Vermontwww.vtcommons.org CommonsNumber 9 | January 2006 VOICES OF INDEPENDENCE INDEPENDENCE REFLECTIONS

Vermont: The Once and Future Republic Vermont Commons is a print and online forum for exploring the idea of Vermont independ- ence—political, economic, social, and spiritual. By James Hogue By Frank Bryan Look for us the last Friday of every month in the Vermont Guardian, and visit our website at www.vtcommons.org. We are unaffiliated with epublic: A system of government in which the ow final the hues of October; the orange of any other organization or media, and interested Rpeople hold sovereign power and elect repre- Hoak and tamarack against the hard green of in all points of view. We welcome your letters, sentatives who exercise that power. It contrasts, on the fir, the light of the leaving sun sneaking up and thoughts, and participation. the one hand, with a pure democracy, in which the under from the south showing rare angles on the people or community as an organized whole forest floor, the heavens heaved northward, IN THIS ISSUE wield the sovereign power of government, and on patient and foreboding. the other with the rule of one person (such as a Driving through the colors of Vermont to 1 Vermont: The Once and Future Repub- king, emperor, czar, or sultan). Black’s Law Dictio- Montpelier this October past to advocate for the lic, by James Hogue and Frank Bryan nary, abridged seventh edition. secession of Vermont from the United States of 2 Re-Inventing Vermont: A New Year, an During the fourteen years between Vermont’s America, I was reminded of the music of Judy Open Invitation, by Rob Williams Declaration of Independence (January 15, 1777) Collins sung thirty years ago and the lyrics that 4 Representing Empire: The Politics of and its acceptance into the union (March 4, 1791) haunt me still: the Living Dead, by Thomas Naylor Vermont convened an elected assembly, adopted a Across the morning sky 5 Our Land, Our Destiny: Vermont Inde- constitution, coined its own money (VERMONT All the birds are leaving. pendence Convention Keynote Address, RES PUBLICA), operated a postal service, con- Oh how can they know by James Howard Kunstler ducted military operations, diplomatic relations It’s time for them to go. 6 A Not So Different Drummer, and trade, recruited and commanded its own mili- Before a winter’s fire by Garret Keizer tia, and wrote its own laws in a legislature elected We’ll still be dreaming 7 Independent Vermont/Independent at Town Meeting, where the people also elected I do not fear the time Wôbanakik, by Frederick M. Wiseman the governor and his twelve member council. I do not fear the time 10 Independent Media (Un)Covers The According to Ira Allen, Vermont from 1777 to Empire: Project Censored 2006, Book 1791 proved a “free & Independent State Wholy And in these words I found the themes that Review by Rob Williams unconnected with any Power whatever.” (Letter would govern the remarks I was to make that day 11 What Is “Independence”?, by Bill to Alexander Dundas and Justus Sherwood, May 8, and which I believe are essential to our cause. Brueckner 1781 re: the exchange of prisoners) Ira’s brother For secession is a final business. 12 The Middlebury Institute: The Logic of Ethan called it a “neutral republic” in his letter to American Secession, by Kirkpatrick Sale General Frederick Haldimand on June 16, 1782. Love From the brothers Allen to the first historians The first of these themes is love. JANUARY ON THE WEB such as Jared Sparks, then John Pell in 1929, I love my country. Long did it cradle my ances- through the romanticism of Frederick van de tors and long has it sustained me and nurtured my • Vermont Independence Parties (VIPS!) Water, to the recent scholarship of Michael Belle- children. If I had to choose one nation on which to • VT Calendar Independence Day: siles, Vermont is referred to as an independent place the fate the planet it would be America. And Your Comments state and republic. Said Sparks of the Green there is this: for the action I took that October day • Live Audio and Video Streaming Mountain Boys in his 1829 biography of Ethan: in Montpelier I would have been shot in many capi- • Your cards, letters, poetry, and prose tols of the world — Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for one. Independence was their first and determined I love America for the Bill of Rights, for Nor- Join the Conversation purpose; and, while they were neglected by mandy and Guadalcanal, for Ted Williams and www.vtcommons.org Congress, and, like another Poland, threatened Willy Nelson, for Mohammad Ali and Dotty West. to subscribe to our free electronic newsletter, with a triple partition between the adjoining When all is said and done, we are doomed if we contact [email protected] States, they felt at liberty to pursue any course, base our movement on hate or disgust, whether it that would secure their safety . . . It was on this be for President Bush or Bill Clinton, Wal-Mart or principle, that they encouraged advances to be Hollywood. love another more is not so say that in the passions made by the British, and not that they ever had On hearing several particularly vicious attacks of long ago we loved another less. the remotest intention of deserting the cause on George Bush last year at the Middlebury Con- of their country, or submitting in any manner vention I thought: “What will we do? Rejoin the COURAGE to the jurisdiction of the English government. union if Hillary is elected?” Hate is easy. Love takes guts. No. The emotion that should fill our hearts is So the second theme of our movement must be Sparks further states that many in Congress melancholy; the sadness of a season past. courage. True courage it seems to me involves refused to interfere in Vermont’s affairs, “affirming Because we have Vermont, we will be spared time and ambiguity. A philosopher once wrote, continued on page 8 the stillness of a winter’s fire alone. But to say we continued on page 9 2 VERMONT COMMONS JANUARY 2006

