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A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town
A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears.
Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road.
When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness.
The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.
Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road.
When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness.
The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2020
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October 16, 2020Absolutely amazing. The story of a tiny remote New Hampshire town that has prioritised not paying taxes and avoiding state interference over everything in its history including, crucially, a functional fire department and bear control. This place naturally gets swarmed with libertarians attempting to demonstrate Randian principles by smoking a lot of weed and suing the government a lot, also unfettered open carry. Things go poorly.
It's terrifically written, hugely readable and extremely funny, but not poking fun at its subjects (beyond what is reasonable, anyway). Some of them are obviously just contrarian arseholes but others are people with a very strongly defined set of values where 'liberty' comes well before 'life' or 'happiness' or 'society' or 'safety'. Which, fine, their choice, if they *want* to live in an amenity-free dump rather than pay $300 a year more tax. Which they do.
These are people whose value system puts individual liberty well above their own health, safety or comfort, who choose to live shittier-than-necessary lives themselves as well as letting their neighbours twist in the wind for lack of support, not just as a matter of terminal shortsightedness and paranoia but as a real principle. It's not that they're necessarily in denial of the overwhelming evidence in favour of eg fire services or funding municipal amenities, or NOT REGULARLY FEEDING BEARS DOUGHNUTS LIKE THEY'RE PIGEONS JESUS CHRIST. It's more that any sort of socially imposed restriction or demand seems to them repugnant, a profound moral wrong. I find it deeply hard to come up with a good reason to be against socialised healthcare or pandemic mask-wearing, but this book does provide some insight into that mindset.
The line that really struck me was in a discussion of taxes, and how paying enough to provide a decent place to live is correlated with happy people. But, the author observes, maybe it's not that paying more in tax and getting the benefits makes you happier. Maybe it's that happier people are readier to contribute to the good of others) whereas by and large the committed libertarians in this book seem to be mostly aggressive, grating, and miserable. (And, notably, the most positive and likeable one is also the volunteer fire chief, ie someone who does in fact contribute to his community.)
An absolutely fascinating read, while being hugely enjoyable, and very funny indeed.
It's terrifically written, hugely readable and extremely funny, but not poking fun at its subjects (beyond what is reasonable, anyway). Some of them are obviously just contrarian arseholes but others are people with a very strongly defined set of values where 'liberty' comes well before 'life' or 'happiness' or 'society' or 'safety'. Which, fine, their choice, if they *want* to live in an amenity-free dump rather than pay $300 a year more tax. Which they do.
These are people whose value system puts individual liberty well above their own health, safety or comfort, who choose to live shittier-than-necessary lives themselves as well as letting their neighbours twist in the wind for lack of support, not just as a matter of terminal shortsightedness and paranoia but as a real principle. It's not that they're necessarily in denial of the overwhelming evidence in favour of eg fire services or funding municipal amenities, or NOT REGULARLY FEEDING BEARS DOUGHNUTS LIKE THEY'RE PIGEONS JESUS CHRIST. It's more that any sort of socially imposed restriction or demand seems to them repugnant, a profound moral wrong. I find it deeply hard to come up with a good reason to be against socialised healthcare or pandemic mask-wearing, but this book does provide some insight into that mindset.
The line that really struck me was in a discussion of taxes, and how paying enough to provide a decent place to live is correlated with happy people. But, the author observes, maybe it's not that paying more in tax and getting the benefits makes you happier. Maybe it's that happier people are readier to contribute to the good of others) whereas by and large the committed libertarians in this book seem to be mostly aggressive, grating, and miserable. (And, notably, the most positive and likeable one is also the volunteer fire chief, ie someone who does in fact contribute to his community.)
An absolutely fascinating read, while being hugely enjoyable, and very funny indeed.
September 16, 2020
How much would you pay right now to laugh out loud, and laugh hard, about something that has nothing whatsoever to do with current events? Exactly. My thanks go to Net Galley and Perseus Books for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
The author is a journalist who caught wind of a tiny hamlet in New Hampshire that was taken over by libertarians:
“The four libertarians who came to New Hampshire had thinner wallets than…other would-be utopians, but they had a new angle they believed would help them move the Free Town Project out of the realm of marijuana-hazed reveries and into reality. Instead of building from scratch, they would harness the power and infrastructure of an existing town—just as a rabies parasite can co-opt the brain of a much larger organism and force it work against its own interests, the libertarians planned to apply just a bit of pressure in such a way that an entire town could be steered toward liberty.”
By the time the long-term denizens of Grafton realized the extent of the mayhem that these people intended, they discovered that “the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded…At the same time the Free Towners set themselves to shaping the community to their liking, the town’s bears were working to create their own utopia.”
The newcomers’ idea of liberty meant no enforcement of any law, and no taxes, even for basic infrastructure and services. And when the local bear population blossomed, it was every Free Towner for herself.
Hongoltz-Hetling provides a succinct history of the town, then introduces a handful of the key players. There’s a man that buys and lives in a church in order to avoid paying taxes; an Earth Mother type that decides the bears are hungry and should receive free donuts, seeds, and grains daily in her own backyard; several tent dwellers that eschew basic hygiene and food safety; and oh, so many, many bears. Some of the townspeople are identified by name, but those that prefer anonymity are identified by colorful nicknames.
At the outset we see jaw-dropping levels of eccentricity coupled with hilarious anecdotes, and true to his journalistic calling, the author spends a good deal of time in this tiny, lawless burg, and so he reports events not second hand, but from his own experience. My favorite part is the showdown between Hurricane the Guard Llama and an ursine interloper looking for mutton on the hoof. Another is the conflict between “Beretta,” the resident next door to “Doughnut Lady,” who hates all bears primarily because they are fat.
Eventually things take a darker, more tragic turn for some; the most impressive aspect of this story is the seamless manner in which the author segues from the hilarious to the heartbreaking, and then brings us back up for air.
Ultimately, the bears are emblematic of the need human beings have for cooperation and organization.
Though the material used for this story is rich and original, it takes a gifted wordsmith like Hongoltz-Hetling to craft it into a darkly amusing tale of this caliber. If I were to change one thing, I would lose the digression near the middle of the book with regard to typhus, Tunisia, and diseases shared by bears. It slows the pace and could easily be whittled down to a single paragraph. But the rest of this book is so engaging that I cannot reduce my rating by even half a star. My advice is to skim that passage, which eats up about five percent of an otherwise perfectly executed narrative, unless of course you like that aspect of it.
In six years of reviewing, and out of the 666 reviews I have provided to Net Galley—and yes, that’s the actual number, until I turn this review in—I have purchased fewer than one percent of the books I’ve read, either to give as gifts, or to keep. That said, this book is going under my Christmas tree this December. If you read it, you’re bound to agree: the story of Grafton is the best surprise of 2020.
Do it.
The author is a journalist who caught wind of a tiny hamlet in New Hampshire that was taken over by libertarians:
“The four libertarians who came to New Hampshire had thinner wallets than…other would-be utopians, but they had a new angle they believed would help them move the Free Town Project out of the realm of marijuana-hazed reveries and into reality. Instead of building from scratch, they would harness the power and infrastructure of an existing town—just as a rabies parasite can co-opt the brain of a much larger organism and force it work against its own interests, the libertarians planned to apply just a bit of pressure in such a way that an entire town could be steered toward liberty.”
By the time the long-term denizens of Grafton realized the extent of the mayhem that these people intended, they discovered that “the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded…At the same time the Free Towners set themselves to shaping the community to their liking, the town’s bears were working to create their own utopia.”
The newcomers’ idea of liberty meant no enforcement of any law, and no taxes, even for basic infrastructure and services. And when the local bear population blossomed, it was every Free Towner for herself.
Hongoltz-Hetling provides a succinct history of the town, then introduces a handful of the key players. There’s a man that buys and lives in a church in order to avoid paying taxes; an Earth Mother type that decides the bears are hungry and should receive free donuts, seeds, and grains daily in her own backyard; several tent dwellers that eschew basic hygiene and food safety; and oh, so many, many bears. Some of the townspeople are identified by name, but those that prefer anonymity are identified by colorful nicknames.
At the outset we see jaw-dropping levels of eccentricity coupled with hilarious anecdotes, and true to his journalistic calling, the author spends a good deal of time in this tiny, lawless burg, and so he reports events not second hand, but from his own experience. My favorite part is the showdown between Hurricane the Guard Llama and an ursine interloper looking for mutton on the hoof. Another is the conflict between “Beretta,” the resident next door to “Doughnut Lady,” who hates all bears primarily because they are fat.
Eventually things take a darker, more tragic turn for some; the most impressive aspect of this story is the seamless manner in which the author segues from the hilarious to the heartbreaking, and then brings us back up for air.
Ultimately, the bears are emblematic of the need human beings have for cooperation and organization.
Though the material used for this story is rich and original, it takes a gifted wordsmith like Hongoltz-Hetling to craft it into a darkly amusing tale of this caliber. If I were to change one thing, I would lose the digression near the middle of the book with regard to typhus, Tunisia, and diseases shared by bears. It slows the pace and could easily be whittled down to a single paragraph. But the rest of this book is so engaging that I cannot reduce my rating by even half a star. My advice is to skim that passage, which eats up about five percent of an otherwise perfectly executed narrative, unless of course you like that aspect of it.
In six years of reviewing, and out of the 666 reviews I have provided to Net Galley—and yes, that’s the actual number, until I turn this review in—I have purchased fewer than one percent of the books I’ve read, either to give as gifts, or to keep. That said, this book is going under my Christmas tree this December. If you read it, you’re bound to agree: the story of Grafton is the best surprise of 2020.
Do it.
March 29, 2024
This book – in which libertarians have literally a title role – was researched, written, fact-checked, edited, probably re-edited (if it's like most other books), and generally endured all the torturous gyrations that any book must go through, all long before the current COVID-19 pandemic came along to blight our lives. But now the pandemic is here, and, try as I might, I see now everything through the lens of pandemic. So, even though this well-written and entertaining book was formed without regard to pandemic, here is my pandemic-influenced view:
As there are allegedly no atheists in foxholes, “There Are No Libertarians in an Epidemic”, opined The Atlantic recently (March 2020). Libertarians replied (here, here, and here, among other places) that there were still plenty of libertarians in this pandemic, thank you very much.
The problem is: the (to be clear: NOT sarcasm) principled libertarian intellectuals who write closely-reasoned defenses of their conception of liberty – like those cited above – have roughly the same relation to the libertarians portrayed in this book as the singing bears in Disney movies have to the actual reality-based New Hampshire bears who, at best, are daily flinging your garbage around your property in search of a snack and, at worst, are snatching defenseless kittens from your back porch and ripping them open with their claws as you listen, helpless, to their anguished kitten death-throes. (This last actually happens and is described in disturbing detail early in this book.)
If I remember correctly, at least one of the principled libertarian intellectuals cited above includes law enforcement as an essential role of the state to which libertarians have no objection. However, this book says the actual rank-and-file libertarians who heeded a call to move to the village of Grafton, New Hampshire, to establish a model libertarian town, while perhaps not disagreeing to the idea of law enforcement in principle, invariably ended up being, according to the author's characterization, a “small army” of “suffering victims of bullshit traffic tickets, alimony burdens imposed by unsympathetic divorce court judges, and school systems that were unfair to their kids” (Kindle location 2996). They also have no trouble with menacing the author with not-so-veiled verbal threats and possibly-illegal displays of ammunition and firearms when he snoops around persistently in pursuit of those suspected of illegal bear killing. The Grafton libertarian leadership also had a occasionally problematic relationship with the law, as it initially contained a man whose interest in liberty included “a long-standing belief that minors could consent to sexual relationships with adults”. To be fair, let me include the following: “When a 2010 audio clip of him stating that view – specifying that a six-year-old could give consent – was publicized in 2016, ...” he was disowned by his Grafton cohort “(though he remained a prominent figure in libertarian circles)” (location 3005).
In case you get the idea that this book is just libertarian-bashing, let me say that, although libertarians are definitely bashed in this book, the author also points out the shortcomings of non-libertarian New Hampshire-ites (Hampshireans?) as well, particularly, the prosperous, wildlife-loving, and more politically-savvy residents of Hanover, home of Dartmouth College, who successfully lobbied for the state to trap a garbage-loving ursine named Mink, and her cubs, and relocate them, at public expense, to a remote area close to the Canadian border, where they would be somebody else's problem. Kindle location 3149:
The writing in the book is generally very good, but I wonder what got into the author, and what the editor (if any) was thinking, when it was decided (at Kindle location 2148) that citing scholarship by a real-life Oxford history professor named Daniel Butt was a good occasion for several closely-following occasions of the scholar's name paired, often after tortured syntax, with the words “wipe”, “cracks”, and “whole”. You can call me a humorless and pandemic-vexed grump if you wish, but I stopped thinking that puns of this caliber were funny when I graduated elementary school, which was some time ago now.
