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Vermont Considers Succeeding from the USA
(Bill Kauffman, The American Conservative, December 19, 2005)
Organizers billed the Vermont Independence Convention of Oct. 28 as "the first statewide convention on secession in the United States since North Carolina voted to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861." . . . Only in Vermont, with its town-meeting tradition and tolerance of radical dissent, would the golden-domed State Capitol be given over to a convention exploring the whys and wherefores of splitting from the United States. . . . the Second Vermont Republic (SVR), which declares itself "a peaceful, democratic, grassroots, libertarian populist movement committed to the return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic as it once was between 1777 and 1791." . . . The Second Vermont Republic has a clear, if not simple, mission: "Our primary objective is to extricate Vermont peacefully from the United States as soon as possible." The SVR people are not doing this to "make a point" or to stretch the boundaries of debate. They really want out. . . . Although SVR members range from hippie greens to gun owners—and among the virtues of Vermont is that the twain do sometimes meet—Naylor describes his group’s ideological coloration as "leftish libertarian with an anarchist streak." . . . The SVR lauds the principles and practices of direct democracy, local control of education and health care, small-scale farming, neighborhood enterprise, and the devolution of political power. The movement is anti-globalist and sees beauty in the small. It detests Wal-Mart, the Interstate Highway System, and a foreign policy that is "immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional." . . . why not a new metaphor, suggests Naylor: that of Vermont, which is "smaller, more rural, more democratic, less violent, less commercial, more egalitarian, and more independent" than its sister states? . . . The group's seriousness of purpose is evident in its literate monthly, Vermont Commons, which includes contributions from the likes of Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, and Kirkpatrick Sale on such topics as family and organic farming, community-supported agriculture, land trusts, and local currencies—constituting in sum, a humane and practicable alternative to the Empire of Wal-Mart and Warfare. The tincture is green, but conservative, too, and although Naylor refuses to kiss up to his state's hack politicians—he calls Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy "a world-class prostitute" - the Republican lieutenant governor has praised the SVR for "their energy and their passion." . . . Kirkpatrick Sale, author of the classic Human Scale, seeks to "put secession on the national agenda." Audacious, perhaps, but hardly a forlorn hope, for as Naylor asks, "Do you want to go down with the Titanic? No empire has survived the test of time." . . . Secession is blowing in the wind. Sale and Naylor count at least 28 U.S. secessionist movements active everywhere from those dubious Cold War states of Alaska and Hawaii to New York City —site of Norman Mailer’s prophetically pro-secession 1969 mayoralty campaign—to the states of the Confederacy, with their League of the South, and up to the felicitously named State of Jefferson in northern California and southern Oregon. America has gone fission. . . . Under a portrait of George Washington, Naylor, the founding father of this republic in gestation, charged that the U.S. government has "no moral authority... it has no soul," and he denied the salvific properties of the Democratic Party: "It doesn't matter if Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza Rice is the next president—the results will be equally grim." . . . I heard much talk of the need for libertarian conservatives and anti-globalist leftists to work together. There is a sense that the old categories, the old straitjackets, must be shed. When Reverend Matchstick preaches that we need decentralism because communities that ban genetically modified food must have the power to enforce those bans, he is speaking a language that pre-imperial conservatives will recognize—the language of local control. Russell Kirk would understand. When the "Vermont nationalist" CEO of a consulting firm insists that Vermont should have the right to determine where (and where not) its national guard is deployed, I hear an echo of the Old Right. Why should the Vermont National Guard be shipped overseas to fight the Empire's wars? . . . "Long Live the Second Vermont Republic and God Bless the Disunited States of America," concluded Thomas Naylor. You got a better idea?

posted by LoZo 10:19 AM