Re-Inventing Vermont: A New Year, An Open Invitation…

awn comes a bit earlier now that January is out of the primordial mists, but out of a particular Dhere in central Vermont’s Mad River Valley, historical moment – the collective 1776 decision and our cozy communities bustle with visitors by a small number of English colonists to assent to sneaking in one more ski before heading home, certain agreed-upon basic truths. From this kids returning to school after the holidays, and the famous “revolutionary” moment, Will asserts, a warmth and hum of local commerce. We are sur- small group of middling and well-to-do merchants rounded by what sometimes feels like timeless invented a new republic with the Constitution’s beauty here: the understated majesty of the snow- 1788 ratification, as well as creating a national blanketed Green Mountains just to our west; the creed revolving around those famous and much- Mad River’s morning mist snaking lazily across debated words from Jefferson’s Declaration. “Life, the frozen belts of ice-crusted meadow and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are corner- through the naked trees; the ski and snowmobile stones of U.S. mythology. Our national doctrine. trails crisscrossing the Valley floor, beckoning for Our creed. One to which all of us in the United just a few minutes of our precious time. States, regardless of where we are from, assent. Though this is a scene that fellow Vermonter We at Vermont Commons are hammering out our Norman Rockwell would love, we know, too, of own creed, built, like Jefferson’s “Declaration,” on the realities a Vermont winter brings. Keeping three fundamental beliefs. The first of these is that our homes warm, our families fed, and our farms, this collective project called the United States - schools, businesses, civic networks, and houses of once a near-universally admired republic and now worship alive in the dead of winter requires hard the richest and most powerful Empire on the work and constant vigilance. And we all have planet - is simply too big and too unsustainable to VERMONT COMMONS neighbors struggling to survive in the face of ris- continue existing in its current form. We assert ing energy costs and dwindling federal support this, as Frank Bryan reminds us in these pages, not www.vtcommons.org for society’s most vulnerable – “to heat or to eat” lightly or with any anger, glee, or malice, but with Publisher Ian Baldwin becomes a real and difficult choice for many. Our a deep sense of melancholy and no small measure Associate Publisher Rick Foley and beautiful yet precarious Green Mountain exis- of regret. We are patriots first and foremost. We Rob Williams tence is thrown into even sharper relief when are proud to be Americans. We are in love with Editor Rob Williams considered against a national backdrop much less this continent’s stunning landscapes, its marvelous Art Director Peter Holm inviting than our snow-covered landscape: spiking cities and quaint towns, and its generous people. If Cartoon Editors Tim Matson and Ian Kiehle fossil fuel prices, mounting national debt, titanic given the choice, most all of us would live Editor-at-Large Kirkpatrick Sale military expenditures, unbridled corporate nowhere else but here. Advertising Manager Ian Kiehle power, and a sense that world events are beyond But “here” in these United States — our coun- Subscriptions Caitlin Bright and our control. try, and, more importantly, our national govern- J. Arthur Loose As we enter our second year publishing Vermont ment — is no longer our own. Rampant mili- Business Manager Pat Ullom Commons and I officially step into the editor’s tarism, endless war, election fraud, debt-for- Web Editor Rob Williams chair, I feel obliged to acknowledge these realities, growth spending, hyper-corporate commercial- Web Design Figrig at www.figrig.com and explain our newspaper’s core operating ism, Peak Oil, climate change, and a host of other Web Host Eggplant Media at assumptions. The articulate and occasionally mad- pressing problems loom large. We are, by virtue of www.eggplantmedia.com dening writer/columnist George Will is fond of being citizens of the richest and most powerful Editorial Committee pointing out that the United States emerged, not Empire in world history, implicated in these Ian Baldwin, Rob Williams, Rick Foley, Cheryl Diersch, Gary Flomenhoft, and Jim Hogue