Returning to the book as a whole: movements and their philosophies should not be judged by their most embarrassing practitioners, but they often are. The pronouncements of vapid movie- and pop-stars are used to condemn US liberalism, and the public antics of morbidly-obese Confederate sympathizers stand in for people of good will who think the world is going to hell in a hat-box. For a long time, libertarianism seemed too much of a fringe movement to attract the critical mass of foolish hypocrites who bring shame to other political points-of-view. But no longer.
The pandemic has thrown into high relief the occasional need for whole-community action in a time of crisis. If a small group of people disregards government regulations installed to protect the weakest of us, the whole community can suffer. But some deliberately fail to understand. As a veteran of New Hampshire-libertarian inflighting says in this book, “They don't get the responsibility side of being a libertarian” (Kindle location 1636).
Read a May 2018 article that the author wrote about Grafton's bears and libertarians here. Most of the information in the article appears in the book, in a different form.
I received a free advanced review copy of this book.
As there are allegedly no atheists in foxholes, “There Are No Libertarians in an Epidemic”, opined The Atlantic recently (March 2020). Libertarians replied (here, here, and here, among other places) that there were still plenty of libertarians in this pandemic, thank you very much.
The problem is: the (to be clear: NOT sarcasm) principled libertarian intellectuals who write closely-reasoned defenses of their conception of liberty – like those cited above – have roughly the same relation to the libertarians portrayed in this book as the singing bears in Disney movies have to the actual reality-based New Hampshire bears who, at best, are daily flinging your garbage around your property in search of a snack and, at worst, are snatching defenseless kittens from your back porch and ripping them open with their claws as you listen, helpless, to their anguished kitten death-throes. (This last actually happens and is described in disturbing detail early in this book.)
If I remember correctly, at least one of the principled libertarian intellectuals cited above includes law enforcement as an essential role of the state to which libertarians have no objection. However, this book says the actual rank-and-file libertarians who heeded a call to move to the village of Grafton, New Hampshire, to establish a model libertarian town, while perhaps not disagreeing to the idea of law enforcement in principle, invariably ended up being, according to the author's characterization, a “small army” of “suffering victims of bullshit traffic tickets, alimony burdens imposed by unsympathetic divorce court judges, and school systems that were unfair to their kids” (Kindle location 2996). They also have no trouble with menacing the author with not-so-veiled verbal threats and possibly-illegal displays of ammunition and firearms when he snoops around persistently in pursuit of those suspected of illegal bear killing. The Grafton libertarian leadership also had a occasionally problematic relationship with the law, as it initially contained a man whose interest in liberty included “a long-standing belief that minors could consent to sexual relationships with adults”. To be fair, let me include the following: “When a 2010 audio clip of him stating that view – specifying that a six-year-old could give consent – was publicized in 2016, ...” he was disowned by his Grafton cohort “(though he remained a prominent figure in libertarian circles)” (location 3005).
In case you get the idea that this book is just libertarian-bashing, let me say that, although libertarians are definitely bashed in this book, the author also points out the shortcomings of non-libertarian New Hampshire-ites (Hampshireans?) as well, particularly, the prosperous, wildlife-loving, and more politically-savvy residents of Hanover, home of Dartmouth College, who successfully lobbied for the state to trap a garbage-loving ursine named Mink, and her cubs, and relocate them, at public expense, to a remote area close to the Canadian border, where they would be somebody else's problem. Kindle location 3149:
A bear's life in Hanover is threatened, and the state moves heaven and earth to find it and treat it in accordance with the wishes of the public. A bear threatens a woman's life in Grafton, and the state makes a halfhearted effort to capture it before the incident quickly fades from the public imagination.Still, libertarians come in for most of the bashing in this book. Attempts to establish a community free of self-defined excessive state interference result in a community that cannot fight its own fires or deal with its bear problems any better than the pampered “statist” (a favorite libertarian form of derision) of university towns. Attempts to live “off the grid” are rendered laughable by the arrival of those who define “off the grid” as “not paying for the electricity to power the wide-screen cable television that I cannot live without”. Grafton becomes an impoverished and dysfunctional black comedy before the whole things collapses and is abandoned.
The writing in the book is generally very good, but I wonder what got into the author, and what the editor (if any) was thinking, when it was decided (at Kindle location 2148) that citing scholarship by a real-life Oxford history professor named Daniel Butt was a good occasion for several closely-following occasions of the scholar's name paired, often after tortured syntax, with the words “wipe”, “cracks”, and “whole”. You can call me a humorless and pandemic-vexed grump if you wish, but I stopped thinking that puns of this caliber were funny when I graduated elementary school, which was some time ago now.
Returning to the book as a whole: movements and their philosophies should not be judged by their most embarrassing practitioners, but they often are. The pronouncements of vapid movie- and pop-stars are used to condemn US liberalism, and the public antics of morbidly-obese Confederate sympathizers stand in for people of good will who think the world is going to hell in a hat-box. For a long time, libertarianism seemed too much of a fringe movement to attract the critical mass of foolish hypocrites who bring shame to other political points-of-view. But no longer.
The pandemic has thrown into high relief the occasional need for whole-community action in a time of crisis. If a small group of people disregards government regulations installed to protect the weakest of us, the whole community can suffer. But some deliberately fail to understand. As a veteran of New Hampshire-libertarian inflighting says in this book, “They don't get the responsibility side of being a libertarian” (Kindle location 1636).
Read a May 2018 article that the author wrote about Grafton's bears and libertarians here. Most of the information in the article appears in the book, in a different form.
I received a free advanced review copy of this book.
October 2, 2021
A disorganised mess that read like the transcript of a particularly smug and incoherent podcast run by a centrist white man who's very into plaid shirts, artisanal beard oils, and IPAs.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear has a great topic—an investigation of a libertarian-led takeover of a tiny New Hampshire town and a contemporary rise in bear attacks in the area—but Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is nowhere near a strong enough writer to actually make anything compelling of it. He didn't even convince me of the book's main proposition, that the bear attacks were all that directly driven by the activities of the libertarians who were flocking to the area. (I have very little patience with libertarians, but it's apparent from what Hongoltz-Hetling writes that the good people of Grafton, NH, have been myopic assholes for generations. I'm sure the libertarians didn't help, but I think stuff would have gone south without them.)
One star for the attack llama anecdote, one star for convincing me that I should stay far away from New Hampshire.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear has a great topic—an investigation of a libertarian-led takeover of a tiny New Hampshire town and a contemporary rise in bear attacks in the area—but Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is nowhere near a strong enough writer to actually make anything compelling of it. He didn't even convince me of the book's main proposition, that the bear attacks were all that directly driven by the activities of the libertarians who were flocking to the area. (I have very little patience with libertarians, but it's apparent from what Hongoltz-Hetling writes that the good people of Grafton, NH, have been myopic assholes for generations. I'm sure the libertarians didn't help, but I think stuff would have gone south without them.)
One star for the attack llama anecdote, one star for convincing me that I should stay far away from New Hampshire.
December 2, 2021
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, a journalist from Lebanon, New Hampshire, has written a fascinating account of the Free Town Project's forage into rural N.H. And could there be a better state than the home of the "Live Free or Die" motto? This fringe group of libertarians thought the small town of Grafton would be the perfect place for a settlement. It would attract other like-minded eccentrics: no laws, no taxes. What could go wrong?
The Free Town settlers make Rand Paul look like a progressive. They settled on a piece of land where they erected tents and slapped together shacks. Being against government interference, control, or any kind of tax, they were able to attract other freedom lovers. Initially, they obtained positions on the town board: gone were the police department, the fire department, road repair, and snow removal (if you have ever been in N.H. in the winter, you know how essential this service is). Although they tried, they were unable to eliminate taxes for the library and schools. But they wouldn't pay the taxes. Meanwhile, for various reasons: a severe winter, lack of garbage removal, fewer hunters, the bears of Grafton infiltrated the planned Utopia. Chicken coops were raided, cats went missing , homes were broken into as these 200-600 lb. bruins sought food.
If you have ever moved to a small rural town or know someone who has, you know newcomers remain outsiders in the minds of the locals. These libertarian eccentrics thought they would be welcomed with open arms in a a community of conservatives who didn't like too much government interference. But they were not political allies of this group. Graftonites were angry. They didn't want "freedom crammed down their throats". Add to all those symptoms of doom, arguments among the Free Town members clinched its demise.
This was an amusing and interesting example of why we have government. Hongoltz-Hetling writes with a liberal sprinkling of humor, much like Bill Bryson. That wit and the somewhat bizarre story made for a delightful and easy read.
The Free Town settlers make Rand Paul look like a progressive. They settled on a piece of land where they erected tents and slapped together shacks. Being against government interference, control, or any kind of tax, they were able to attract other freedom lovers. Initially, they obtained positions on the town board: gone were the police department, the fire department, road repair, and snow removal (if you have ever been in N.H. in the winter, you know how essential this service is). Although they tried, they were unable to eliminate taxes for the library and schools. But they wouldn't pay the taxes. Meanwhile, for various reasons: a severe winter, lack of garbage removal, fewer hunters, the bears of Grafton infiltrated the planned Utopia. Chicken coops were raided, cats went missing , homes were broken into as these 200-600 lb. bruins sought food.
If you have ever moved to a small rural town or know someone who has, you know newcomers remain outsiders in the minds of the locals. These libertarian eccentrics thought they would be welcomed with open arms in a a community of conservatives who didn't like too much government interference. But they were not political allies of this group. Graftonites were angry. They didn't want "freedom crammed down their throats". Add to all those symptoms of doom, arguments among the Free Town members clinched its demise.
This was an amusing and interesting example of why we have government. Hongoltz-Hetling writes with a liberal sprinkling of humor, much like Bill Bryson. That wit and the somewhat bizarre story made for a delightful and easy read.
June 28, 2020
What would a town run by libertarians look like? Wild, happy freedom? Prosperity for all? In Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s A Libertarian Walks into a Bear, the answer is much more uncomfortable. Libertarians have issues – with every one and every thing. They are miserable in their “freedom”.
Grafton, New Hampshire has always had a libertarian streak. Before they completed the US Constitution, Grafton was already trying to secede from the USA. Any hint of tax or authority set the residents off. It has been slashing budgets and avoiding services ever since.
In this century, libertarians were drawn to Grafton by the promise of turning “a stodgy and unattractive thicket of burdensome regulations into an ‘anything goes’ frontier where…citizens could assert certain inalienable rights, such as the right to have more than two junk cars on private property, the right to gamble, the right to engage in school truancy, the right to traffic drugs and the right to have incestual intercourse…the right to traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights, in which people who are homeless or otherwise indigent are paid small amounts of money to engage in fisticuffs.” This was the Free Town Project, and the pitches are from its website. It promised no or minimal taxation and no interference by any authority, of which there would simply be none. After all, New Hampshire was the home of the “Live Free or Die” license plate.
The people pushing this policy had their own reasons, rather than a consistent political philosophy. They were not successful in life. Some were sexual predators trying to start over with no boundaries (or ID). They were not builders or entrepreneurs, but arguers. Freedom was about the only word they had in common.
They attacked Grafton with an aim to tear it down to nothing, requiring no taxes and providing no services. Freedom from participating in the community was the goal. Every home was a castle to its owner, and private property was all that mattered. The government’s sole role in their scenario was to protect property rights. Roads, lights, fire parks, social services and police held no places in their vision.
“Grafton’s municipal office deteriorated from a state of mere shabbiness to downright decrepitude,” Hetling says. Buildings fell well below code. The public library could open for just three hours, on Wednesday mornings. Its bathroom was a refurbished Port-A-Potty, bolted to a wall. Potholed roads received no attention. The volunteer fire department relied on nearby towns. Stores disappeared. So did the school. By the time this book was written, the last retail establishment was gone. Life in Grafton kept deteriorating, while the nearby towns of Canaan and Enfield, with triple the tax revenues, were blossoming, accommodating, comfortable and inviting. And growing. In Grafton, police chiefs had to work, interview people and store records in their own homes over a stretch of 82 years. The contrasts with real government were stark.
One long subplot in the book involves a man who bought the old church, announced he was the new pastor, and ran it into the ground. Every year he refused to pay taxes. Every year he applied for a non-profit exemption. But as a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, he refused to apply to the IRS for 501(3)C non-profit status. Without it, the town refused his applications. But not believing the IRS to be a legitimate institution, he would not lower himself to deal with it. Instead, he fought off annual seizures, lived like a hermit and eventually, penniless, died in a fire in the church. Such is the price of freedom, libertarian style.
The town’s budget kept shrinking, and it could not keep up with normal commitments. People sued the town over everything, driving up legal costs in a budget that never even covered the basics.
Grafton libertarians seemed to spend all their time griping about their freedoms, but they had none. They felt the need to be armed, overwhelmingly. They were always on guard for the slightest challenge to their so-called freedoms. One walked around with a video recorder always on to prove to one and all every little slight he suffered on a daily basis. Hetling shows how he taunted people into such situations so he could claim martyrdom. Libertarians are constantly on their guard.
Graftonites got into arguments and fights. For the first time in decades, there were murders. Police calls soared. When fire broke out, neighbors rushed to help carry belongings out of the house, but then others stole them out of the fields. Sex offender registrations more than tripled in four years. A tent city took shape. Anything that required raising money for the town got voted down. Angrily.
