A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)

by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Overview

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 spread into the neighboring woods. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. And it all caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears.


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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541788497
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	125,925
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a freelance journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won a George Polk Award, and been voted Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press association, among numerous other honors. His work has appeared in Foreign Policy, USA Today, Popular Science, Atavist Magazine, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Associated Press, and elsewhere. He lives in Vermont.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Firefighter and the Bear 1

Book 1 Verge of Wild

1 A Feline Feeding 7

2 A Taxing Tradition 13

3 The Logical Libertarian 23

4 A Quartet of Colonists 29

5 A Rousing Response 35

6 The Converted Caretaker 43

7 The Blackness of the Bear 49

8 The Scrappy Survivalist 55

9 The Animal Admirers 63

10 Fanning Freedom 69

11 The Principled Pastor 75

12 A Battle with Bears 83

Book 2 Rugged Growth

1 Unlocking Utopia 91

2 A History of Heat 97

3 The Pastor Purplifies 103

4 The Campfire Clash 111

5 A Deluge of Doughnuts 121

6 The Survivalists Struggle 129

7 A Bureaucracy of Bears 137

8 The Caretaker Confined 145

9 The Hidden Hitchhiker 153

10 The Pastor's Plan 163

11 A Bear's Belligerence 169

Book 3 Boundless Ruins

1 A Huddle of Hunters 179

2 The Assault's Aftermath 185

3 A Pressing of Poachers 191

4 The Pastor Is Pushed 197

5 A Neighbor Annoyed 205

6 The Pastor's Price 209

7 A Propagation of Prerogative 217

8 The Respectable Riot 225

9 An Experiment Ends 231

10 A Denouncement of Doughnuts 237

11 A Jeopardous Journey 241

12 The Freedoms Forgotten 247

Epilogue: The Firefighter and the Bear 251

Acknowledgments 255

Bibliography 257

Editorial Reviews

"[A] witty and precisely observed debut....Hongoltz-Hetling skillfully probes shortcomings and ironies in the libertarian philosophy....The result is an entertaining and incisive portrait of political ideology run amok."
—Publishers Weekly

"An entertaining sendup of idealistic politics and the fatal flaws of overweening self-interest."
—Kirkus

"[Hongoltz-Hetling] reconstructs a remarkable, and remarkably strange, episode in recent history....The resulting narrative is simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling."
—The New Republic

"Every once in a while, a book comes along that is so darkly comedic, with such a defined sense of place and filled with characters that range from the fascinating to the bizarre to the earnest, that partway through reading, it hits you: This has got to become a Coen brothers movie...Hongoltz-Hetling is a master of the turn of phrase. His voice is breezy and critical, with a finely tuned eye aimed at the absurdities as well as at the earnestness of the Free Town Project."
—Star Tribune

"Since the beginning, Americans have been fighting about the balance between individual liberty and the common good. Hongoltz-Hetling shows what can happen when one rural New Hampshire town went to the libertarian extreme in this madcap tale that zig-zags between tragedy and farce, with the possibility of being eaten."—Colin Woodard, New York Times-bestselling author of American Nations and Union

"A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is a finely drawn portrait of one freedom-loving town, and a joyful romp through the dark corners of the American psyche. Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a gifted writer with a high-powered radar for the strange details of American life. He skillfully portrays the dreamers and eccentrics who populate Grafton, and the bears lurking just beyond its treelines. At turns hilarious and alarming, this story had me firmly in its jaws from the opening pages."—Evan Ratliff, author of The Mastermind

"Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling's wild and wonderful blend of small-town America and large-scale ideals, imparted with humor and insight reminiscent of Sarah Vowell and Bill Bryson, is an unpredictable and endlessly fascinating feat of immersive reporting, filled with singular characters and doughnut-eating bears."—Michael Finkel, bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods

From the Publisher

06/29/2020

Journalist Hongoltz-Hetling chronicles the libertarian takeover of Grafton, N.H., in his witty and precisely observed debut. In 2004, a group of libertarian activists launched a plan to transform the “rural, isolated community of about 560 homogenous households” into a “Free Town” where citizens could “traffic organs... hold duels... and organize so-called bum-fights,” among other “inalienable rights.” Spreading the word online, project leaders attracted like-minded individuals to Grafton and harnessed their voting power to defund public services, remove streetlights, and cut property taxes. Meanwhile, multiple factors including the underfunding of New Hampshire’s Fish and Game Department, “bear-tolerant” wildlife conservation policies, and severe drought led to an increase in “problematic bear encounters” across the state. The situation came to a head in 2012 after a 300-pound bear attacked a Grafton woman on her porch and vigilante poachers undertook an “ursine genocide campaign.” Hongoltz-Hetling skillfully probes shortcomings and ironies in the libertarian philosophy of “unfettered personal and property rights,” and colorfully sketches Grafton residents including a former factory worker who purchased the town’s church and hears messages directly from God. The result is an entertaining and incisive portrait of political ideology run amok. Agent: Ross Harris, the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

2020-06-04
Good-natured account of a New Hampshire town where living free and the possibility of dying go hand in hand.

Magazine journalist Hongoltz-Hetling opens his narrative with a firefighter who holds government in contempt even if he draws a salary from it. The firefighter put out the word that the little burg in which he lived, “a flyspeck town buried in the woods of New Hampshire’s western fringe,” could be a paradise for libertarians, if only enough of them would move there and take control of—yes, the government. Libertarians arrived just in time for an infestation of hungry black bears. Enter a conundrum of libertarian logic: Bears pose a danger, but nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the government has the power to intervene. It’s an argument, writes the author, that goes back to the Colonial era, when frontier settlers took it upon themselves, rather than the hated crown, to engage in self-defense. “Anti-tax, anti-law,” the libertarians did what libertarians do: They argued over purity while trying to defund such things as the public library. The bears advanced their own arguments—and, according to a local bear authority, bears are smart, self-aware, and capable of cooperating “to enforce a bear justice system.” Moreover, they had a local ally who was happy to feed them as well as a town that, while sheltering a few poachers and plenty of gun nuts, couldn’t quite get it together to solve the problem. In the end, “the so-called Free Town” (and local tent city, since many of the newcomers lacked the means to buy property) project melted away. The bears were one thing, but the libertarians, in the end, decided they liked basketball courts, baseball fields, and even libraries and moved on. “They don’t recognize,” our firefighter concludes, “that the town was already free.”

An entertaining sendup of idealistic politics and the fatal flaws of overweening self-interest.

Kirkus Reviews