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... or, to give it its full title A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears). Have you ever wanted to read a book that will confirm all of your prejudices about libertarians and also bears? Because if so, oh boy, have I got a story for you!
In his debut book, New Hampshire journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling charts the history of the Free Town Project, a scheme hatched in 2004 by a group of libertarians to move to the tiny town of Grafton in order to take over the local government and dismantle as much of it as possible. They expected to be hailed as heroes by the tax-hating residents, and were shocked when the locals did not welcome them with open arms. Except the local black bears, who were absolutely delighted to meet humans who like to leave unsecured food lying around ...
If you are not a libertarian, you can probably already imagine how well it works out when a significant quantity of people who love guns and don't want to fund anything like, say, just for example, animal control move to a town together. The fact that the libertarians are very, very surprised when letting local bridges fall apart or defunding the fire service turns out to be a bad idea certainly says something about their philosophy. Which is to say that a lot of distressing things happen in this book - sometimes to bears, sometimes to people, occasionally to cats - but it is also very, very funny in the way of outrageous non-fiction that nobody would believe if you made it up.
As America faces an out of control pandemic spurred on by people who don't want to wear masks, let alone fund public health services, this felt very timely, to the point where I'm not sure it would be such a light read if I wasn't on the other side of the world. (Australia has its own libertarian dillweeds, but none of them are feeding and/or shooting any bears.) It's well worth reading, though, as a case study of the extremes of small government philosophy.
Also, at one point a llama fights a bear. Surely worth picking up from your (hopefully well-funded) local public library just to hear how that turns out.
In his debut book, New Hampshire journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling charts the history of the Free Town Project, a scheme hatched in 2004 by a group of libertarians to move to the tiny town of Grafton in order to take over the local government and dismantle as much of it as possible. They expected to be hailed as heroes by the tax-hating residents, and were shocked when the locals did not welcome them with open arms. Except the local black bears, who were absolutely delighted to meet humans who like to leave unsecured food lying around ...
If you are not a libertarian, you can probably already imagine how well it works out when a significant quantity of people who love guns and don't want to fund anything like, say, just for example, animal control move to a town together. The fact that the libertarians are very, very surprised when letting local bridges fall apart or defunding the fire service turns out to be a bad idea certainly says something about their philosophy. Which is to say that a lot of distressing things happen in this book - sometimes to bears, sometimes to people, occasionally to cats - but it is also very, very funny in the way of outrageous non-fiction that nobody would believe if you made it up.
As America faces an out of control pandemic spurred on by people who don't want to wear masks, let alone fund public health services, this felt very timely, to the point where I'm not sure it would be such a light read if I wasn't on the other side of the world. (Australia has its own libertarian dillweeds, but none of them are feeding and/or shooting any bears.) It's well worth reading, though, as a case study of the extremes of small government philosophy.
Also, at one point a llama fights a bear. Surely worth picking up from your (hopefully well-funded) local public library just to hear how that turns out.
