand cuts all but imperceptible but ultimately fatal.

As to New Hampshire, a couple of years back some executive dingbat paid a gazillion dollars to some marketing agency to come up with a tourist slogan. What do you get for that kind of expenditure? Six words: “You’re going to love it here!”

They put it on a sign on I-93 as you cross over from Massachusetts. There was a huge objection to this seven-figure insipid generic pap, and within weeks it had been replaced with “Live free or die!” I don’t know whether the state’s copyright on “You’re going to love it here!”, but it’s a fine slogan for Obamatopia.