Let's avoid the bears

Football season is upon us; and, like every year, I am excited to watch and root for my favorite team: the Chicago Bears.

I was born into a family that is mostly from Illinois and I had a father that religiously watched the Chicago Bears play whenever a game was on TV. The Chicago Bears mean a lot to me. They represent nostalgia, family time, and hope (because that’s all us Bears fans have at this point).

And I have always been highly interested in bears as a species of animal. I find them fascinating and have so much respect for their abilities as apex predators. I just wouldn’t want them in my town.

I will explain.

Grafton, New Hampshire, is famous for a dubious reason. And that reason does include bears. In short, the citizens of Grafton decided they would conduct an experiment to develop a libertarian utopia. They named this utopia: the Free Town Project.

It followed libertarian ideals to the extreme — as one hallmark of the libertarian philosophy are the words “taxation is theft” — and they set forth into motion their plan in 2004. The call was put out to followers of that philosophy and Grafton was advertised as a haven for libertarians.

The problem is that Grafton is a small community. But the minds behind the experiment wanted a town that had no zoning laws and very little regulation. And there were many who heeded the call and arrived in Grafton, but there weren’t homes for them — which meant homes would need to be built — and, subsequently there were numerous people camping and living out of tents and RVs. They combined with different libertarian conservatives in the area and started shaping policy for the small town.

For example: they tried to withdraw from the school district, completely discontinue paying for road repairs, and to declare Grafton a United Nations free zone, among other ridiculous things. They met little resistance as they saw that many Grafton residents would be happy to cut town services to a shoe-string budget. They managed to put a budgetary choke hold on things like police services, road services and fire services, and even the public library. All budgets were cut.

So, how did this experiment go? Within a few years things had become terrible. The town of Grafton had previously never recorded having a murder, but soon had it’s first one: a double murder that stemmed from a roommate dispute. Crime went up exponentially and multiple sex offenders started to populate the area. And little could be done about it because the police had been restricted by a budget that was cut to the bone. So crime started to go relatively unchecked.

Likewise, without the necessary funding, roads and bridges started to fall into disrepair. In addition to that, these individuals disposed of their garbage as they saw fit, because they didn’t need the government telling them what to do. And those individuals who were living out of campers, RVs, and tents were throwing their waste on the ground.

That’s when the bears started to arrive.

Several black bears responded to the smell of food waste and, because the town was down to one single police officer who didn’t even have the budget to get his cruiser repaired, the people were on their own with no licensed animal control.

Some people shot at the bears, others threw fireworks at the bears, and some people just outright fed the bears. All of those actions led to the bears becoming aggressive for food, and some people were badly injured.

The experiment lasted until, roughly, 2016. And many people suffered because of it. But that leads me to the central point.

The Chicago Bears are a team. Sure, there will always be one stand-out player or another; but no NFL team wins championships with just one individual. All team members serve a vital role, and they’re all in it together.

Folks, that’s how this country operates. We may like to romanticize the ideal of limitless freedom; but there are always consequences to our actions. We are all in this together. We are all responsible for public education, law enforcement, road services, the fire department, and many more things.

Believing and saying is one thing, but putting into practice is something else entirely. You have to be completely apathetic to not care how your “freedom” is affecting someone else. And, for that reason, I avoid falling into the trap of those ideals. For that reason, I try to be considerate of my fellow man and am mindful that my neighbor benefits from the same services I do.

That’s the world I want to live in. That’s the town I want to live in. And as a fan of bears, I want a town without bears.

Jonathon Dawe is a staff writer at the Daily American Republic. He can be reached at jdawe@darnews.com.