Don't know when or where I read it. The story, told with a humorous slant, highlights a small town that implements a mix of libertarian and socialist philosophies, much to the distain of two grumpy men who apparently argue continually about how the leadership should be "pure" in their policies, one way or another. A visitor talks to the mayor(?) who explains that the town adopts what works, regardless of what the idea might be labeled. I am writing a version of this story and want to credit the story and Anderson.
Poul Anderson short story about a communitarian town with two curmudgeons who have conflicting views
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The is "The Last of the Deliverers" published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1958.
The story is set in an idyllic town and narrated by a boy who is puzzled about two old men who live there -- the last Communist and the last Republican -- who hold to political views that just seem meaningless to him.
He lives somewhere in Ohio and Ohio, perhaps the US, perhaps the whole world is governed very lightly by the United Townships. The town he lives in, at least, is not big on high tech, but his brother is part of the United Townships' Mars colony. A peaceful world and an idyllic world. (And especially so to readers who were barely ten years past World War Two and fearing nuclear annihilation.) A world grown beyond politics and isms of all sorts.
After a festival, the boy returns and discovers that the last Communist and the last Republican had gotten into a physical fight and had both died while grappling with each other. He more-or-less shrugs at this meaningless end to meaningless past passions. There will be no more intrusion of obsolete hatreds into his utopia.
He then turns the whole story on its head, saying: I remember this because it was the year that the Men of Cleveland refused to plant the Trees. This could not be borne, and war went across the hills.
Classic Anderson!