Contributors Consulting Editors Jacqueline Brook, Marna Ehrech, Alvino-Mario Bill Brueckner is a farmer. He and his wife Laura own and operate a small berry farm in Water- Fantini, John Ford, Karen Gallus, Bill Grennon, bury Center. He was previously employed by IBM for more than 25 years, after completing mili- Anita Kelman, Ian Kiehle, J. Arthur Loose, Tim tary service obligations. Matson, Sharon McDonnell, Thomas Naylor, Garret Keizer is the author of Help: The Original Human Dilemma and a contributing editor for Susan Ohanian, Robert Riversong, David White, Helen Whybrow, and Kate Williams Harper’s Magazine. James Howard Kunstler’s new book The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Editorial Office and Submissions Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century was published in April. 308 Wallis Drive Waitsfield, VT 05673 Thomas Naylor is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University, founder of the Second [email protected] Vermont Republic, and author of thirty books, including The Vermont Manifesto, Downsizing the Business Office U.S.A., and Affluenza. P.O. Box 66 Kirkpatrick Sale is the author of twelve books, including Human Scale, The Conquest of Paradise, Orwell,VT 05760 Rebels Against the Future, and The Fire of Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream. Subscriptions $20 a year for 12 issues Rob Williams is a teacher, historian, writer and musician. He is cofounder of the film production [email protected] company memeFILMS, board president of the Action Coalition for Media Education (ACME), Vermont Commons and editor and associate publisher of the Vermont Commons. P.O. Box 674 Fred Wiseman trained as an archaeologist at the University of Arizona. He is the author of articles Moretown,VT 05660 and books on the Vermont Abenakis, as well as an activist for justice for Vermont’s indigenous Advertising communities. [email protected] JANUARY 2006 VERMONT COMMONS 3

daunting realities. For those who believe that the federal government is simply incompetent, we have suggested that the truth may be far more sin- ister. For others who assert that the U.S. Empire, decades in the making, can somehow be reformed simply by electing the right millionaire/presiden- tial candidate to office, or by passing the right piece of legislation, we believe otherwise. Our ultimate goal is “re-invention.” We assent to a second belief here at Vermont Commons. Namely, that secession — the state of Vermont’s peaceable and voluntary withdrawal from the United States Empire — is not merely a viable policy option supported by both the U.S. Constitution and our own history. Secession ulti- mately represents the best practical response to the series of crises now confronting all of us as American citizens living amidst Empire. Secession is not “running away” from the problems facing us, as some critics have asserted, but confronting those problems square on, unflinchingly and hon- estly, and encouraging our fellow Americans across this great land to do the same. To save what That independent republic governed, fed, pow- VERMONT MARBLE SECEDES is best about our beloved United States, in other ered, and supported its citizens for fourteen years FROM SUPREME COURT words, we must peaceably dismantle it, reclaiming prior to admission into the Union. our land, our resources, our rights, and our And now, the reality of global Peak Oil is setting As Vermonters move inexorably closer to responsibilities to one another from those who in. The federal government, a project now prima- secession from the American Empire and its rob us of the same, while they energetically wave rily run by and for the world’s wealthiest corpora- façade of “equal justice under the law,” it was the flag and speak of “freedom,” “liberty,” and tions, is busy off-shoring taxable wealth, raiding curiously appropriate that a block of Ver- “democracy.” the U.S. Treasury on the sly, borrowing money at mont marble has seceded from the US Our ultimate goal is “re-invention.” unprecedented rates, manipulating electoral Supreme Court building. A medicine ball- For those who live within Vermont’s bound- returns, attacking its own citizens as part of a so- sized piece of marble molding fell from the aries, our third core belief is really directed called “war on terror,” and shelling out a weekly facade over the entrance to the Supreme towards you. We at Vermont Commons believe that $1 billion to fund a sequential global war for the Court on Monday, November 28th. The piece we Vermonters, working independently and in world’s last fossil fuel energy reserves. of Vermont marble was part of the dentil concert with the entire world, can better feed, We can do better. ornamentation surrounding the icons of the power, clothe, transport, educate, entertain and We must do better. Court. As it fell, it took a chunk out of sustain ourselves as an independent republic than The time has come, once again, for us to con- Authority. leaving Liberty and Order intact, we can as one of fifty states in an Empire that is sider independence. Decentralization. Devolu- and damaged the veneer of Equal Justice crumbling (and very much in denial about this tion. Smaller scale organization. Under Law. fact). This will not be easy, of course, and we may Not just here, but globally. The dentil cracked off to the right of cen- fail. But, as I travel throughout our remarkable For us, and for our children. And our children’s ter in the pediment of the building. One state, I see promising signs everywhere: the fam- children. might say the event took a bit of the “teeth” ily farms, front yard gardens, and local businesses And Vermont can lead the way. out of the right. Though the fallen marble dotting our hills and valleys; our annual town We at Vermont Commons champion, within lay directly in the center of the court meeting and the ongoing work of our local gov- these pages, a good hard look towards our com- entrance through which visitors had just erning bodies; myriad Green Mountain organiza- mon future together, and seek common ground passed, no one was injured, reinforcing the tions tackling what will be some of the 21st cen- wherever, whenever, and with whomever is inter- non-violent nature of Vermont culture, both tury’s toughest problems: re-inventing our energy ested in rolling up our collective sleeves and shar- human and geomorphological. paradigm