Land of the Free
GRAFTON, N.H. -- "This is the place," Mormon leader Brigham Young said when he first beheld the Salt Lake Valley stretching out before him in 1847. But I am looking around Grafton, at the open general store ("worms and crawlers available"), the closed general store, the closed museum, and the one open filling station, and I am thinking: This is not the place.
This is tiny, rural Grafton, where a band of oddball Libertarians want to found a no-tax, no-zoning -- heck, no-rules-at-all -- colony smack in the heart of Live Free or Die Country. The Free Town Project's stated intention is to move "in enough Libertarians to control the local Government and remove oppressive Regulations . . . and stop enforcement of Laws prohibiting Victimless Acts among Consenting Adults, such as Dueling, Gambling, Incest, Cannibalism, and Drug Handling."
Makes me wish I had a sister. An edible sister, that is. Just kidding, of course.
The Free Town Project is an offshoot of the Free State Project, the brainchild of a Yale political science lecturer named Jason Sorens. The Free Staters, who espouse a high-test version of fashionable Libertarian philosophy, spent several years canvassing the United States to discover the "freest" state in the Union. For these people, freedom's just another word for 1) I don't want to pay any taxes, 2) I want to roar my snowmobile across your organic vegetable garden, and 3) I want to eat my sister. Just kidding, of course.
The 6,000-odd Free Staters have designated New Hampshire as The Place. Then a handful of pioneers scoured the Granite State for a suitable landing spot. They picked Grafton, population 1,200, a 40-square-mile tract, primarily because it has no zoning laws. That is "because zoning might be used as a statist weapon by existing local political powers to block any large-scale immigration of [Free Staters] into the town" according to Free Town "literature."
The same broadside notes that Grafton "is in the proverbial `middle of nowhere,' " a downside to be sure. (Worse yet, it's near Vermont.) I scoured the local police blotter for the kinds of victimless crimes that the Free Staters would no longer bother to prosecute. Here's one: On five successive days, Grafton resident Stephen Marshall allegedly made loud noises "by discharging firearms, said noises disturbing persons of average sensibilities." Good news for Graftonites; come the Libertarian revolution, fire away!
The revolution remains very much a hypothetical proposition. Some Free Towners have made themselves unwelcome. Florida-based computer analyst Larry Pendarvis, who operates a mail-order-bride website that urges visitors to "Date Locally, Marry Globally," told the Associated Press: "Our dream is to move libertarians and only libertarians to Grafton and get rid of the petty Hitlers who try to control things." In libertarian fashion, he has posted a raft of alternately amusing and offensive materials on his Grafton-related website, freetownproject.com.
Sorens and other Free State types are trying to dissociate themselves from Pendarvis. "We've always stressed that we are not a takeover movement," Sorens says. "We're encouraging [Pendarvis & Co.] not to move to New Hampshire." Another Free State leader, Florida lawyer Tim Condon, calls Pendarvis a "libertarian exhibitionist." "We've got some people who are wackos," he allows. "There was talk of having donkey shows in Grafton, like they do in Tijuana. The whole effort was misunderstood."
Condon experienced the misunderstandings first-hand when he traveled to Grafton last month to show the locals the human face of the Free State movement. "It was like a lynch mob," he recalls. "A little old lady stood up and said, `We hate you, and we're going to teach our children to hate you.' "
Last week, I conducted a brief, unscientific survey at a Grafton flea market where a couple of old-timers -- Dave Roberts and Thomas Bowen -- seemed unperturbed by the theatened invasion of free-thinking flatlanders. They know that the Free Town types have bought at least 300 acres of land in Grafton, "but I don't think they're planning to move here for three or four years," Roberts said. (Sorens and Condon confirm this.)
Bowen didn't object much to the Free Town philosophy; it's the population density that makes him nervous. "I don't want more people in this town," he said, casting his gaze over the empty, wooded hills. "It's overpopulated. I'm looking for a smaller town to start over again."
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 