Sometimes a title just does it for you. A Libertarian Walks into a Bear – as a title – makes me smile every time. Make of that what you will. Its author’s writing style is also sly and occasionally funny which works to balance out the serious nature of a lot of what is being discussed in the narrative.
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a local New Hampshire journalist who gets pulled into the world of Grafton, NH and its story of libertarians and bears through what I expect is probably a rather common occurrence – someone called the media outlet he worked for looking for help on getting attention for a problem that they were having trouble getting traction on. On the surface it wasn’t related to bears or libertarians, but once Hongoltz-Hetling dug in it was in fact related to both, and the larger history of Grafton. From there we are along for the ride as Hongoltz-Hetling unpacks how Grafton became the focus of the Free Town movement and what that meant for the town for the next 20 years.
To level-set a bit, I am far from being a libertarian and much of what forms the basis for that political mindset strikes me as antithetical to functioning as a society. So, there was a great deal of this book where I stared at the pages skeptically wondering how the very real people portrayed within its pages honestly felt that life the way they were pursuing it was benefitting them (but then, I’m likely never going to understand as I’m someone who has dedicated her professional life to working in the public sphere and have worked for three different county governments in the past 20+ years). In fact, I was viscerally reminded of reading The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles earlier this month and pondering why people would choose to live a harder life simply to prove to themselves that they could, or believing that we should. But as Hongoltz-Hetling lays out, they are far from the first people to head to the New Hampshire wilderness with that sort of mindset, in fact, Grafton’s founding isn’t so far from the Free Town ideals that found it two centuries later.
Hongoltz-Hetling broke the narrative into three sections (some stronger than others) and weaves chapters on the history of Grafton and its environs, the Libertarian political movement that led to both the Free Town and Free State campaigns, and the wildlife management tale of the bears surrounding Grafton which all came together to turn Grafton into the national hotspot for bear attacks. The book was published in 2020, and while early readers could hardly avoid looking at the goings-on in Grafton through a pandemic lens sitting in 2025 I’m having a difficult time viewing it through a lens that doesn’t take into account Trump’s second term and all the fallout it is bringing. I find in this time I have much less sympathy for many people Hongoltz-Hetling portrays than I might have a few years ago, but this is still a fascinating work on how everything weaves together – or not – to form a functional society.
Bingo Square: Citizen. This is a book is full of people who view their legal relationship with the United States and their rights and responsibilities in a variety of ways and tracks the subsequent effects of the actions those views cause.