for a post-carbon age, for example, or ing the work (and the rewards) re-invention will As the Court gets stacked by neo-cons to figuring out how to revitalize our local and state bring. We’ve got some exciting challenges ahead. remove the last bulwarks against tyranny, economies as global corporations abandon us for Long live the (dis)United States and the second could this “coincidence” be more appropriate? more exploitable labor and cheaper resources Vermont Republic. Block by block, let us continue to dismantle elsewhere. A Republic that, one day soon, will be. the corrupt artifacts and icons of Empire. All of these ongoing projects, profoundly local in nature, but directly connected to the wider Rob Williams — Robert Riversong world in so many ways, offer us more than hope. Edito These gardens and grassroots organizations are signposts, pointing the way towards a future we are only now beginning to imagine. Vermont Commons welcomes your input Our ultimate goal is “re-invention.” Please e-mail letters to [email protected] or post to 308 Wallis Drive, Waitsfield, VT 05673. This year and this month marks the first annual Although we will try to print your letters in their entirety, we may edit to fit. Please be concise. “Vermont Independence Day,” a calendar day cel- Be sure to include your contact information (name, address, telephone, and e-mail) for verifica- ebrating Vermont’s first declaration of independ- tion purposes. ence as an independent republic in January 1777. 4 VERMONT COMMONS JANUARY 2006

Representing Empire: The Politics of the Living Dead By Thomas Naylor

uring a recent fund raiser for his Senatorial police a few years ago. At different times of the Ciphers are one of the most important instru- Dcampaign, Congressman Bernie Sanders railed year, Leahy can be found playing a wide variety of ments of mass manipulation and social control in against the U.S. Senate, correctly claiming that it is different roles—the hawk, the dove, the statesman, the culture of the living dead, a culture in which peo- corrupt to the core since it is owned, operated, and the patriot, the military strategist, the peacemaker, ple behave as though they have been deprived of controlled by Corporate America. During the Q&A and the tough talking negotiator. life and don’t even know it. session that followed, I raised two questions. Who is the real Patrick Leahy? But Vermont is a culture of the living. It is smaller, “If the U.S. Senate is as corrupt as you say it is, Bernie Sanders often attacks big corporations more rural, more democratic, less violent, less why would you ever consider serving in such a and globalization, but he loves big government, commercial, more egalitarian, more humane, more tainted body? the same big government that is controlled by independent, and more radical than most states. It Hadn’t you rather be president of your own Corporate America. He seems to think he can provides a communitarian alternative to the dehu- little country, the independent Republic of have it both ways. Ironically, most of his support- manized, mass production, mass consumption, Vermont?” ers truly believe that only the federal government narcissistic lifestyle that pervades most of America. The first question went unanswered. As for the can solve all of our problems. The call of the Second Vermont Republic is a second, he smiled and jokingly said, “Only after I Vermont Progressives whine a lot about Presi- call for Vermont to reclaim its soul – to return to have been elected to the Senate.” He really didn’t dent George W. Bush, but are prepared to doing its rightful status as an independent republic. In so get it. Nor do many of the so-called Vermont Pro- nothing to rid our nation of this plague. They doing, Vermont can provide a kinder, gentler gressives who support him. seem to think that all that will be required is to model for a nation obsessed with money, power, The United States government has lost its moral elect a liberal Democrat to the White House, one size, speed, greed, and fear of terrorism. authority. It has no soul. It is too big, too central- who advocates campaign finance reform, and all The Second Vermont Republic wants to take ized, too powerful, too materialistic, too intrusive, of our problems will be solved. back Vermont from big business, big markets, and too militaristic, and too unresponsive to the needs It matters not whether Hillary Clinton or Con- big government. It also wants to take back Vermont of Vermont citizens and communities. As Kirk- doleezza Rice is our next president; the results will from Howard Dean, Jim Douglas, Brian Dubie, Jim patrick Sale noted in his address to the Vermont be equally grim. Campaign finance reform will Jeffords, Patrick Leahy, and Bernie Sanders. Independence Convention last October 28, this is never see the light of day because Corporate Vive Le Vermont Libre!• the same government that opposes “the Geneva America exercises hammerlock control over the Convention, the international criminal court, inter- U.S. Congress. national law, the United Nations, test-ban treaties, We have a single political party in this country, Advertise with Vermont Commons the Kyoto Treaty, budget controls, civil rights, the Republican Party, disguised as a two-party sys- Vermont Commons is distributed every month Social Security, and an independent judiciary.” tem. The Democratic Party headed by former in the Vermont Guardian and at select locations The U.S. Congress condones the occupation of Vermont Governor Howard Dean is effectively throughout the state, with a current circula- Afghanistan and Iraq, a war on terrorism which brain dead, having had no new political ideas since tion of 8,000 in print and many more online. we helped create, an impotent homeland security the 1960s. bureaucracy, corporate greed, pandering to the Both Governor Jim Douglas and Lt. Governor AD RATES rich and powerful, the denial of civil liberties, Brian Dubie are enthusiastic supporters of George Business Card $30 Half page $220 environmental degradation, pseudo-religious W. Bush, the war in Iraq, and Corporate America. 