Hey Vermont, take us with you!


There may be readers of this blog who have such pathetic lives that they will remember that I came out in favor of secession a couple of years ago. Nothing in the intervening years has led me to change my mind, so I was happy to come across this article (Will Vermont Secede from the Union). Vermont, it seems, was a more long lived and vibrant Independent Republic than Texas before it took the fateful step in 1791 to throw in the lot with the nascent United States. Now there's a movement among Vermonters to change their minds:

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.

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.

...

It's quite simple. The United States has destroyed the 10th Amendment, which says that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The present movement for secession has been gathering steam for a decade and a half. In preparation for Vermont's bicentennial in 1991, public debates -- moderated by then-Lt. Gov. Howard Dean -- were held in seven towns before crowds that averaged 230 citizens. At the end of each, Dean asked all those in favor of Vermont's seceding from the Union to stand and be counted. In town after town, solid majorities stood. The final count: 999 (62 percent) for secession and 608 opposed.

This may sound like a pipe dream, but there are good reasons, even aside from Empire, to think that the U.S. has exceeded the size that even Jamie Madison would have believed was feasible. One small example: it seems unlikely that this country will ever have a transportation policy that makes sense on the coasts. Why? Because the people in the interior, rich in Senators and poor in population, can't even understand the need and see no reason to turn the flow of money from here to there back in the other direction. And don't get me started, once again, about how great it would be if we could shed our affiliation with the religious nuts that are running this country.
Posted: Wednesday - April 04, 2007 at 07:53 PM          

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