There were absurd arguments over everything. When the state recommended a tax holiday for the blind, voters in Grafton tried to shout it down, claiming every blind millionaire in the world would move to Grafton, take over and raise everyone else’s taxes. The motion passed, but no millionaires descended. Civil discourse and common sense seem to have little role to play in a libertarian society.
Hetling spent four years getting to know the locals. It could be a struggle at times. Often, they clammed up simply because he was a journalist. Others because they had things to hide. They lied to him, and he knew it. The hostility was palpable: “Knocking on doors in Grafton has left me with the nervous reflex of tensing up every time the door opens. You just never know when you’re going to get Friendly Advice,” Hetling said.
The tension level was far higher in the land of the free of Grafton, and with no services or infrastructure, and no prospects for work or success, residents left, making the problem worse. This also allowed the forest to reclaim it, bit by bit.
This is where the bears come in, literally. Grafton is in bear country, and it was always noticeable, without being a big problem. But recently, residents started to feed them or made it easy for them to feed themselves. Where other towns enjoyed seeing the occasional bear, in Grafton they were considered a plague. Every other chapter in the book is a standalone bear story.
The book tries really hard to weave a parallel story of bears into the main drama of libertarianism. But it doesn’t fit and it doesn’t work. The libertarian book stands on its own, without any reference to bears needed, or adding any value to the politics. The bear chapters make it bulky and balky.
Every chapter in the book begins with an epigraph quoting someone famous, most often Shakespeare, mentioning the word bear. It is as if Hetling went through Bartlett’s Quotations, and found two dozen quotes with the word bear, and placed them at the top of his chapters. None of them connects to the chapter ahead. And none of them has to anything to do with libertarianism. They have no relevance to the bear issues in Grafton, and certainly nothing whatever to do with the politics of American-style libertarianism. It is forced, off topic, and really only supports the jokey title – A Libertarian Walks into a Bear.
Hetling does a terrific job of getting under his characters’ skins. He makes readers understand where they’ve been and how they came to this place at this time. He even followed one to Arizona, where she was finally able to relax, regain her composure, confidence and strength, and surprised herself by becoming independent again and enjoying her new community.
His research back to the time of independence builds a solid foundation for the deterioration to come. And he does it with humor, setting up situations and cashing with a sly remark. He also likes subtlety. Sarcasm adds a laugh or two along the way, too. Hetling tells a good story. Or two in this case. Just largely unconnected and unconnectable.
The message is that Ayn Rand was very wrong. Given the total freedom they seek, Americans cringe in fear. They fear losing any part of their freedoms. They fear their neighbors. They fear any kind of authority. Their community crumbles before their eyes at their own instigation. There is no cohesion, only suspicion. The libertarian ethic is anti-everything, pro-nothing, and a horrible way to live.
David Wineberg
Grafton, New Hampshire has always had a libertarian streak. Before they completed the US Constitution, Grafton was already trying to secede from the USA. Any hint of tax or authority set the residents off. It has been slashing budgets and avoiding services ever since.
In this century, libertarians were drawn to Grafton by the promise of turning “a stodgy and unattractive thicket of burdensome regulations into an ‘anything goes’ frontier where…citizens could assert certain inalienable rights, such as the right to have more than two junk cars on private property, the right to gamble, the right to engage in school truancy, the right to traffic drugs and the right to have incestual intercourse…the right to traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights, in which people who are homeless or otherwise indigent are paid small amounts of money to engage in fisticuffs.” This was the Free Town Project, and the pitches are from its website. It promised no or minimal taxation and no interference by any authority, of which there would simply be none. After all, New Hampshire was the home of the “Live Free or Die” license plate.
The people pushing this policy had their own reasons, rather than a consistent political philosophy. They were not successful in life. Some were sexual predators trying to start over with no boundaries (or ID). They were not builders or entrepreneurs, but arguers. Freedom was about the only word they had in common.
They attacked Grafton with an aim to tear it down to nothing, requiring no taxes and providing no services. Freedom from participating in the community was the goal. Every home was a castle to its owner, and private property was all that mattered. The government’s sole role in their scenario was to protect property rights. Roads, lights, fire parks, social services and police held no places in their vision.
“Grafton’s municipal office deteriorated from a state of mere shabbiness to downright decrepitude,” Hetling says. Buildings fell well below code. The public library could open for just three hours, on Wednesday mornings. Its bathroom was a refurbished Port-A-Potty, bolted to a wall. Potholed roads received no attention. The volunteer fire department relied on nearby towns. Stores disappeared. So did the school. By the time this book was written, the last retail establishment was gone. Life in Grafton kept deteriorating, while the nearby towns of Canaan and Enfield, with triple the tax revenues, were blossoming, accommodating, comfortable and inviting. And growing. In Grafton, police chiefs had to work, interview people and store records in their own homes over a stretch of 82 years. The contrasts with real government were stark.
One long subplot in the book involves a man who bought the old church, announced he was the new pastor, and ran it into the ground. Every year he refused to pay taxes. Every year he applied for a non-profit exemption. But as a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, he refused to apply to the IRS for 501(3)C non-profit status. Without it, the town refused his applications. But not believing the IRS to be a legitimate institution, he would not lower himself to deal with it. Instead, he fought off annual seizures, lived like a hermit and eventually, penniless, died in a fire in the church. Such is the price of freedom, libertarian style.
The town’s budget kept shrinking, and it could not keep up with normal commitments. People sued the town over everything, driving up legal costs in a budget that never even covered the basics.
Grafton libertarians seemed to spend all their time griping about their freedoms, but they had none. They felt the need to be armed, overwhelmingly. They were always on guard for the slightest challenge to their so-called freedoms. One walked around with a video recorder always on to prove to one and all every little slight he suffered on a daily basis. Hetling shows how he taunted people into such situations so he could claim martyrdom. Libertarians are constantly on their guard.
Graftonites got into arguments and fights. For the first time in decades, there were murders. Police calls soared. When fire broke out, neighbors rushed to help carry belongings out of the house, but then others stole them out of the fields. Sex offender registrations more than tripled in four years. A tent city took shape. Anything that required raising money for the town got voted down. Angrily.
There were absurd arguments over everything. When the state recommended a tax holiday for the blind, voters in Grafton tried to shout it down, claiming every blind millionaire in the world would move to Grafton, take over and raise everyone else’s taxes. The motion passed, but no millionaires descended. Civil discourse and common sense seem to have little role to play in a libertarian society.
Hetling spent four years getting to know the locals. It could be a struggle at times. Often, they clammed up simply because he was a journalist. Others because they had things to hide. They lied to him, and he knew it. The hostility was palpable: “Knocking on doors in Grafton has left me with the nervous reflex of tensing up every time the door opens. You just never know when you’re going to get Friendly Advice,” Hetling said.
The tension level was far higher in the land of the free of Grafton, and with no services or infrastructure, and no prospects for work or success, residents left, making the problem worse. This also allowed the forest to reclaim it, bit by bit.
This is where the bears come in, literally. Grafton is in bear country, and it was always noticeable, without being a big problem. But recently, residents started to feed them or made it easy for them to feed themselves. Where other towns enjoyed seeing the occasional bear, in Grafton they were considered a plague. Every other chapter in the book is a standalone bear story.
The book tries really hard to weave a parallel story of bears into the main drama of libertarianism. But it doesn’t fit and it doesn’t work. The libertarian book stands on its own, without any reference to bears needed, or adding any value to the politics. The bear chapters make it bulky and balky.
Every chapter in the book begins with an epigraph quoting someone famous, most often Shakespeare, mentioning the word bear. It is as if Hetling went through Bartlett’s Quotations, and found two dozen quotes with the word bear, and placed them at the top of his chapters. None of them connects to the chapter ahead. And none of them has to anything to do with libertarianism. They have no relevance to the bear issues in Grafton, and certainly nothing whatever to do with the politics of American-style libertarianism. It is forced, off topic, and really only supports the jokey title – A Libertarian Walks into a Bear.
Hetling does a terrific job of getting under his characters’ skins. He makes readers understand where they’ve been and how they came to this place at this time. He even followed one to Arizona, where she was finally able to relax, regain her composure, confidence and strength, and surprised herself by becoming independent again and enjoying her new community.
His research back to the time of independence builds a solid foundation for the deterioration to come. And he does it with humor, setting up situations and cashing with a sly remark. He also likes subtlety. Sarcasm adds a laugh or two along the way, too. Hetling tells a good story. Or two in this case. Just largely unconnected and unconnectable.
The message is that Ayn Rand was very wrong. Given the total freedom they seek, Americans cringe in fear. They fear losing any part of their freedoms. They fear their neighbors. They fear any kind of authority. Their community crumbles before their eyes at their own instigation. There is no cohesion, only suspicion. The libertarian ethic is anti-everything, pro-nothing, and a horrible way to live.
David Wineberg
December 5, 2020
A hilarious story and great premise for a book. I think it could have been shorter and I also really want to see this made into a satirical miniseries for TV
January 7, 2021
Very well researched book by the author. You can really see how much work he put into the research and interviews for the book. It was highly entertaining and even funny at times but some of the stuff rubbed me wrong (especially the shade thrown at Fish and Game). I will say for a book with libertarian in the title it did not overreach in the political aspect. Overall an interesting book that is well researched.
February 2, 2021
The structure of this book is a mess - lots of short chapters that have a tendency to jump around in time and in terms of characters and themes. Many chapters seemed fairly superfluous to the main story: sometimes because they were and sometimes because the links between chapters were pretty tenuous and hard to sort out in your mind as a reader. This made it hard to keep track of and identify with the people he reports on, and made the book a bit of a slog. Aside from that he also seems to report on and judge the people in this book in a kind of mean but jokey way, expecting the reader to feel the same, and the (frankly lazy) epitaphs for each chapter just seems like he searched “bear” on Wikiquote and had at it.
In the end I didn’t really know what this book was trying to say or do, other than turn a probably quite interesting news article into a bloated, padded out book with little respect for the people and timeline it centred on.
(In case anyone is concerned about bias, I am truly the furthest from a libertarian you can get lol)
In the end I didn’t really know what this book was trying to say or do, other than turn a probably quite interesting news article into a bloated, padded out book with little respect for the people and timeline it centred on.
(In case anyone is concerned about bias, I am truly the furthest from a libertarian you can get lol)
May 27, 2022
Niby nie do końca interesował mnie ten temat, ale autor opisuje wszystko w tak lekki i ciekawy sposób, że w niektórych momentach nie mogłem odłożyć książki. Największą siłą wydaje mi się narracja, zabawna i miejscami dosadna, czasem ironiczna, ale jednocześnie nie lekceważąca. Połączenie ze sobą wątku Free Town Project i ataków baribali na mieszkańców miasteczka trochę naciągane, ale chyba właśnie dzięki temu czytalo mi się to tak dobrze.
November 21, 2022
Good lord. I felt so many emotions while reading this book, and I am realizing that for the most part, I felt sad. I feel sad that a bunch of yahoos (that is my polite word for them) came into a town called Grafton and decided here we will make a libertarian paradise and just utterly wrecked the place. To the point that at times it felt like the bears were not the worst part of the whole ordeal. I think what makes me most sad though is that the realization that people try these pie in the sky utopias, but they stop working the first time someone says they don't agree with you. I felt a frisson of fear as Hongoltz-Hetling brings up the fact some of these people are currently in office and are pushing for a secession movement in the state of New Hampshire. I also felt some anger too though because this town in probably a year, maybe two or three is going to just be eaten back up by the very forest that the settlers removed to set up homes. It feels like the town of Grafton was poisoned from the start of too many men and women who didn't want to pay taxes and or give up their so called "freedoms."
April 27, 2022
Gdy Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling pracował nad reportażem z Grafton, małego miasteczka w stanie New Hempshire, zauważył że z każdym dniem miejsce to zdaje mu się “coraz bardziej wypełnione”. Libertarianami, niedźwiedziami i bronią. I ludźmi, którzy kochali niedźwiedzie, libertarianizm i broń, “albo jakąś inną kombinację tych trzech rzeczy”. Byli też gotowi walczyć o to, co kochają. Ale nie można zapomnieć o pączkach. Pączki kochała “Pani od Pączków”, anonimowa bohaterka tej książki, która kupowała je w pokaźnych ilościach w miejscowym Market Basket. Pani od pączków miała wielkie serce dla zwierząt. Nie tylko swojej krówki, pogrążonej w żałobie Margerytki, ale i grasujących w okolicy baribali, które szczodrze podkarmiała. W końcu były to “jej niedźwiedzie”.
“Niedźwiedzia przysługa” to świetnie napisany reportaż o niezwykłym poplątaniu idei i wydarzeń, do którego doszło w Grafton. Miasteczko od swoich początków w końcu osiemnastego stulecia prowadzą nierówną i niejasną walkę z baribalami, które tak przyzwyczaiły się do ludzi, że traktują ich jak osoby zbyt sobie bliskie. Graftończycy prowadzą też inną walkę - z państwem amerykańskim, a zwłaszcza z podatkami. Unikaniem płacenia danin zajmują się równie długo, jak walką z baribalami. Przekomiczna jest momentami opowieść o tym, jak dawni graftończycy mieli nadzieję, że wypisanie się z New Hempshire, lub pisanie kolejnych podań do stanowych władz sprawią, że uwolnią się od przykrego obowiązku.
