Pedophiles and Marauding Bears: When libertarians took control of a small New Hampshire town, the results were no joke.

• Author: Austin, Elizabeth
• Position: On political books

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

by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

PublicAffairs, 288 pp.

From his book's very title, it's clear that Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling sees his story as one great big joke. As he describes it, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear tells the "strange-but-true story of Grafton, NH, a small town that became the nexus of a collision between bears, libertarians, guns, doughnuts, parasites, firecrackers, taxes and one angry llama." The book--his first--is based on a lively article, published in 2018 in The Atavist Magazine, about an attempted political takeover of the small New Hampshire town by a motley crew of libertarians and survivalists from all across America. Their stated goal was to establish "the boldest social experiment in modern American history: the Free Town Project."

Their effort was inspired by the Free State Project, a libertarian-adjacent organization founded in 2003 with the goal of taking over New Hampshire and transforming it into a tiny-government paradise. After more than a decade of persistence, the project persuaded 20,000 like-minded revolutionaries to sign its pledge to move to New Hampshire and finally force the state to live up to its "Live Free or Die" motto. (Despite their pledged support, only about 1,300 signers actually made the move. Another 3,000 were New Hampshire residents to begin with.) The project's political successes peaked in 2018, when 17 of the 400 members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives identified as Free Staters--although all but two were registered Republicans.

The affiliated Free Town Project set its sights on Grafton in 2004 because of both its small size--about 1,200 residents--and its long history as a haven for tax protesters, eccentrics, and generalized curmudgeons. The Free Town Project leaders figured that they could engineer a libertarian tipping point by bringing in a few dozen new true believers and collaborating with the resident soreheads. Over the next decade or so, Free Towners managed to join forces with some of the town's most tightfisted taxpayers to pass a 30 percent cut in the town's $1 million budget over three years, slashing unnecessary spending on such municipal frills as streetlights, firefighting, road repairs, and bridge reconstruction. But eventually, the Free Town leadership splintered and the haphazard movement fizzled out. The municipal budget has since bounced back, to $1.55 million.

But even though the Free Towners' full-scale libertarian takeover of Grafton never fully materialized, they fanned the flames of a community culture that prioritized individual freedom...