The druggies have Electric Forest. The hippies have Burning Man. The yuppies have Firefly. And now, the libertarians have a summer festival to call their own: Porcupine Freedom Festival.
Located in the middle-of-nowhere mountainous region of New Hampshire, a.k.a Lancaster, these young people gathered around the bonfire are united by their common love for…second amendment rights?
No, this is not your typical summer festival. It’s a liberty lover’s utopia, a society without laws, a mini experiment in what life would be like without the constraints of government.
Porcupine Fest 2014 (via Twitter)
The participants spend the week taking drugs freely, carrying around AK-47s, and basically just doing as they please. What they have in common is a shared ideology: the less government intervention, the better.
“It’s great to be around people who understand,” a man by a campfire told The Washington Post. “I don’t get how the left won’t just admit that income tax is theft. Who cares if it’s for a good cause? If I held you at gunpoint to pay for my mother’s cancer treatment, wouldn’t that still be theft?”
Libertarians gather around the bonfire at PorcFest 2014 (via Twitter)
This year roughly 2,000 people, mainly white men, paid between $45 and $200 for the pleasure of experiencing this libertarian dreamland, even if for a week.
The festival is put on by the Free State Project, as an initiative to encourage libertarians to move to New Hampshire, with the idea that if the projects can recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to the sparsely populated New England state, that faction can make a difference in the polls.
Libertarians rejoice during PorcFest 2014 (via Twitter)
The festival began in 2004, and has grown in its numbers ever since. According to the website, the festival now draws “over 1,500+ of the liberty movement’s finest freedom-lovers from across the globe.”
Why the porcupine? It’s a creature that doesn’t bother anyone, The Washington Post explains, but it’s ready to defend itself.
A performer at PorcFest 2014 (via Twitter)
This years’ porcupine fest ran the last week in June and is scheduled to occur again next summer. Libertarians everywhere, rejoice!
This article has been updated.