1/8 page $60 2/3 page $280 drivel, prisoner abuse, a foreign policy based on Neither has shown any interest whatsoever in 1/6 page $80 Full page $400 full spectrum dominance and imperial over- bringing back the Vermont National Guard troops 1/4 page $115 Back cover $600 stretch, and a culture of deceit. from Iraq. Douglas is much more interested in pro- 1/3 page $150 Congressman Sanders, Senator Jim Jeffords, and tecting genetically modified seed producer Mon- Senator Patrick Leahy are all card-carrying mem- santo from Vermont farmers and consumers than bers of this culture of deceit. They are an integral he is in protecting Vermonters from the global part of the problem, not the solution. Those who behemoth. And he loves Wal-Mart. Never mind the support them politically are also contributing devastating effect it’s had on small merchants all directly to the further loss of moral authority by over Vermont. Last, but by no means least, he even our government. spent the night in the Bush While House. Why? The Congressional Club is a very exclusive club Lt. Governor Dubie is an American Airlines cap- whose members have been seduced by a combina- tain who flies nearly every week. He also flies fre- tion of money and power. They are paid by the quently for the Air National Guard. From whom is U.S. government and are, therefore, loyal to Wash- he trying to protect Vermont? ington, not their respective home states. Most Quebec? members behave as though they were world-class Upstate New York? prostitutes. That’s how they stay in office. Or possibly New Hampshire? Take Senator Patrick Leahy, for example. Leahy President Bush is the political and moral leader and the other members of the Vermont Congres- of our morally bankrupt government. To whom sional delegation all voted against the resolution are Douglas and Dubie loyal? The American authorizing the war in Iraq, but consistently sup- Empire, Corporate America, or Vermont? port legislation funding the war. Every time the What Governor Douglas, Lt. Governor Dubie, Burlington office of General Dynamics receives a and the Vermont Congressional delegation all new multi-million dollar defense contract, it is Sen- have in common is that they are ciphers. In the ator Leahy who announces the contract with great parlance of communications intelligence, ciphers glee. He also has no qualms about speaking at Nor- produce secret messages deliberately encoded to The confluence of form and function wich University and announcing a new Homeland mislead unintended recipients. But a cipher may through the medium of masonry Security contract for the University, even though it also be a person who transmits messages intended Peter McNeary Welch was caught in bed with the Indonesian secret to mislead virtually everyone. JANUARY 2006 VERMONT COMMONS 5

Our Land, Our Destiny: Vermont Independence Convention Keynote Address James Howard Kunstler

hen we think about the destiny of our land, choices because it is a living arrangement with no because it squandered its wealth in building gigan- Wthere are a few questions we might ask: future. And that future is now here in the form of tic suburban metroplexes that have no future. What do we mean by ‘our land?’ the peak oil predicament. Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Charlotte. The people in What has been holding it together? Because they have no future, our suburbs entail these places will be full of grievance and bewilder- Who are we? a powerful psychology of previous investment ment, and they may seek comfort in the romance And who will we become? that will prevent us from even thinking about of firearms in seeking to defend the indefensible For about 210 years, we have been a federal reforming them or letting go of them. entitlements of their failing suburbs. democratic republic composed of more than a few That’s why vice-president Cheney said the The people in Phoenix and Tucson will have states, eventually adding up to fifty. At times, the “American way of life” is non negotiable. dreadful problems with water on top of their citizen’s identity has shifted from allegiance to a There will be a great battle to preserve the sup- problems with oil and the loss of cheap air condi- particular state to the republic as a whole – as posed entitlements to suburbia and it will be an tioning. They may not be able to grow any food of when Robert E. Lee, for instance, famously epochal act of futility, a huge waste of effort and their own, locally. declared that he was first a citizen of Virginia. resources that might have been much better In Las Vegas, the excitement will be over. The Lately the tendency has been for citizens to think spent in finding new ways to carry on an Ameri- capital of a something for nothing culture will be left of themselves first as Americans, and secondarily can civilization. to the wind, the tarantulas and the Gila monsters. as New Yorkers or Virginians or Vermonters. We might, for instance, have invested in restor- California, the most tragic part of our country What has held us together — at least since