Duch wolności opanował jednak graftończyków, co dzisiaj skutkuje choćby zamiłowaniem do publicznego noszenia broni. I tym, że partia libertariańska uznała miejscowość za idealny przyczółek do głoszenia swoich poglądów i ogólnoamerykańskiej ekspansji.
Motto stanu, w którym znalazło się Grafton brzmi: “Żyj wolnym lub umrzyj”. Na tle mdłych, oficjalnych haseł innych amerykańskich stanów, jest wyjątkowo wyraziste. Między innymi to ściągnęło do miasta libertarian, którym współgrało ono z ich filozofią indywidualizmu. Free Town Project, bo tak nazwali swój pomysł libertarianie, graftończykom też się nie spodobał. Bo graftończycy najbardziej lubią siebie. A i to w ograniczonym zakresie.
Libertarianie to niewielka, acz głośna partia amerykańska, która głosi hasła całkowitej wolności, co niekoniecznie ma jakiś związek z obowiązkami obywateli. Jej członkami są różne podejrzane osoby, które propagowały m.in. legalizację kanibalizmu. Swój podbój Ameryki postanowili rozpocząć w Grafton. Utworzyli miasteczko namiotowe, spali w kamperach, przyczepach mieszkalnych i jurtach. Zjednoczeni w walce o uwolnienie siebie i Grafton od zwierzchności państwa, mimo oporów mieszkańców, choć nie uwolnili miasta od podatków, to uwolnili je od komisji planowania przestrzennego, straży pożarnej i napraw dróg.
Wskutek tych wspaniałych, wspólnototwórczych działań, miasto zaczęło ulegać erozji. Drogi niszczały, domy płonęły, a zarówno te spalone jak i wciąż stojące, odwiedzały baribale, częstując się zróżnicowanym pokarmem - od kur, przez psy, po ludzinę. Zwłaszcza, że idee wolnościowe zabraniały państwowej ingerencji w populację niedźwiedzi. Ludzie zostali pozostawieni sami sobie, przez co niektórzy zmuszeni zostali do stawiania przy domach znaków “No Bears Allowed”. Wiara w ponadprzeciętną inteligencję baribali ma ponoć naukowe usprawiedliwienie.
Libertarianie zaczeli walczyć sami z sobą, a Grafton zaczęło się wyludniać. Grafton zostało wyzwolone od graftończyków.
Opis miejscowości rządzonej przez libertarian przeraża, ale i daje wiele do myślenia nad tym, jak działają mechanizmy demokracji i dlaczego wolnościowe utopie bywają antywolnościowe. Autor fantastycznie analizuje logikę działań libertarian, zwłaszcza, że wszystko co pisze okrasza wisielczym humorem. I choć przeważnie nie jestem po stronie reporterów, którzy ironizują z opisywanych przez siebie sytuacji czy bohaterów, to nie da się odmówić Hongoltzowi-Hetlingowi słuszności w obnażaniu głupoty tak libertarian, jak i graftończyków, którzy narzekając na baribale, hojnie je dokarmiali.
Nie jest to najkrótsza to lektura, ale na szczęście autorowi udaje się przebijać balonik powagi i dawać czytelnikowi lżejsze, zabawniejsze momenty, by mógł wytrzymać czytanie o tym, jak tragicznie kończy się wiara w utopie za wszelką cenę. Dzisiaj czyta się historię powstania libertariańskiej osady też jako metaforę tego, w jaki sposób możemy utracić demokrację - wystarczy, że ktoś się do nas wprowadzi i zacznie powoli zmieniać nasz świat. Tak jak zrobili to z Grafton libertarianie.
Dużą zaletą reportażu Hongoltz-Hetlinga jest również to, że unika uogólnień. Pisząc o libertarianach, rzadko kiedy pisze o grupie, pokazuje indywidualne postawy, niuansuje, opowiadając o tym co sprawia, że będąc tak różnymi, stanowią jedną, niebezpieczną dla demokratycznego konsensusu, zbiorowość.
Jest tu właściwie wszystko, co dobry reportaż powinien mieć - szeroka perspektywa, uważność na szczegół, ciekawi bohaterowie, wielka historia i lokalna, archiwa i raporty policyjne, proste metafory i trudne pytania natury bardzo ogólnej. No a do tego język - może nie każdemu czarny humor autora przypadnie do gustu - ale przynajmniej jest “jakiś”, charakterystyczny i specyficzny. Od kilku miesięcy nie przeczytałem z taką przyjemnością żadnego reportażu.
Przekład Aleksandry Paszkowskiej jest całkiem udany, choć uważam, że przekład tytułu już udanym nie jest. “A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears)” ma w sobie dużo więcej z humoru autora, niż polski odpowiednik. Choć rozumiem też trudności z polską wersją. Niezależnie od tego bardzo Państwu poleca - kilka dni lektury, poznacie dziwnych ludzi i pomyślicie - a może jeden przemysłowy pączek mi nie zaszkodzi?
“Niedźwiedzia przysługa” to świetnie napisany reportaż o niezwykłym poplątaniu idei i wydarzeń, do którego doszło w Grafton. Miasteczko od swoich początków w końcu osiemnastego stulecia prowadzą nierówną i niejasną walkę z baribalami, które tak przyzwyczaiły się do ludzi, że traktują ich jak osoby zbyt sobie bliskie. Graftończycy prowadzą też inną walkę - z państwem amerykańskim, a zwłaszcza z podatkami. Unikaniem płacenia danin zajmują się równie długo, jak walką z baribalami. Przekomiczna jest momentami opowieść o tym, jak dawni graftończycy mieli nadzieję, że wypisanie się z New Hempshire, lub pisanie kolejnych podań do stanowych władz sprawią, że uwolnią się od przykrego obowiązku.
Duch wolności opanował jednak graftończyków, co dzisiaj skutkuje choćby zamiłowaniem do publicznego noszenia broni. I tym, że partia libertariańska uznała miejscowość za idealny przyczółek do głoszenia swoich poglądów i ogólnoamerykańskiej ekspansji.
Motto stanu, w którym znalazło się Grafton brzmi: “Żyj wolnym lub umrzyj”. Na tle mdłych, oficjalnych haseł innych amerykańskich stanów, jest wyjątkowo wyraziste. Między innymi to ściągnęło do miasta libertarian, którym współgrało ono z ich filozofią indywidualizmu. Free Town Project, bo tak nazwali swój pomysł libertarianie, graftończykom też się nie spodobał. Bo graftończycy najbardziej lubią siebie. A i to w ograniczonym zakresie.
Libertarianie to niewielka, acz głośna partia amerykańska, która głosi hasła całkowitej wolności, co niekoniecznie ma jakiś związek z obowiązkami obywateli. Jej członkami są różne podejrzane osoby, które propagowały m.in. legalizację kanibalizmu. Swój podbój Ameryki postanowili rozpocząć w Grafton. Utworzyli miasteczko namiotowe, spali w kamperach, przyczepach mieszkalnych i jurtach. Zjednoczeni w walce o uwolnienie siebie i Grafton od zwierzchności państwa, mimo oporów mieszkańców, choć nie uwolnili miasta od podatków, to uwolnili je od komisji planowania przestrzennego, straży pożarnej i napraw dróg.
Wskutek tych wspaniałych, wspólnototwórczych działań, miasto zaczęło ulegać erozji. Drogi niszczały, domy płonęły, a zarówno te spalone jak i wciąż stojące, odwiedzały baribale, częstując się zróżnicowanym pokarmem - od kur, przez psy, po ludzinę. Zwłaszcza, że idee wolnościowe zabraniały państwowej ingerencji w populację niedźwiedzi. Ludzie zostali pozostawieni sami sobie, przez co niektórzy zmuszeni zostali do stawiania przy domach znaków “No Bears Allowed”. Wiara w ponadprzeciętną inteligencję baribali ma ponoć naukowe usprawiedliwienie.
Libertarianie zaczeli walczyć sami z sobą, a Grafton zaczęło się wyludniać. Grafton zostało wyzwolone od graftończyków.
Opis miejscowości rządzonej przez libertarian przeraża, ale i daje wiele do myślenia nad tym, jak działają mechanizmy demokracji i dlaczego wolnościowe utopie bywają antywolnościowe. Autor fantastycznie analizuje logikę działań libertarian, zwłaszcza, że wszystko co pisze okrasza wisielczym humorem. I choć przeważnie nie jestem po stronie reporterów, którzy ironizują z opisywanych przez siebie sytuacji czy bohaterów, to nie da się odmówić Hongoltzowi-Hetlingowi słuszności w obnażaniu głupoty tak libertarian, jak i graftończyków, którzy narzekając na baribale, hojnie je dokarmiali.
Nie jest to najkrótsza to lektura, ale na szczęście autorowi udaje się przebijać balonik powagi i dawać czytelnikowi lżejsze, zabawniejsze momenty, by mógł wytrzymać czytanie o tym, jak tragicznie kończy się wiara w utopie za wszelką cenę. Dzisiaj czyta się historię powstania libertariańskiej osady też jako metaforę tego, w jaki sposób możemy utracić demokrację - wystarczy, że ktoś się do nas wprowadzi i zacznie powoli zmieniać nasz świat. Tak jak zrobili to z Grafton libertarianie.
Dużą zaletą reportażu Hongoltz-Hetlinga jest również to, że unika uogólnień. Pisząc o libertarianach, rzadko kiedy pisze o grupie, pokazuje indywidualne postawy, niuansuje, opowiadając o tym co sprawia, że będąc tak różnymi, stanowią jedną, niebezpieczną dla demokratycznego konsensusu, zbiorowość.
Jest tu właściwie wszystko, co dobry reportaż powinien mieć - szeroka perspektywa, uważność na szczegół, ciekawi bohaterowie, wielka historia i lokalna, archiwa i raporty policyjne, proste metafory i trudne pytania natury bardzo ogólnej. No a do tego język - może nie każdemu czarny humor autora przypadnie do gustu - ale przynajmniej jest “jakiś”, charakterystyczny i specyficzny. Od kilku miesięcy nie przeczytałem z taką przyjemnością żadnego reportażu.
Przekład Aleksandry Paszkowskiej jest całkiem udany, choć uważam, że przekład tytułu już udanym nie jest. “A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears)” ma w sobie dużo więcej z humoru autora, niż polski odpowiednik. Choć rozumiem też trudności z polską wersją. Niezależnie od tego bardzo Państwu poleca - kilka dni lektury, poznacie dziwnych ludzi i pomyślicie - a może jeden przemysłowy pączek mi nie zaszkodzi?
January 16, 2022
Mind-boggling that this is a real place, with real people (and real bears). How does one begin to describe a book like this? I don’t know. If it wasn’t so early in the year, I might be tempted to review amnesty out of it and just point you in the direction of the many great reviews that have already been written about it.
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a long form journalist who spent a lot of time in the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, learning about the collision of weirdness that occurred there, when the the anti-tax history of the town, some enterprising bears, and a group of libertarians hell bent on creating a place to live where anyone could be free to do anything, even if that thing was feeding the local wildlife, owning one hundred guns, or cannibalism. The extreme individualist mindset of the (mostly) men of the Free Town Project was fascinating to me, and I was so busy being continually amazed by what was being described in the book, that I mostly forgot to be angry. H-H’s writing is very tongue in cheek, and while he has respect for his subjects, he also doesn’t hesitate to poke a little fun.
For example:
“Instead of building from scratch, they would harness the power and infrastructure of an existing town–just as a rabies parasite can co-opt the brain of a much larger organism and force it to work against its own interests, the libertarians planned to apply just a little bit of pressure in such a way that an entire town could be steered toward liberty.”
And:
“Free State Project organizers tried to relieve this tension by disassociating themselves from the politically problematic Larry Pendarvises of the world. One such prominent Free Stateer was Ian Freeman. On the plus side, Freeman hosted a popular liberty-themed podcast with an international reach that attracted many New Hampshire residents, but on the minus side, he had a long-standing belief that minors could consent to sexual relationships with adults.”
And don’t forget about the bears! As I think the author aptly shows, Grafton’s bears are not like other bears. They are not afraid of people, and the response in the town’s citizens to their encroachment (encouraged by lax to nonexistent human/wildlife management laws and crumbling town infrastructure) ranges from feeding them illegally to illegally slaughtering them as they hibernate for the winter. The less said about the bears here, and specifics, the better. It really is a surprise on every page you must experience for yourself.
Highly recommend this one.
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a long form journalist who spent a lot of time in the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, learning about the collision of weirdness that occurred there, when the the anti-tax history of the town, some enterprising bears, and a group of libertarians hell bent on creating a place to live where anyone could be free to do anything, even if that thing was feeding the local wildlife, owning one hundred guns, or cannibalism. The extreme individualist mindset of the (mostly) men of the Free Town Project was fascinating to me, and I was so busy being continually amazed by what was being described in the book, that I mostly forgot to be angry. H-H’s writing is very tongue in cheek, and while he has respect for his subjects, he also doesn’t hesitate to poke a little fun.
