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

by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Each day Grafton seemed to grow fuller. More full of bears. More full of libertarians. More full of guns. And more full of people who loved bears, libertarianism, guns, or some combination of the three—and who were increasingly prepared to fight for what they loved. Oh and doughnuts. The doughnuts were on the rise too.

When he speaks, each word is water-stamped with the Boston-area blue-collar accent that imbues the friendliest of phrases with a don’t-fuck-with-me undertone.

And yet the bear market remained quite bullish.

We talk of deviations from natural life, as if artificial life were not also natural. The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836