Nov
7
2020

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear

The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)

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An irresistible title for me, and (even better) it's a book about a town more local than most: Grafton, New Hampshire, just up US Route 4. A few years back, it was the target of the so-called "Free Town Project", an effort for self-styled libertarians to take over the reins of Grafton's town government, and start whittling back on its power. The book's author, Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, centers his book around this movement, but it's really more wide-ranging. For one thing, Grafton had (and has) a pretty serious bear problem, and MH-H goes into great (and sometimes gory) detail there. But there's no indication the bears ask about your political leanings before they raid your beehives and chicken coops.

Since the book is so wide-ranging, it also seems unfocused. There's stuff about Grafton's history (a long record of tax-hating). But most of the book centers on people: one citizen takes the local church building off the town's hands, only opening up years of wrangling over whether the town can assess property taxes on it. (A tragic ending unfolds.) Various people have bear interactions. NH Fish and Game is criticized for its bear policies. Bear poaching is deplored, and MH-H is given "Friendly Advice" that he probably shouldn't inquire into the details.

At one point, MH-H's story-telling takes him to Tunisia and the colonialist scholar Professor Daniel Butt of the University of Oxford. Which gives rise to the following phraseology:

  • "Butt heads down a different path…"
  • "… the oppressors (according to Butt) wipe out the indigenous culture…"
  • "Butt cracks down on the notion of benevolent colonialism…"
  • "All three characteristics, taken togother, make this very serious theory of colonialism, proposed by Professor Butt, whole."

My inner thirteen-year-old couldn't help but chuckle.

By coincidence, while I was finishing up the book I read this Reason article which urges libertarians to work politically at the local level. I'd recommend this book to anyone looking to go that route: sure, you can hold down spending, but it would be a good idea to have privately-provided services ready to take the place of the taxpayer-supported ones you're defunding. Arguably, Grafton libertarians failed on that score.

Also from that article:

In 2014, Jeffrey Tucker wrote about two main libertarian camps, which he termed "humanitarians" and "brutalists."

The humanitarians believe in liberty because it "allows peaceful human cooperation" and "keeps violence at bay," he argued. "It allows for capital formation and prosperity. It protects human rights of all against invasion. It allows human associations of all sorts to flourish on their own terms."

By contrast, brutalists like liberty because "it allows people to assert their individual preferences, to form homogeneous tribes, to work out their biases in action, to ostracize people based on 'politically incorrect' standards." It allows them "to hate to their heart's content so long as no violence is used as a means, to shout down people based on their demographics or political opinions." I call them "get off my lawn" libertarians.

Arguably, Grafton's libertarians might have had a brutalist tilt. Some seem nice enough, others not so much.

Small data point, since we just had an election: In Grafton, the Trump/Biden/Jorgenson US presidential votes split 423/345/16, for a Libertarian percentage of 2.04%. In my town of Rollinsford, things went 735/951/50, working out to 4.42% for Jorgenson. I question Grafton's [Ll]ibertarian creds! (Yes, anarchistic libertarians don't vote, because it's a symbolic granting of legitimacy to the state, blah blah blah; but there's no reason to think we don't have those folks in Rollinsford too. It shouldn't affect the apples-to-apples town comparison.)

By the way, Jorgenson's statewide percentage was a puny 1.63%. So Rollinsford is a relative libertarian hot spot.


Last Modified 2024-01-23 2:06 PM EDT