Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.
Will Vermont Secede from the Union?
Share and save this post:
AlterNet Social Networks:
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Rolling Stone Expose Declares Goldman Sachs Behind Every Market Crash Since 1920s
Daniel Tencer
DrugReporter:
Michael Jackson Probably O.D.'d -- Just Like Thousands of Americans Who Fall Victim to Our Overdose Epidemic
Jill Harris
Environment:
Michael Pollan: We Are Headed Toward a Breakdown in Our Food System
David Beers
Health and Wellness:
Labor Rallies for Health Care, But Keeps it Vague
Jane Slaughter
Immigration:
Why is the Government Criminalizing Humanitarian Aid at the U.S.-Mexico Border?
Valeria Fernandez
Media and Technology:
Will the Tragedy of Michael Jackson's Life Be Inherited By His Kids?
Patricia J. Williams
Movie Mix:
This Time, Pixar Has Gone Too Far
Eileen Jones
Politics:
Breadline USA: Why People Are Going Hungry in the Land of Plenty
Sasha Abramsky
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Why Are People Obsessed with Their Kids?
Vanessa Richmond
Rights and Liberties:
In Iran, Fears That a Prominent Prisoner Detained In Election Upheaval Could Die in Jail
Katie Mattern
Sex and Relationships:
Why the Left Looks Like a Big Hypocrite in the Sanford Affair
JoAnn Wypijewski
Take Action:
Pressuring Obama to Make the Right Decision on Health Care is AlterNet's Top Campaign of the Week
Byard Duncan
Water:
David v. Goliath: Help Michigan Citizens Protect Their Water from Nestle's Bottling Operations
Leslie Samuelrich
World:
High Noon in Honduras
Laura Carlsen
The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain State.
Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be one again. We think the time to make that happen is now. Over the past 50 years, the U.S. government has grown too big, too corrupt and too aggressive toward the world, toward its own citizens and toward local democratic institutions. It has abandoned the democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans' fundamental freedoms.
Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire.
Some of us therefore seek permission to leave.
A decade before the War of Independence, Vermont became New England's first frontier, settled by pioneers escaping colonial bondage who hewed settlements across a lush region whose spine is the Green Mountains. These independent folk brought with them what Henry David Thoreau called the "true American Congress" -- the New England town meeting, which is still the legislature for nearly all of Vermont's 237 towns. Here every citizen is a legislator who helps fashion the rules that govern the locality.
Today, however, Vermont no longer controls even its own National Guard, a domestic emergency force that is now employed in an imperial war 6,000 miles away. The 9/11 commission report says that "the American homeland is the planet." To defend this "homeland," the United States spends six times as much on its military as China, the next highest-spending nation, funding more than 730 military bases in more than 130 countries, abetted by more than 100 military space satellites and more than 100,000 seaborne battle-ready forces. This is the greatest military colossus ever forged.
Few heed George Washington's Farewell Address, which warned against the danger of a permanent large standing army that "can be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty." Or that of a later general-become-president: "We must never let the weight of [the military-industrial complex] endanger our liberties or democratic processes." Dwight D. Eisenhower pointedly included the word "congressional" after "military-industrial" but allowed his advisers to excise it. That word completes a true description of the hidden threat to democracy in the United States.
The two of us are typical of the diversity of Vermont's secessionist movement: one descended from old Vermonter stock, the other a more recent arrival -- a "flatlander" from down country. Our Vermont homeland remains economically conservative and socially liberal. And the love of freedom runs deep in its psyche.
Vermont seceded from the British Empire in 1777 and stood free for 14 years, until 1791. Its constitution -- which preceded the U.S. Constitution by more than a decade -- was the first to prohibit slavery in the New World and to guarantee universal manhood suffrage. Vermont issued its own currency, ran its own postal service, developed its own foreign relations, grew its own food, made its own roads and paid for its own militia. No other state, not even Texas, governed itself more thoroughly or longer before giving up its nationhood and joining the Union.
But the seeds of disunion have been growing since the beginning. Vermont more or less sat out the War of 1812, and its governor ordered troops fighting the British to disengage and come home. Vermont fought the Civil War primarily to end slavery; Abraham Lincoln did so primarily to save the Union. Vermont's record on the slavery issue was so strong that Georgia's legislature resolved that a ditch be dug around the "pestiferous" state and it be floated out to sea.
After the Great Flood of 1927, the worst natural disaster in the state's history, President Calvin Coolidge (a Vermonter) offered help. Vermont's governor replied, "Vermont will take care of its own." In 1936, town meetings rejected a huge federal highway referendum that would have blacktopped the Green Mountain crest line from Massachusetts to Canada.
See more stories tagged with: vermont, independence, secession
Ian Baldwin is publisher of Vermont Commons. Frank Bryan, a political science professor at the University of Vermont, is author of "Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works."
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
EMAIL
PRINT
221 COMMENTS