the ing our national railroad system, which we will –because it was once the most beautiful and is convulsion of the Civil War — is a common cul- need desperately, because no other project we now most lost – will have many of the previously ture and especially the common enterprise of a might undertake would have such a profoundly mentioned problems and the prospect of awful great industrial economy. positive impact on our oil consumption. ethnic conflict. For much of our history, including the first half But instead we will try desperately to make cars I am describing a nation that may not hold of the 20th century, we were a resourceful, adap- that get better mileage, so we can continue being together far into the 20th century. I would like to be tive, generous, brave, forward-looking people who car dependent and continue building out and elab- wrong about this, but it hard to look at the big pic- believed in earnest effort, who occupied a beauti- orating the infrastructure for a living arrangement ture and come up with a different set of conclusions. ful landscape full of places worth caring about and with no future — the subdivisions of the All parts of the United States are going to endure worth defending. McHouses, the strip malls, the big box pods, the hardships in the decades ahead, but some regions Since then, lost in raptures of easy motoring, deployments of hamburger shacks and pizza huts. or states may be better prepared, or just luckier. I fried food, incessant infotainment, and desperate In the service of defending suburbia, the Amer- tend to me more optimistic about the future in money grubbing, we became a nation of overfed ican public may turn to political maniacs, who will New England, The mid-Atlantic States, the upper clowns who believed that it was possible to get promise to make the country just like it was in Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest (if it can something for nothing, who ravaged the land- 1997, before we started having all these problems. escape the wrath emanating out of California.) scape in an orgy of wanton carelessness, who In the course of this long emergency we face, I include Vermont in this list, of course. This believed we were entitled to lives of everlasting life and politics are apt to become profoundly part of the country enjoys some advantages: an comfort and convenience, no matter what, and local. Many of my friends wring their hands over armature of towns scaled to the requirements of expected the rest of the world to pay for it. We George W. Bush, whom they regard as the second life in a lower energy world; a lot of good agricul- even elected a vice-president who declared that coming of Adolf Hitler and who think the Federal tural land; a civic tradition of responsible local this American way of life was non-negotiable. government will regulate every inch of their lives. governance; a set of regional collective character We now face the most serious challenge to our I tell them, in the long emergency the federal gov- traits we associate with New England Yankees at collective identity, economy, culture, and security ernment will be impotent and ineffectual — just as their best: rectitude, discipline, perseverance, and since the Civil War. The end of the cheap fossil they were after Hurricane Katrina — and that the allegiance to the community. fuel era will change everything about how we live federal government will be lucky if they can I’m personally not an advocate of national in this country. It will challenge all of our assump- answer the phones five years from now, let alone breakup or secession. I grew up with United States tions. It will compel us to do things differently — regulate anybody’s life. and I have been, until recently, been pretty com- whether we like it or not. I tell them, life in America is going to become fortable with the idea that we would stick together We are at or near the all-time maximum global profoundly and intensely local, and it will be the no matter what. oil production peak. We do not have to run out of local politicians you’ll have to worry about. But in the Long Emergency all bets are off for oil to find ourselves in trouble. When world American life will become intensely and pro- politics, economics, and social cohesion. Turbu- demand for oil exceeds the world’s ability to pro- foundly local because the complex systems that lence will be the rule and we will have to do our duce oil, all the complex systems we depend on hold this nation together are going to fail. best to make sure that the just prevail over the will de-stabilize. We will have to grow a lot more of our food in wicked, and that the weak are not trampled, and Everything from national chain retail, to the the regions where we live. That won’t be easy. A that the best that was in us as a people can some- Archer Daniel Midland Cheez Doodle and Pepsi lot of our best agricultural land close to our towns how be rescued from dumpster of memory. model of agriculture, to the arrangements for and cities has been paved over. A lot of knowledge Anyway, I’m a New Yorker, an up-stater, and I heating our homes and lighting our cities will has been lost. don’t relish the idea of patrolling the waters of begin to wobble. Some of these things will fail us We are going to have to reconstruct local Lake Champlain in a solar electric gunboat to keep and begin to change our lives. economies, local networks of interdependency — you Green Mountain boys and girls from chop- At the same time, we will be tempted to join a and that will not be easy given the methodical ping down the Adirondacks so you can bake all worldwide scramble for the world’s remaining oil destruction of economic infrastructure to our that granola you are reputed to subsist on. – most of which belongs to countries whose peo- communities by Wal-Mart and the rest of the However things turn out, I hope you’ll let me ple don’t like us – and the nature of this contest national chain companies over the past forty years. across the border from time to time to see how may be very violent. As these severe challenges arise, different things are going. Our suburbs will prove to be a huge liability. regions of the United States will cope differently. Thanks very much for your attention, and good They represent the greatest misallocation of The Sun Belt will probably suffer in equal pro- luck figuring all this out. • resources in the history of the world. portion to the degree that it benefited from the The project of suburbia represent a set of tragic cheap oil fiesta of the past several decades — 6 VERMONT COMMONS JANUARY 2006

A Not So Different Drummer By Garret Keizer

hat they can sometimes be smug about saying time have shaken hands with Ben or possibly First of all, independence is a socially-derived Tso does not necessarily mean that Vermonters Jerry. value. To say that a Sasquatch (or a mad survival- are wrong to describe themselves as an independ- This is where the Second Vermont Republic has ist) crashing through the Idaho woods is inde- ent people. Their political history can fairly be said done the state a service. To be honest, I have some pendent signifies very little. We might as well to have begun with an assertion of independence reservations about the Second Vermont Republic. attempt to define purity with reference to an — the Green Mountain Boys thumbing their noses To cite but one, I question how a citizenry often uncontaminated urine sample. Meaningful inde- at the land barons of New York — and to have lacking in the discipline required to participate in pendence exists in relation to — relationships. It is been marked by a periodic reassertion of the same, the governance of an established nation-state not “a stand” so much as one partner of a dance, perhaps most admirably when Vermont became could or would acquire the even greater discipline the other partner being solidarity. When our soli- the first state in the union to abolish slavery, per- required to turn a breakaway state into a nation. darity is such that every Vermonter can enjoy a haps more dubiously when it was one of only two Still, by having the laudable effrontery to suggest decent independence, then we have learned how to states (Maine was the other) not to support that Vermont ought to be independent, the seces- dance with something like grace. Franklin Roosevelt in the presidential election of sionists are calling into question what too many of The second thing I know is that genuine inde- 1936. Today Vermont is the only state in the union us glibly assume to be a done deal. It is as if some- pendence has to do with paying your own way. to boast both a Republican governor and a Social- one had asked Bill Clinton or John Kerry if he Even a kid knows that. The wild getup of a “free ist congressman. And it remains one of only a few would like to become a Democrat, which to my spirit” is so much livery if his life depends on any states to have taken the apparently shocking step of way of thinking would have been both a reason- patron’s largesse. In that regard, one finds a certain allowing two consenting adults of the same gender able and an efficacious invitation. bohemian disingenuousness among a number of to engage in legalized monogamy. If one con- The second question we need to pose is whether Vermonters, a pose of rebellion against everything tention of this essay is that we can sometimes independence is always a virtue. I suspect it is not. that makes the modern world so ugly, but an undi- make too much of Vermont’s independence, it A lemming that marches over a cliff to the sound minished craving for its handouts. We want cell would be foolish to make nothing of it at all. of a different drummer is still a lemming. phones but we don’t want to look at any cell tow- But no sooner do we accept the proposition of In Vermont, the celebration of “fierce inde- ers. We find it “such a shame” that so many trailers Vermont’s “fierce independence” than we are con- pendence” has traditionally been done through a are cluttering up the landscape but apparently not fronted with several questions that we must sacrament known as low wages. Low wages such a shame that so many working class women address, if only because no people who failed to derive from a dearth of organized labor, which in are diapering our dependents for minimum wage. do so could remain independent, much less fierce, turn derives from an economy based largely and In certain nineteenth century restaurants, dogs for very long. The first of these is whether Ver- long on small scale agriculture. As for the small were used to turn the roasting spits, trotting their mont is quite as independent as its citizens imag- farms themselves, their pitiless destruction — or lives away in rotating cages. (After this was deemed ine. Are Vermonters noticeably any more inde- to put it another way, the fact that dairy farmers inhumane, the dogs were in some cases replaced pendent than, say, people from New Jersey? are earning the same price for raw milk today as with black children.) The “Vermont way of life,” Out of fairness to Vermont, it ought to be said they got in the mid 1970s — derives partly from especially