Once upon a time, there were some people who believed very strongly in individual liberties. They would gather together on private email lists or message boards and discuss what liberty meant with like-minded freedom finders. After a while of gathering only virtually, their leaders decided there should be a real life community where their shared ideals could thrive.
They settled on a small hamlet in a place where its residents were well-known for living freely or dying. Their answer was small government so once their members got elected to local offices, they began the work of transforming their society. First thing, they cut the size of the town government.
Things only got freer and freer after the cuts, with the individual liberty people constantly suing the town government. People heard about this utopia and moved there, and because pesky government and the theft that is taxation were seen as villains, some of the government things that make life better, like say filling in pot holes, ceased to happen. And of course the police force was cut in the name of individual liberties and violent crime, including domestic violence, rose.
Small government (blessed be) continued to bear fruit, one of which was both cutting back municipal garbage pick ups and rolling back mandates for bear-proof garbage cans, which meant the black bears in the area moved in toward the people, eating their pets and their livestock. Some people were opposed to the bears and so decided to shoot them in their dens (which is illegal and immoral).
Others preferred to express their individual rights in more holistic ways, such as feeding the bears themselves, convinced that the bears (or leopards, hmmm) that they were personally feeding every day, would never eat their faces. Until the day that one of them stopped feeding the bears only to find them on their porch, and attacking them when they tried to scare them off.
The promised land of individual freedom’s center could not hold. The citizens, cold and constantly on bear watch, began fighting amongst themselves over whose freedom was the truest freedom and eventually splintered. Such is the history of utopian communities in that nation’s history. In the end it turns out that some of the targets of the individual freedom movement are also the ones that keep places habitable, and in this case, kept the bears at bay, and so nobody lived happily after.
And should you doubt that my morality play and its inherent lesson are just a fairy tale, I can assure you that apart from a few poetic licenses, this did happen. And then there was a book, discussed here. I urge you to read the first link for a great look into this libertarian festival of freedom.
This is obviously the song to close this piece out: