If you need a respite from the incessant braying of Trump and the MAGA crowd, pick up Mathew Hongoltz-Hetling’s comedic account of the Libertarian attempt to take over the town of Grafton, New Hampshire. A Libertarian walks into a Bear; The Utopian plot to Liberate an American Town (and some bears) is a laugher with a serious message about fanatical ideological politics.
In 2004 a group of Libertarians hatched a plot to take over the town of Grafton, N.H. Known as the Free Town Project, they hoped to eliminate its government and live totally free so that there would be no government, no taxes, no laws, no civic responsibilities – no nothing except total freedom to do as they please. After all, wasn’t New Hampshire the “Live free or Die” state?
The upshot of the experiment ranged from the bizarre to the ridiculous before turning disastrous for the tiny community. After gutting much of the local government and tax base, the libertarian faith in voluntary contributions and labor failed to materialize and the town fell into disrepair. Roads were not paved, businesses closed, and community services declined. As Grafton’s freedom-loving residents ignored hunting laws and ignored proper food disposal, the bear population increasingly became a threat to the lives and well-being of the citizenry.
Unfortunately, Churchill’s oft quoted observation that Americans always do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities, doesn’t hold true here as the doctrinaire ideology of the New Hampshire Libertarians lives on in and around Grafton.
Something to chew on given our contemporary politics….