For example:
“Instead of building from scratch, they would harness the power and infrastructure of an existing town–just as a rabies parasite can co-opt the brain of a much larger organism and force it to work against its own interests, the libertarians planned to apply just a little bit of pressure in such a way that an entire town could be steered toward liberty.”
And:
“Free State Project organizers tried to relieve this tension by disassociating themselves from the politically problematic Larry Pendarvises of the world. One such prominent Free Stateer was Ian Freeman. On the plus side, Freeman hosted a popular liberty-themed podcast with an international reach that attracted many New Hampshire residents, but on the minus side, he had a long-standing belief that minors could consent to sexual relationships with adults.”
And don’t forget about the bears! As I think the author aptly shows, Grafton’s bears are not like other bears. They are not afraid of people, and the response in the town’s citizens to their encroachment (encouraged by lax to nonexistent human/wildlife management laws and crumbling town infrastructure) ranges from feeding them illegally to illegally slaughtering them as they hibernate for the winter. The less said about the bears here, and specifics, the better. It really is a surprise on every page you must experience for yourself.
Highly recommend this one.
April 22, 2022
This was structured terribly. There was no flow. It was painful.
It’s supposed to tell the story of a group that decided to do a libertarian project in a small town in NH, where things go hilariously but also devastatingly awry with bears and all sorts of other things they didn’t think of before embarking on this kind of project.
Admittedly, I find libertarian ideals very interesting, but there are a lot of kooks in the group like this that stand out. But to try something like this is interesting, if not a little crazy.
We go from talking about doing it to doing it for a minute and then going back to talk about the background of something or someone else. Good grief, just tell the story in chronological order. Tell us what we need to know and then dive in. It’s boring. How can you make this boring?!
I’m not even finished with it yet. I’m going to turn the audio on when I go to sleep and try to finish it that way. I’ve honestly been trying to read this for months but it loses me every time so I even got the audio to go along with it and that hasn’t helped much. I hate to leave a bad review on a book covering something I find so interesting.
Authors: even in nonfiction, book structure is so important.
It’s supposed to tell the story of a group that decided to do a libertarian project in a small town in NH, where things go hilariously but also devastatingly awry with bears and all sorts of other things they didn’t think of before embarking on this kind of project.
Admittedly, I find libertarian ideals very interesting, but there are a lot of kooks in the group like this that stand out. But to try something like this is interesting, if not a little crazy.
We go from talking about doing it to doing it for a minute and then going back to talk about the background of something or someone else. Good grief, just tell the story in chronological order. Tell us what we need to know and then dive in. It’s boring. How can you make this boring?!
I’m not even finished with it yet. I’m going to turn the audio on when I go to sleep and try to finish it that way. I’ve honestly been trying to read this for months but it loses me every time so I even got the audio to go along with it and that hasn’t helped much. I hate to leave a bad review on a book covering something I find so interesting.
Authors: even in nonfiction, book structure is so important.
December 17, 2020
Oh you wacky Libertarians.
This is a highly entertaining and yet terrifying look at when “liberty” runs amok.
It’s the story of a small group of men, including an accused pedophile, who through various chat groups and forums fantasized about starting their own “freedom town” where they would not have to pay taxes, support communistic things like libraries or schools, and be able to have duels and consensual cannibalism.
Seriously. Because who hasn’t felt the cold and repressive hand of the government stopping you from being able to eat your neighbor right?
They band together and start researching places where they can see this dystopian vision out to its fullest, until they stumble upon the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, population approximately 2,000.
As they moved into the town, began to occupy places of influence on local committees and boards (with the ultimate goal of shutting them down) they met quite a bit of initial resistance. Turns out that quite a few people in Grafton liked schools and functional fire departments. The latter in particular as Grafton for centuries has been devastated by an astonishing number of fires that ravaged the community.
Unfortunately for Grafton, there were far more people who drank the Kool-Aid and were receptive to these outsiders ideas.
Taxes were slashed to a bare minimum, the local historic church was bought by an, shall we say eccentric, religious fanatic/avant garde artist who refused to pay taxes and installed his “art” throughout the church.
Crime began to rise, fires were not put out, squatter tent settlements began to spring up, and bears.
Lots of bears.
Bears who were bolder than the average bear in that they would come up to people’s homes, raid garbage cans (some residents proposed mandating bear proof trash cans but the libertarians saw this as undue government tyranny). Even after some horrific bear attacks on Graft’s citizen’s, there were some who refused to enlist the help of any government agency to control the bears. One woman in fact set up a feeding station for the bears outside her home where they would come and eat twice a day. While this seems rather irresponsible considering the circumstances, if not selfish, the woman claimed it was her right. Because you know, freedom.
The book is littered with stories like this and is a fascinating look at what happens when the common good is completely disregarded in favor of “individual rights”.
That your rights are infringing on my rights and the rights of your neighbors seem to be utterly lost on this motley cast of nutjobs.
That their experiment failed in Grafton probably is unlikely to deter them from trying again somewhere else. Such is the result of a lack of kindness or compassion for your fellow man, and an inability to see a world beyond your own selfish desires.
This is a highly entertaining and yet terrifying look at when “liberty” runs amok.
It’s the story of a small group of men, including an accused pedophile, who through various chat groups and forums fantasized about starting their own “freedom town” where they would not have to pay taxes, support communistic things like libraries or schools, and be able to have duels and consensual cannibalism.
Seriously. Because who hasn’t felt the cold and repressive hand of the government stopping you from being able to eat your neighbor right?
They band together and start researching places where they can see this dystopian vision out to its fullest, until they stumble upon the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, population approximately 2,000.
As they moved into the town, began to occupy places of influence on local committees and boards (with the ultimate goal of shutting them down) they met quite a bit of initial resistance. Turns out that quite a few people in Grafton liked schools and functional fire departments. The latter in particular as Grafton for centuries has been devastated by an astonishing number of fires that ravaged the community.
Unfortunately for Grafton, there were far more people who drank the Kool-Aid and were receptive to these outsiders ideas.
Taxes were slashed to a bare minimum, the local historic church was bought by an, shall we say eccentric, religious fanatic/avant garde artist who refused to pay taxes and installed his “art” throughout the church.
Crime began to rise, fires were not put out, squatter tent settlements began to spring up, and bears.
Lots of bears.
Bears who were bolder than the average bear in that they would come up to people’s homes, raid garbage cans (some residents proposed mandating bear proof trash cans but the libertarians saw this as undue government tyranny). Even after some horrific bear attacks on Graft’s citizen’s, there were some who refused to enlist the help of any government agency to control the bears. One woman in fact set up a feeding station for the bears outside her home where they would come and eat twice a day. While this seems rather irresponsible considering the circumstances, if not selfish, the woman claimed it was her right. Because you know, freedom.
The book is littered with stories like this and is a fascinating look at what happens when the common good is completely disregarded in favor of “individual rights”.
That your rights are infringing on my rights and the rights of your neighbors seem to be utterly lost on this motley cast of nutjobs.
That their experiment failed in Grafton probably is unlikely to deter them from trying again somewhere else. Such is the result of a lack of kindness or compassion for your fellow man, and an inability to see a world beyond your own selfish desires.
March 16, 2020
This is an absolute mess of a book, the structure is infuriating and overwrought, the emphasis on gun ownership is bizarre (no one is actually injured by a firearm in Grafton, this scary gun toting town), the "problem solving bears" nonsense, the completely unsupported wild claims of all kinds of random events...just a total mess. Sort of amazing this is getting published.
Despite that it is well written. The actual prose is excellent, it's just a shame Matthew has nothing particularly interesting to write about. This feels like it started as a book about the Free Town Project that didn't have enough material so he threw in some pretty unremarkable bear stories and then spruced it up with a lot of conjecture and frankly insulting statistical and timeline manipulation.
(Review based on a copy received through netgalley)
Despite that it is well written. The actual prose is excellent, it's just a shame Matthew has nothing particularly interesting to write about. This feels like it started as a book about the Free Town Project that didn't have enough material so he threw in some pretty unremarkable bear stories and then spruced it up with a lot of conjecture and frankly insulting statistical and timeline manipulation.
(Review based on a copy received through netgalley)
September 16, 2020
I grew up in Harrisville, New Hampshire -- a tiny town located just east of Keene. From what I can remember from my childhood, there wasn't a lot to do in Harrisville. I do remember there were a lot of dirt roads, fields, and moose. Today the population of Harrisville is still under 1000 people, and there is only one school -- an elementary school servicing grades K-6.
So reading Hongoltz-Hetling's book about a similarly small town a bit farther north felt familiar. I recently visited a college friend whose family lives on top of a giant hill in Grafton. On my way up the winding, pot-holed filled path shrouded by looming trees, it was like entering another world as my phone slowly lost service connecting me to my GPS. Even at her house the wi-fi signal was nearly non-existent.
There are many towns like this, I'm sure, across America, but what Hongoltz-Hetling captures in his book is the strange sense that living in New Hampshire, emboldened by the "Live Free or Die" motto, guarantees that ones rights to complete and total freedom are sacred. Let's just clarify that the motto was not established until the 1940s (well before H-H tells of Grafton residents' persistent demands to have freedom at all cost), AND it almost didn't become the state motto at all (other options included ““Strong as Our Hills and Firm as Our Granite” and “Pioneers Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow”). Not to mention that living free and not dying is not exactly new. I think the French Revolution would have some words to exchange with New Hampshirites in the 1940s about their originality. Even today some people in New Hampshire think that they have inalienable rights protecting whatever they choose to believe -- toting guns, wearing seat belts, donning face masks.
Hongoltz-Hetling takes the reader through the history of Grafton and its freedom-seeking ways to illustrate how it was the perfect hub for this libertarian movement. From the establishment of the town, Graftonites denied law protecting Native lands, defied orders from England, and refused to pay taxes. So when local officials realized the human population had a bear problem, they couldn't exactly force people to take care of it. What about their rights?! Instead, officials found ways to incentivize the slaughter of bears, disguising the policy they needed in capitalistic gain.
Interwoven between the history of the town are chapters that focus on different Graftonites in recent years (mostly tax evaders and people who have had run ins with bears) and the team of men who brought the social experiment "Free Town" to Grafton. Free Town was the (mostly) unsuccessful attempt to grow the Libertarian party, who belief in individual rights over all. Hongoltz-Hetling illustrates how the gun-toting, bear-killing, tax-evading people of the Revolution are not that different than the gun-toting, bear-killing, tax-evading people of modern Grafton.
I did struggle with the structure of this book because I needed to make a lot of connections myself. I found myself wondering why certain stories were being told, and often times it felt as if H-H was including them to fill space or because they were marginally connected to the main narrative. Each chapter started with a literary epithet that I thought didn't add much to the overall text.
This book has something for every nonfiction reader -- politics, sociology, history, animals.
You'll find yourself laughing. A lot, which surprised me for a book such as this. The portrait of characters (especially Doughnut Lady and her epic llama, Hurricane) add to the deftly humorous prose. While I think this is beyond the level of my students, I can see a few of my students enjoying this odd little text. 3.5/5
So reading Hongoltz-Hetling's book about a similarly small town a bit farther north felt familiar. I recently visited a college friend whose family lives on top of a giant hill in Grafton. On my way up the winding, pot-holed filled path shrouded by looming trees, it was like entering another world as my phone slowly lost service connecting me to my GPS. Even at her house the wi-fi signal was nearly non-existent.
There are many towns like this, I'm sure, across America, but what Hongoltz-Hetling captures in his book is the strange sense that living in New Hampshire, emboldened by the "Live Free or Die" motto, guarantees that ones rights to complete and total freedom are sacred. Let's just clarify that the motto was not established until the 1940s (well before H-H tells of Grafton residents' persistent demands to have freedom at all cost), AND it almost didn't become the state motto at all (other options included ““Strong as Our Hills and Firm as Our Granite” and “Pioneers Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow”). Not to mention that living free and not dying is not exactly new. I think the French Revolution would have some words to exchange with New Hampshirites in the 1940s about their originality. Even today some people in New Hampshire think that they have inalienable rights protecting whatever they choose to believe -- toting guns, wearing seat belts, donning face masks.
Hongoltz-Hetling takes the reader through the history of Grafton and its freedom-seeking ways to illustrate how it was the perfect hub for this libertarian movement. From the establishment of the town, Graftonites denied law protecting Native lands, defied orders from England, and refused to pay taxes. So when local officials realized the human population had a bear problem, they couldn't exactly force people to take care of it. What about their rights?! Instead, officials found ways to incentivize the slaughter of bears, disguising the policy they needed in capitalistic gain.
Interwoven between the history of the town are chapters that focus on different Graftonites in recent years (mostly tax evaders and people who have had run ins with bears) and the team of men who brought the social experiment "Free Town" to Grafton. Free Town was the (mostly) unsuccessful attempt to grow the Libertarian party, who belief in individual rights over all. Hongoltz-Hetling illustrates how the gun-toting, bear-killing, tax-evading people of the Revolution are not that different than the gun-toting, bear-killing, tax-evading people of modern Grafton.
I did struggle with the structure of this book because I needed to make a lot of connections myself. I found myself wondering why certain stories were being told, and often times it felt as if H-H was including them to fill space or because they were marginally connected to the main narrative. Each chapter started with a literary epithet that I thought didn't add much to the overall text.
This book has something for every nonfiction reader -- politics, sociology, history, animals.
You'll find yourself laughing. A lot, which surprised me for a book such as this. The portrait of characters (especially Doughnut Lady and her epic llama, Hurricane) add to the deftly humorous prose. While I think this is beyond the level of my students, I can see a few of my students enjoying this odd little text. 3.5/5
April 1, 2022
Way back in high school and early university, I discovered Ayn Rand. What a discovery it was! “I’ve got mine and FU if you don’t like it!” Not only did I read ‘Atlas Shrugged’, but also such pithy stuff like ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘The Virtue of Selfishness’. It has been said here on Goodreads: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." So, no, I am no longer a Libertarian. I grew up and joined the real world.
Which brings me to this book. Mr. Hongoltz-Hetling is a good writer, and he tells the sorry tale of Grafton, New Hampshire after it comes to be ‘governed’ under fully Libertarian guidelines. Of course, stupid ‘Statist’ ideas like public roads, fire departments, libraries and animal control are abandoned with predictable results. For me, it was something of a depressing confirmation and culmination of Republican ideas. Let’s not kid ourselves here; the only serious difference between Republicans and Libertarians is that Libertarians like weed.
I wish I could be more upbeat, but after the Former Guy, it seems like normal people are being dragged along by a lunatic cult and this book appears to show the logical end of such policies. Don’t get me wrong, this is an enjoyable book. The people and the bears are great reading. The problem is when you start thinking about the implications on a broader scale. These people are not going away and they hold great influence in our polity. Read the book for some smiles, but recognize that these people are among us.
Which brings me to this book. Mr. Hongoltz-Hetling is a good writer, and he tells the sorry tale of Grafton, New Hampshire after it comes to be ‘governed’ under fully Libertarian guidelines. Of course, stupid ‘Statist’ ideas like public roads, fire departments, libraries and animal control are abandoned with predictable results. For me, it was something of a depressing confirmation and culmination of Republican ideas. Let’s not kid ourselves here; the only serious difference between Republicans and Libertarians is that Libertarians like weed.
I wish I could be more upbeat, but after the Former Guy, it seems like normal people are being dragged along by a lunatic cult and this book appears to show the logical end of such policies. Don’t get me wrong, this is an enjoyable book. The people and the bears are great reading. The problem is when you start thinking about the implications on a broader scale. These people are not going away and they hold great influence in our polity. Read the book for some smiles, but recognize that these people are among us.
January 20, 2021
Janusz Korwin-Misie, czyli kuce kontra niedźwiedzie: opowieść o tym, jak grupa amerykańskich libertarian postanowiła przejąć senne amerykańskie miasteczko w New Hampshire i urządzić tam wolnościową utopię, w której dozwolony będzie handel narkotykami i narządami, kazirodztwo, kanibalizm i walki żuli. Z długiej listy życzeń udało im się m.in. ograniczyć podatki, co spowodowało upadek usług publicznych, a do pożarów musiała przyjeżdżać straż pożarna z sąsiednich miasteczek (PROTIP: jeśli myślisz o ochotniczej straży, pamiętaj, że musisz znaleźć ochotników). Próbowali przegłosować ogłoszenie miasteczka strefą wolną od Organizacji Narodów Zjednoczonych, co tak rozzłościło starszych mieszkańców (PROTIP: jeśli chcesz budować utopię, sprawdź, czy na jej terenie już ktoś nie mieszka), że przegłosowali poprawkę, w której ONZ zastąpiono Spongebobem Kanciastoportym. Po drodze do osiągnięcia libertariańskiej nirwany kilkakrotnie pokłócili się między sobą, gość od kazirodztwa i walk żuli finalnie chyba nawet nie przyjechał, reszta zwyzywała się od sługusów systemu i poobrażała na siebie. A na końcu rozpleniły się niedźwiedzie. Bardzo śmieszne, trochę straszne.
Read
December 18, 2020This is the sort of story that would be unbelievable if it were fiction: in the early 2000s, a group of American libertarians decided to take over a small, remote town in New Hampshire, eliminate the government, and create a tax-free libertarian utopia. Things did not go to plan, although they did manage to slash all public amenities including and especially the fire department. Then the bears moved in. The author can't resist editorialising at various points, but mostly makes the libertarians look ridiculous (which they very much are) by recounting neutrally the bizarre and self-defeating choices they made over the years they had control over the town, all with the goal of reducing taxes (and how this made them such easy prey for the bears). The book is occasionally a little scattershot, but it's funny and fascinating.
January 4, 2021
This is the story of Grafton, New Hampshire, and the unlikely redoubt of libertarians it has become. The author wryly recounts this tale, focusing distinctly on two issues libertarians grapple with, one famously ("Everyone's a libertarian until their house catches fire") and another less so (bears: libertarians believe that one should be able to do what one wants on one's property, including as concerns wildlife; when one woman began undertaking superhuman efforts to feed a colony of lay-about bears, gun enthusiasts clashed with state authorities in their attempts to mitigate the problem while everyone else remained helpless).
This book is not a charitable take on libertarianism, and perhaps that is acceptable. I'm no fan of the doctrine, and for reasons the book chronicles: the idea that one can take all of the advantages of modern life and exempt oneself from them is not only childish, but inevitably courts disaster. Ultimately, we all live in a society and human tolls must be accounted for; ideally, we prevent them, even if it costs us. In Grafton, the poor are unable to prevent bear attacks, what little government presides is incapable of or unwilling to provide bear protection services that render bear-human interactions a rarity in surrounding locales, and fires run rampant while principled citizens dicker over peanuts and ponder whether all-volunteer fire companies can solve a problem that the rest of the developed world has already figured is a worthwhile expense that can be borne by everyone collectively.
Anyway, it's an amusing yarn, but not particularly revelatory. I enjoyed it.
This book is not a charitable take on libertarianism, and perhaps that is acceptable. I'm no fan of the doctrine, and for reasons the book chronicles: the idea that one can take all of the advantages of modern life and exempt oneself from them is not only childish, but inevitably courts disaster. Ultimately, we all live in a society and human tolls must be accounted for; ideally, we prevent them, even if it costs us. In Grafton, the poor are unable to prevent bear attacks, what little government presides is incapable of or unwilling to provide bear protection services that render bear-human interactions a rarity in surrounding locales, and fires run rampant while principled citizens dicker over peanuts and ponder whether all-volunteer fire companies can solve a problem that the rest of the developed world has already figured is a worthwhile expense that can be borne by everyone collectively.
Anyway, it's an amusing yarn, but not particularly revelatory. I enjoyed it.
May 3, 2021
This was an interesting book.
End of review.
End of review.
May 8, 2020
A honey of a tale!
The title of this book raised three expectations in my mind: I will hear about rather committed libertarians; I will learn something about animals, particularly bears; and I will have fun doing it. I am pleased to report that A Libertarian Walks into a Bear met all three expectations!
New Hampshire, with its motto of “Live Free or Die” and town meetings where all the residents make major decisions for the town, sounds like fertile ground for an experiment in libertarian living. Grafton, NH, a small isolated community of about 560 households, looked like a good choice for a group of libertarians, who moved to Grafton in 2004 to “’liberate’ it from the strangling yokes of government.” The “group”, if it can really be called that, each had their individual notions of personal freedom, and it was as interesting to hear the disagreements within the Free Towners as it was to learn about the clashes with other townspeople and authorities.
This book is thought-provoking, and I believe one of its strengths is that it lets the readers develop their own thoughts. This is not a book where the author tirelessly grinds his axe and portrays the situation as very black-and-white. The reader gets to see both the benefits and the warts of less government and more government, more freedom and less freedom. Many people could agree with the libertarians’ push to allow them to grow marijuana or own a gun but draw the line at allowing adults to have sex with young minors or telling people if they want the road in front of their house to be maintained they should do it themselves. At the other end of the spectrum the excessive bureaucracy of the government at times clearly stands in the way of helping the citizens.
New England people have a reputation for being colorful and quirky, and there are plenty of them in Grafton. Author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling portrays them with warmth and sympathy, no matter where they stand on the political spectrum. I was especially drawn to Jessica Soule, a Navy veteran and ex-Moonie whose kittens were snatched from her yard by a bear. And I was glad not to be in the shoes of libertarian firefighter John Babiarz, who is faced with the ethical dilemma of being called to put out an open fire built by a group of libertarians to cook hot dogs when the area was experiencing a severe drought and open fires had been prohibited.
So what about the bears? Some might feel the bear theme, which plays a major role in the book (Highlighted by the presence of wonderful chapter epigrams mentioning bears from people like Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln) is irrelevant to the main theme, but I felt it was a brilliant ingredient. Rural New Hampshire is full of wildlife that gives the humans joy and heartache and presents beauty and danger. It is not surprising that there are differences of opinion in how to deal with this element of life and that those differences can have significant consequences. Bears are a good example in themselves and a wonderful metaphor for the broader issues.
In the course of spinning the yarn of the Free Town of Grafton , Hongoltz-Hetling takes a number of side trips. Some were closely related, such as the story of how the elite community of Hanover, NH, site of Dartmouth College, handled its bear problem. Others seem less relevant, like the story of Nobel winner Charles Nicolle, a French doctor working in Tunisia who discovered the toxoplasmosa gondii pathogen. In the hands of a less skilled writer, I tend to get impatient at such deviations from the main storyline, but these were reliably both fascinating, informative, and relevant.
Who would enjoy this book? A major factor in helping me decide how much I enjoyed a book is how many friends I want to recommend it to, and in this case the list is long. My libertarian-leaning friends (No, I doubt any of them would have moved to Free Town. ), my liberal friends, history-loving friends, friends with a sense of humor. As a matter of fact, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes books that make you think without hitting you over the head with the author’s thesis. As a matter of fact, if I were not somewhat libertarian-inclined myself, I might even call it required reading.
The title of this book raised three expectations in my mind: I will hear about rather committed libertarians; I will learn something about animals, particularly bears; and I will have fun doing it. I am pleased to report that A Libertarian Walks into a Bear met all three expectations!
New Hampshire, with its motto of “Live Free or Die” and town meetings where all the residents make major decisions for the town, sounds like fertile ground for an experiment in libertarian living. Grafton, NH, a small isolated community of about 560 households, looked like a good choice for a group of libertarians, who moved to Grafton in 2004 to “’liberate’ it from the strangling yokes of government.” The “group”, if it can really be called that, each had their individual notions of personal freedom, and it was as interesting to hear the disagreements within the Free Towners as it was to learn about the clashes with other townspeople and authorities.
This book is thought-provoking, and I believe one of its strengths is that it lets the readers develop their own thoughts. This is not a book where the author tirelessly grinds his axe and portrays the situation as very black-and-white. The reader gets to see both the benefits and the warts of less government and more government, more freedom and less freedom. Many people could agree with the libertarians’ push to allow them to grow marijuana or own a gun but draw the line at allowing adults to have sex with young minors or telling people if they want the road in front of their house to be maintained they should do it themselves. At the other end of the spectrum the excessive bureaucracy of the government at times clearly stands in the way of helping the citizens.
New England people have a reputation for being colorful and quirky, and there are plenty of them in Grafton. Author Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling portrays them with warmth and sympathy, no matter where they stand on the political spectrum. I was especially drawn to Jessica Soule, a Navy veteran and ex-Moonie whose kittens were snatched from her yard by a bear. And I was glad not to be in the shoes of libertarian firefighter John Babiarz, who is faced with the ethical dilemma of being called to put out an open fire built by a group of libertarians to cook hot dogs when the area was experiencing a severe drought and open fires had been prohibited.
So what about the bears? Some might feel the bear theme, which plays a major role in the book (Highlighted by the presence of wonderful chapter epigrams mentioning bears from people like Charles Dickens and Abraham Lincoln) is irrelevant to the main theme, but I felt it was a brilliant ingredient. Rural New Hampshire is full of wildlife that gives the humans joy and heartache and presents beauty and danger. It is not surprising that there are differences of opinion in how to deal with this element of life and that those differences can have significant consequences. Bears are a good example in themselves and a wonderful metaphor for the broader issues.
In the course of spinning the yarn of the Free Town of Grafton , Hongoltz-Hetling takes a number of side trips. Some were closely related, such as the story of how the elite community of Hanover, NH, site of Dartmouth College, handled its bear problem. Others seem less relevant, like the story of Nobel winner Charles Nicolle, a French doctor working in Tunisia who discovered the toxoplasmosa gondii pathogen. In the hands of a less skilled writer, I tend to get impatient at such deviations from the main storyline, but these were reliably both fascinating, informative, and relevant.
