{"id":1302,"date":"2025-04-12T18:28:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T22:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potlatchga.com\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2025-04-12T18:28:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T22:28:55","slug":"libertarians-bears-and-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/potlatchga.com\/?p=1302","title":{"rendered":"Libertarians, Bears and Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you need a respite from the incessant braying of Trump and the MAGA crowd, pick up Mathew Hongoltz-Hetling\u2019s comedic account of the Libertarian attempt to take over the town of Grafton, New Hampshire. <em>A Libertarian walks into a Bear; The Utopian plot to Liberate an American Town (and some bears)<\/em> is a laugher with a serious message about fanatical ideological politics.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8211; no nothing except total freedom to do as they please. After all, wasn\u2019t New Hampshire the \u201cLive free or Die\u201d state?<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, Churchill\u2019s oft quoted observation that Americans always do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities, doesn\u2019t hold true here as the doctrinaire ideology of the New Hampshire Libertarians lives on in and around Grafton.<\/p>\n<p>Something to chew on given our contemporary politics\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you need a respite from the incessant braying of Trump and the MAGA crowd, pick up Mathew Hongoltz-Hetling\u2019s 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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-robert-fischer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Libertarians, Bears and Us - Potlatch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/potlatchga.com\/?p=1302\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Libertarians, Bears and Us - Potlatch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you need a respite from the incessant braying of Trump and the MAGA crowd, pick up Mathew Hongoltz-Hetling\u2019s comedic account of the Libertarian attempt to take over the town of Grafton, New Hampshire. 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