Who would enjoy this book? A major factor in helping me decide how much I enjoyed a book is how many friends I want to recommend it to, and in this case the list is long. My libertarian-leaning friends (No, I doubt any of them would have moved to Free Town. ), my liberal friends, history-loving friends, friends with a sense of humor. As a matter of fact, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes books that make you think without hitting you over the head with the author’s thesis. As a matter of fact, if I were not somewhat libertarian-inclined myself, I might even call it required reading.
March 29, 2022
This is hard to rate. On the one hand, I pretty much agree with this meme, so reading a book about a group of libertarians who moved to a small town (full of people already so opposed to paying taxes that they were willing to live without a fire department or live with washing their hands in icy water at the town hall because they refused to pay taxes that would fund a fire department or a hot water heater in the town hall), and having their libertarianism make things worse for everyone almost immediately was pretty satisfying. But the amount of satisfying that it was is the problem. I felt so smug reading this, and that's just not a good thing. Hongoltz-Hetling writes with a lot of wry humour, and at times gets downright condescending. And when you're watching people make bad decision after bad decision, it's hard not to snort derisively, especially since Hongoltz-Hetling is egging you on. The equivalent is my right leaning but thoughtful and compassionate stepdad getting a warm glow from a book about a group of well-intentioned but poorly prepared hippies starting a commune and having it spectacularly implode. "Ha!" you think, "Look at those dummies with their dumb ideologies!"
Hongoltz-Hetling argues that the influx of libertarians and their simultaneous efforts to remove all taxation and refusal to follow almost any kind of rule or regulation increased the presence and danger of bears in this small town. I'm not convinced by the argument. I'm certain they didn't help any, but there were all kinds of factors in motion before they arrived, and some spectacularly stupid behaviour by some of the existing residents as well. Never mind everything else in New Hampshire that contributed to the steadily increasing bear population.
At the end of the day, I'm going to give this 3 stars. Some of the people in this book hold ideas that should be condemned - some of the policy proposals, for example, included legalizing duels and cannibalism, and removing all age of consent laws. Others are out there owning a lot (A LOT) of guns and dropping those guns into casual conversation lest the other person think about trying to rob them, and one person literally feeding bears doughnuts on a daily schedule. There are some pretty easy targets in this town. And the whole story is fascinating! A bunch of people with the same political ideas moving to a town to make it into a utopia is fundamentally interesting. (And very in keeping with North American history.) But I also think that narratives with this level of smug condescension encourage us to feel superior, and while disagreement is important and vital to democracy, the second you start feeling like you're better and smarter than people who think differently than you, the system is a little weaker.
November 6, 2020
Najprv prišli libertariáni. Prišli z celých US, rozhodli sa sa usadiť v meste s nízkym daňami a minimom regulácií a ukázať, ako sa dá po libertariánsky žiť ešte lepšie. Postupne rušili ďalšie nariadenia, znížili dane, výdavky, ohlodali verejné služby na kosť. Malo rozkvitnúť tisíc kvetov.
A potom prišli aj premnožené medvede.
Čo sa stane, keď v americkom zapadákove, malom mestečku v New Hampshire, kde historicky vždy preferovali nízke dane a podvýživené verejné služby, nastane invázia neželaných návštevníkov?
Bolo by to vtipné, keby to nebolo tragické.
Takto sa robí local journalism s širším presahom, je to precítené, odsledované, s drobnokresbou. Miestami až príliš. Možno naozaj nepotrebujeme vedieť všetko - o každej postavičke a každej spadnutej tehle. Ale ako moralitka o nedocenení verejných statkov a seba-záhubnom charaktere libertariánstva je to naozaj výstižná reportáž.
3,5/5*
A potom prišli aj premnožené medvede.
Čo sa stane, keď v americkom zapadákove, malom mestečku v New Hampshire, kde historicky vždy preferovali nízke dane a podvýživené verejné služby, nastane invázia neželaných návštevníkov?
Bolo by to vtipné, keby to nebolo tragické.
Takto sa robí local journalism s širším presahom, je to precítené, odsledované, s drobnokresbou. Miestami až príliš. Možno naozaj nepotrebujeme vedieť všetko - o každej postavičke a každej spadnutej tehle. Ale ako moralitka o nedocenení verejných statkov a seba-záhubnom charaktere libertariánstva je to naozaj výstižná reportáž.
3,5/5*
May 30, 2022
Certainly an entertaining read, but I think I expected something more. At times the author goes into speculation that seems purely circumstantial or based on conjecture (the chapter about Toxoplasmosis being the prime example). Some passages seem to be padding, and do not introduce anything of major interest to the book, though they read ok. Another issue us the general tone of the book, which veers from satirical to serious in a manner in a way that at times left me uncertain whether the author was currently engaging in hyperbole or was he being earnest.
September 10, 2023
You know how some meetings could’ve been an email? This book could’ve been a longform article in The Atlantic
February 26, 2022
Ahoy there mateys! Though the First Mate and I have very different reading tastes, occasionally we do recommend books to each other. He and I both read the following:
We read and talked about the book and I enjoyed his viewpoint so Iordered asked him to write a review. So you get one from me and a bonus additional review from me crew. Please note that I write like I talk and the First Mate writes like he thinks. Hope you enjoy!
From the Captain:
If anyone asked me to provide a timeline of events or even a light plot summary of how the Libertarian movement worked in this book, I would be hard pressed to oblige. This book was so scattered in the telling that I honestly ended up being confused about the book's overall message or even the consequences of the Free Town Project. Well besides the "taxes are evil" theme and that the Project failed. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the book. I did. I just enjoyed it for reasons that I don't believe were the stated purpose of the book. And I don't think listening to it in audiobook form was the problem.
The book's premise as indicated to me from the blurb is that a small New Hampshire town is inadvertently taken over by Libertarians whose policies lead to too many bears (and other things) and thus chaos ensues. But Grafton, said taken over town, seemed to be just fine having bear and tax problems on its own even before the Libertarians show up. In fact, the author does a nice job providing small snippets of Grafton's history of hatred of both bears and taxes from the town's inception in 1778.
Like in many small towns (well, everywhere really) there are some truly colorful people. Donut Lady, who purposely fed the bears, was one such person. The attack llama was awesome. The story of the woman who helped run the Moonies and later gets attacked by a bear was heart breaking and she had the only semi-happy ending in the whole book. However, because of the crazy disorganization of the chapters, many of the white, gun-toting, government-hating men were rather interchangeable and I had trouble telling them apart.
The book does resonate in how not paying for public services ended up being problematic for Grafton. The chapter about the lack of a paid fire department, a dearth of fire equipment, and the statics of Grafton fires was horrifying. Ditto for discussions about roads or schools. The comparisons to other nearby towns with basically similar tax rates but lots of public services was illuminating. As a reader, the library statistics and stories were fascinating.
But I felt like what I got out of this book were interesting fragments about random historical events of New Hampshire in general, Grafton specifically, and bears during the history of the U.S. Throw in some Libertarian politics and people. But if the premise was to show how Libertarians almost ruined a town, the book spectacularly fails. The residents of Grafton may not call themselves Libertarians but from a practical standpoint, I really don't see the difference. Arrrr!
From the First Mate:
Like a lot of people, I heard about Hongoltz-Hetling’s book during the pre-publication media tour. My exposure was reading an excerpt that focused on the “Donut Lady” and her propensity to feed doughnuts to the bears outside of her New Hampshire home and the way in which the lax regulations of the town prevented anyone from stopping her. The implication of the excerpt and the book the excerpt was promoting appeared to be that the libertarians who’d moved into town had spearheaded a wave of deregulation that was destroying the town and threatening the lives of its citizens. To say that implication was misleading would be quite an understatement.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is kind of a mess of a book. A mix of colonial history, small town politics, fringe political philosophy, profiles of odd people, and baffled finger pointing, the book seems to struggle in attempting to make a point. Focusing mostly on Grafton, New Hampshire, we learn that the town has a long history of opposing taxes and regulations. There’s the story of the town briefly becoming part of Vermont in an effort to avoid paying taxes. There’s the story about not having a fire department well into the twentieth century (and then continually underfunding it). There’s the various schemes historical residents of the town used to avoid paying taxes. And all of that before the libertarians came to town.
Don’t get me wrong, the libertarians and their Free Town Project didn’t make Grafton any better, but Hongoltz-Hetling doesn’t really present any good arguments for their attempts to take over the town making it significantly worse, either. The libertarians appeared to choose Grafton because it was already somewhat amenable to libertarian ideals. The aforementioned Donut Lady is a local. As are many of the other Grafton residents who were profiled and who favored smaller government, deregulation, and not paying taxes.
Which brings us to the bears. We learn that it’s not just Grafton that has a bear problem. The entire state of New Hampshire is rife with bears. Some of that problem stems from the fact that New Hampshire is kind of libertarian in its general political outlook and doesn’t provide adequet resources to its bear problems. But mostly there’s a lot of bears in New Hampshire because there’s a lot of bears in all of New England. Some of the New England states put more resources towards dealing with the bears and those states tend to have less bear problems. But many of the fascinating historical accounts that we get in the book focus on the fact that bears have always been a problem in the area. I was particularly fond of the story of “Old Slippery Skin.”
Small, rural towns are weird. And they’re usually populated with weird people who have weird interests and get up to all sorts of weird behavior. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the story of a weird town that had some weird people move in and try to take over. The town’s problems existed before the attempted takeover and exist to this day. Perhaps the most puzzling part, given the desire of both the locals and the libertarians to not pay taxes, is the fact that Grafton pays taxes at around the same level as all of the surrounding towns.
I guess ultimately I don’t know what the point of the book was. The title and the media push would suggest that it’s a takedown of the failure of the Free Town Project. Hongoltz-Hetling seems to view the libertarians as villains here; and, honestly, they’re a disagreeable sort whom I found easy to dislike. But the book doesn’t make a successful argument that Grafton would’ve been fine if not for those silly fools who invaded. Seems like Grafton has spent over two hundred years trying to chew off its own leg.
Recommended to people who enjoy profiles of interesting people and colonial history. Avoid if lack of truth in advertising offends.
a libertarian walks into a bear: the utopian plot to liberate an
american town and some bears (Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling)
We read and talked about the book and I enjoyed his viewpoint so I
From the Captain:
If anyone asked me to provide a timeline of events or even a light plot summary of how the Libertarian movement worked in this book, I would be hard pressed to oblige. This book was so scattered in the telling that I honestly ended up being confused about the book's overall message or even the consequences of the Free Town Project. Well besides the "taxes are evil" theme and that the Project failed. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the book. I did. I just enjoyed it for reasons that I don't believe were the stated purpose of the book. And I don't think listening to it in audiobook form was the problem.
The book's premise as indicated to me from the blurb is that a small New Hampshire town is inadvertently taken over by Libertarians whose policies lead to too many bears (and other things) and thus chaos ensues. But Grafton, said taken over town, seemed to be just fine having bear and tax problems on its own even before the Libertarians show up. In fact, the author does a nice job providing small snippets of Grafton's history of hatred of both bears and taxes from the town's inception in 1778.
Like in many small towns (well, everywhere really) there are some truly colorful people. Donut Lady, who purposely fed the bears, was one such person. The attack llama was awesome. The story of the woman who helped run the Moonies and later gets attacked by a bear was heart breaking and she had the only semi-happy ending in the whole book. However, because of the crazy disorganization of the chapters, many of the white, gun-toting, government-hating men were rather interchangeable and I had trouble telling them apart.
The book does resonate in how not paying for public services ended up being problematic for Grafton. The chapter about the lack of a paid fire department, a dearth of fire equipment, and the statics of Grafton fires was horrifying. Ditto for discussions about roads or schools. The comparisons to other nearby towns with basically similar tax rates but lots of public services was illuminating. As a reader, the library statistics and stories were fascinating.
But I felt like what I got out of this book were interesting fragments about random historical events of New Hampshire in general, Grafton specifically, and bears during the history of the U.S. Throw in some Libertarian politics and people. But if the premise was to show how Libertarians almost ruined a town, the book spectacularly fails. The residents of Grafton may not call themselves Libertarians but from a practical standpoint, I really don't see the difference. Arrrr!
From the First Mate:
Like a lot of people, I heard about Hongoltz-Hetling’s book during the pre-publication media tour. My exposure was reading an excerpt that focused on the “Donut Lady” and her propensity to feed doughnuts to the bears outside of her New Hampshire home and the way in which the lax regulations of the town prevented anyone from stopping her. The implication of the excerpt and the book the excerpt was promoting appeared to be that the libertarians who’d moved into town had spearheaded a wave of deregulation that was destroying the town and threatening the lives of its citizens. To say that implication was misleading would be quite an understatement.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is kind of a mess of a book. A mix of colonial history, small town politics, fringe political philosophy, profiles of odd people, and baffled finger pointing, the book seems to struggle in attempting to make a point. Focusing mostly on Grafton, New Hampshire, we learn that the town has a long history of opposing taxes and regulations. There’s the story of the town briefly becoming part of Vermont in an effort to avoid paying taxes. There’s the story about not having a fire department well into the twentieth century (and then continually underfunding it). There’s the various schemes historical residents of the town used to avoid paying taxes. And all of that before the libertarians came to town.
Don’t get me wrong, the libertarians and their Free Town Project didn’t make Grafton any better, but Hongoltz-Hetling doesn’t really present any good arguments for their attempts to take over the town making it significantly worse, either. The libertarians appeared to choose Grafton because it was already somewhat amenable to libertarian ideals. The aforementioned Donut Lady is a local. As are many of the other Grafton residents who were profiled and who favored smaller government, deregulation, and not paying taxes.
Which brings us to the bears. We learn that it’s not just Grafton that has a bear problem. The entire state of New Hampshire is rife with bears. Some of that problem stems from the fact that New Hampshire is kind of libertarian in its general political outlook and doesn’t provide adequet resources to its bear problems. But mostly there’s a lot of bears in New Hampshire because there’s a lot of bears in all of New England. Some of the New England states put more resources towards dealing with the bears and those states tend to have less bear problems. But many of the fascinating historical accounts that we get in the book focus on the fact that bears have always been a problem in the area. I was particularly fond of the story of “Old Slippery Skin.”
Small, rural towns are weird. And they’re usually populated with weird people who have weird interests and get up to all sorts of weird behavior. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the story of a weird town that had some weird people move in and try to take over. The town’s problems existed before the attempted takeover and exist to this day. Perhaps the most puzzling part, given the desire of both the locals and the libertarians to not pay taxes, is the fact that Grafton pays taxes at around the same level as all of the surrounding towns.
I guess ultimately I don’t know what the point of the book was. The title and the media push would suggest that it’s a takedown of the failure of the Free Town Project. Hongoltz-Hetling seems to view the libertarians as villains here; and, honestly, they’re a disagreeable sort whom I found easy to dislike. But the book doesn’t make a successful argument that Grafton would’ve been fine if not for those silly fools who invaded. Seems like Grafton has spent over two hundred years trying to chew off its own leg.
Recommended to people who enjoy profiles of interesting people and colonial history. Avoid if lack of truth in advertising offends.
March 3, 2022
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is an often funny, often tragic account of two major threads in American life that crossed in the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire.
The first is the Ideal of Liberty (caps intended), the notion that America was founded as a place where you could be free to live your life as you want, without inconvenient laws and regulations and especially taxes. Grafton has a long history of collective and individual tax evasion, backed by rural Yankee skinflint attitudes towards money. In 2004, a few of the locals decided that Grafton would be an ideal location for their Free Town experiment. They'd recruit Libertarians from the internet and pack the apparatuses of government with supporters, and then dismantle the state from the inside.
There were a few problems with this plan. First, Grafton is incredibly economically depressed, with essentially zero industry or commerce. While land is cheap, transportation is not. Second, internet libertarians willing to move to a small town are by definition difficult people. As newcomers squatted in various wooded shacks and tent encampments, tempers boiled over in a thousand small way, stressing the town's legal system. And third, there were the bears.
The bears are the second major theme. White settlement in New Hampshire was literally hacked from bear infested woods with musket and axe. But as small farms retreated and the conservation movement rose, bears returned in force. Bears are clever survivors, and humans leave lots of food lying around their property, from chicken coops to bird feeders to trash. Donut Lady, a local resident who started feeding the bears, is the headline, but the real story is a new ecology at the ursine-human interface, with bears as very large and very dangerous racoons. The bear population of New Hampshire has exploded, leaving Fish and Game totally overwhelmed. And one Grafton resident was mauled, while many suffered close scares.
Libertarian attitudes of "I do what I want" haven't helped the bear problem, with complications from laissez faire trash disposal to deliberately feeding the bears, but even organized state responses seem insufficient. The much more prosperous town of Hanover (Dartmouth College) had a celebrity bear, Mink, who was repeatedly trapped and tranqed by fish and game and relocated to deep wilderness at immense expense. Tahoe has a current (March 2022) problem with Hank the Tank, a bear that breaks into vacation homes. What worked, at least temporarily, was a vigilante effort in Grafton that illegally hunted bears and killed at least a dozen. The bear problem would rapidly disappear if people were allowed to open fire on bears sniffing around their garbage cans, use bait, and attack bears in their dens. But such actions are cowardly and despicable, whether done by private individuals or organized under the aegis of the public good.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is a fun story, and a good display of contemporary libertarian politics as emotional reaction against community and responsibility, rather than any kind of actual intellectualism or politics. It points towards changes in how Americans relate to nature, and a possible curve in the conversation movement, though one that hasn't happened yet. Charismatic megafauna is charismatic.
The first is the Ideal of Liberty (caps intended), the notion that America was founded as a place where you could be free to live your life as you want, without inconvenient laws and regulations and especially taxes. Grafton has a long history of collective and individual tax evasion, backed by rural Yankee skinflint attitudes towards money. In 2004, a few of the locals decided that Grafton would be an ideal location for their Free Town experiment. They'd recruit Libertarians from the internet and pack the apparatuses of government with supporters, and then dismantle the state from the inside.
There were a few problems with this plan. First, Grafton is incredibly economically depressed, with essentially zero industry or commerce. While land is cheap, transportation is not. Second, internet libertarians willing to move to a small town are by definition difficult people. As newcomers squatted in various wooded shacks and tent encampments, tempers boiled over in a thousand small way, stressing the town's legal system. And third, there were the bears.
The bears are the second major theme. White settlement in New Hampshire was literally hacked from bear infested woods with musket and axe. But as small farms retreated and the conservation movement rose, bears returned in force. Bears are clever survivors, and humans leave lots of food lying around their property, from chicken coops to bird feeders to trash. Donut Lady, a local resident who started feeding the bears, is the headline, but the real story is a new ecology at the ursine-human interface, with bears as very large and very dangerous racoons. The bear population of New Hampshire has exploded, leaving Fish and Game totally overwhelmed. And one Grafton resident was mauled, while many suffered close scares.
Libertarian attitudes of "I do what I want" haven't helped the bear problem, with complications from laissez faire trash disposal to deliberately feeding the bears, but even organized state responses seem insufficient. The much more prosperous town of Hanover (Dartmouth College) had a celebrity bear, Mink, who was repeatedly trapped and tranqed by fish and game and relocated to deep wilderness at immense expense. Tahoe has a current (March 2022) problem with Hank the Tank, a bear that breaks into vacation homes. What worked, at least temporarily, was a vigilante effort in Grafton that illegally hunted bears and killed at least a dozen. The bear problem would rapidly disappear if people were allowed to open fire on bears sniffing around their garbage cans, use bait, and attack bears in their dens. But such actions are cowardly and despicable, whether done by private individuals or organized under the aegis of the public good.
A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is a fun story, and a good display of contemporary libertarian politics as emotional reaction against community and responsibility, rather than any kind of actual intellectualism or politics. It points towards changes in how Americans relate to nature, and a possible curve in the conversation movement, though one that hasn't happened yet. Charismatic megafauna is charismatic.
November 20, 2020
Something this dire - a town of people so opposed to paying taxes that they become a country-wide hotspot for bear attacks - should not be this funny. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling carefully walks the line between Bill Bryson and a VICE documentarian while spinning this wild story of a Free Town and the beasts- man and animal alike, within. This collection of people, carefully and deliberately documented by Hongoltz-Hetling, shoot themselves in the foot so many times and with such ferocity that it is amazing the whole town of Grafton isn't just a smoking hole in the ground.
I know Grafton, as I know New Hampshire; I have been an accidental resident of the Granite State for the last 14 years. I went to school down in Cheshire county and stayed; I've lived and worked allover the place, from down on the MA border to way out in the Great North Woods. I got married here, I have a home here, and my career is here- none of which was really planned. I happened to be here, so I continued to follow opportunities further and further away from my Tri-State Area upbringing. When I lived nearer to Grafton, not long from when this account takes place, I used to drive that stretch of Route 4 on the regular; the dilapidated sign for The Ruggles Mine is still stamped in my brain.
Grafton is a lot like many other small rural towns in the North East; boarded up stores, countless "for sale" signs, handmade "private property" posts, ramshackle buildings, dead cars, and people working in their yards with firearms strapped to their hip. People who want to give you, as Hongoltz-Hetling experienced many times, "friendly advice" while flashing a threatening smile and the butt of their gun.
New Hampshire is full of towns that flourished pre-Civil War; Grafton itself housed kilns, mills, and farms that all dried up as people and industry moved west. Many of these towns left old stone walls, schoolhouses, and maybe a church dotting the rapidly reforesting landscape, but Grafton had something else: lots of bears, and a town worth of Libertarians!
Hongoltz-Hetling paints a bizarre and often hilarious picture of a small town besieged by both bears and Libertarians. He uses bits of historical anecdote and research to illustrate the terrible destiny of Grafton; even pre-America folks out in those woods would do anything to avoid paying taxes- and would get continuously mauled by bears! The area has long been a magnet for self-styled free thinkers, and this account holds our hand and introduces us to the thinkers, movers, and shakers of the Free Town experiment. In the early 2000s, a handful of Libertarians from allover the country rolled in to town and began to dismantle the already sparse infrastructure of the town, focusing on the freedom to protect one's own property and not much else.
Things went, as I am sure you can imagine, off the rails in a stunning way. I took copious notes while reading this book, as it is full with baffling story after baffling story. I laughed a lot, and gasped out loud in shock in equal measure. I had quotes on quotes saved up to share here, but no- you have to read this for yourself. You have to let Hongoltz-Hetling guide you through this mire of anti-government invaders, old-home townsfolk, and the bears that terrorize and delight them all.
A few words of warning; since we are talking rural New England and bears, we are definitely talking about graphic situations. There is mauling, poaching, and the eating of pets aplenty. All of these instances are documented with care, but they are gruesome none the less. There are also descriptions of ideas held by people both within and outside of the Libertarian party that are pretty extreme; Hongoltz-Hetling handles them with grace and refrains from veering into the salacious, which is a difficult feat considering the actions and ideas of said people!
This is required reading for anyone with a spark of curiosity; I have a list of people in mind that need to read this book, and it will be going out to many for the upcoming holiday. Now is the best time to read a book from the safety and comfort of home- why not read a book full of humor, horror, and top-notch reporting?
*I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I know Grafton, as I know New Hampshire; I have been an accidental resident of the Granite State for the last 14 years. I went to school down in Cheshire county and stayed; I've lived and worked allover the place, from down on the MA border to way out in the Great North Woods. I got married here, I have a home here, and my career is here- none of which was really planned. I happened to be here, so I continued to follow opportunities further and further away from my Tri-State Area upbringing. When I lived nearer to Grafton, not long from when this account takes place, I used to drive that stretch of Route 4 on the regular; the dilapidated sign for The Ruggles Mine is still stamped in my brain.
Grafton is a lot like many other small rural towns in the North East; boarded up stores, countless "for sale" signs, handmade "private property" posts, ramshackle buildings, dead cars, and people working in their yards with firearms strapped to their hip. People who want to give you, as Hongoltz-Hetling experienced many times, "friendly advice" while flashing a threatening smile and the butt of their gun.
New Hampshire is full of towns that flourished pre-Civil War; Grafton itself housed kilns, mills, and farms that all dried up as people and industry moved west. Many of these towns left old stone walls, schoolhouses, and maybe a church dotting the rapidly reforesting landscape, but Grafton had something else: lots of bears, and a town worth of Libertarians!
Hongoltz-Hetling paints a bizarre and often hilarious picture of a small town besieged by both bears and Libertarians. He uses bits of historical anecdote and research to illustrate the terrible destiny of Grafton; even pre-America folks out in those woods would do anything to avoid paying taxes- and would get continuously mauled by bears! The area has long been a magnet for self-styled free thinkers, and this account holds our hand and introduces us to the thinkers, movers, and shakers of the Free Town experiment. In the early 2000s, a handful of Libertarians from allover the country rolled in to town and began to dismantle the already sparse infrastructure of the town, focusing on the freedom to protect one's own property and not much else.
Things went, as I am sure you can imagine, off the rails in a stunning way. I took copious notes while reading this book, as it is full with baffling story after baffling story. I laughed a lot, and gasped out loud in shock in equal measure. I had quotes on quotes saved up to share here, but no- you have to read this for yourself. You have to let Hongoltz-Hetling guide you through this mire of anti-government invaders, old-home townsfolk, and the bears that terrorize and delight them all.
A few words of warning; since we are talking rural New England and bears, we are definitely talking about graphic situations. There is mauling, poaching, and the eating of pets aplenty. All of these instances are documented with care, but they are gruesome none the less. There are also descriptions of ideas held by people both within and outside of the Libertarian party that are pretty extreme; Hongoltz-Hetling handles them with grace and refrains from veering into the salacious, which is a difficult feat considering the actions and ideas of said people!
This is required reading for anyone with a spark of curiosity; I have a list of people in mind that need to read this book, and it will be going out to many for the upcoming holiday. Now is the best time to read a book from the safety and comfort of home- why not read a book full of humor, horror, and top-notch reporting?
*I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
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