as extolled by those having the where- that, true or not, people from New Jersey seem to the fact that “hardy, independent people” are not withal to find it so ultra glorious, often strikes me think so. In other words, the so-called “Vermont only easier to romanticize; they’re easier to divide as a reservation in one of those restaurants—at a character” is not solely a matter of self-congratu- and conquer. And this is true not only of the farm- table as far away as possible from the sound of the lation. I often notice when visiting my relatives ers themselves, but of their more or less oblivious rotisserie and the dog, with a nice view out the win- “down country” how readily people assume that neighbors, who will hold forth at the slightest dow and some wonderful entrees under MEAT. since I live in the Green Mountains, in an old farm- instigation on “what makes Vermont so very, very On this level, even the questions I have posed house where I grow a vegetable garden and heat special,” seemingly without the slightest idea of thus far are too abstract. So is any notion of an with wood, that I exist in some kind of mystical what, essentially, that is. These are sometimes the “independent Vermont” — unless we turn to a communion with the land. I am thought to be same people who will run over three toothless more concrete set of questions, namely: Where do independent of, or at least somewhat independent farm hands in their rush to get to Montpelier to we get our energy? What do we do with our waste? How of the moral compromises and environmental lia- demonstrate on behalf of campesinos in any part of do we employ all our people? These questions need to bilities that beset my less wholesome brethren. the world that isn’t Orleans County. be posed on a local as well as a state level, and not Of course this is a crock. Unless one is com- The dubious value of “fierce independence” is just when our “way of life is threatened” by a new pletely off the grid, life in the country is not so also illustrated as Vermont’s smaller towns and box store or power plant with plans of moving to much an alternative to life in the suburbs as an more remote regions fall prey to outside developers town. The questions need to be answered in a way exaggerated version of it. My communion is less and industrial energy projects in a manner reminis- and on a scale that preserve every person’s individ- with the land than with the internal combustion cent of how the West was won, to say nothing of ual responsibility for the answer (and every per- engine, of which I presently own seven kinds, the entire Third World. There is always some inde- son’s fair share of the benefits should the answer both two and four-stroke, which enable my life in pendent chief or village potentate ready to cut his prove tenable). And here is a good rule of thumb: the woods. Compared to me, the typical Manhat- own deal, and the art of successful colonization whenever you think you can hire one big company tanite, who uses public transportation and buys depends to a large degree on knowing where to find or employ one expensive technology to “take care her supper unwrapped at the corner market (to him. But for a ready supply of such “native inde- of it,” you haven’t got the answer. And you cer- which she walks), is a veritable tree-hugger. pendence,” Europeans might never have beaten tainly haven’t got your independence. The nature boy mythology is not without King Philip or Tecumseh. If independence means As things stand now, our choices often seem political parallels. One gets (or promotes) the the ability to stand alone, it can also mean, and his- divided between a right wing ready to engage impression that we Vermonters are less impli- torically has been demonstrated to mean, the ability those questions (if only to provide a number of cated in the actions of the federal government to stand alone in effigy outside a cigar store. short-term, profit-motivated answers) and a left because our post offices tend to be smaller than This leads to the last question, or the last I have wing that prefers to wait until after a revolution those in the District of Columbia. Or, that we room for, and also the most unsettling. Do we that in its heart of hearts it hopes never comes. have less responsibility for the imperial cast of even know what independence is? To write as I And that is where I arrive at the limits of my own American foreign policy because we’ve gone to a have done here, one should have at least some independence, for I need some help getting beyond Bread and Puppet performance or might at one idea, and to date this is what I have: that impasse, and I am not too proud to ask.• JANUARY 2006 VERMONT COMMONS 7

Independent Vermont/Independent Wôbanakik By Frederick M. Wiseman

Our brothers, a few days ago we came to see The Abenakis, of course, never ceded any of this bian ethnocide, where the Slobodan Milosevic our father Mister Johnson, (the British Indian land to France in the 17th century, the English in regime rewrote history to assert that Bosnian Agent for Eastern Canada) then he made all of the 1760s, or Vermont, either as republic or state, Muslims were “transient” ethnic Albanians with- our hearths (Indian Nations) happy. He gave us in the late 18th century. The Abenakis never forgot out indigenous rights. a text. . . which states that the Iroquois their ancient rights, claims that evolved into a more So what does all of this history have to do with (Kahnawake Mohawks) and the Five Nations do desire for hunting and fishing rights, and, most a “once and future” independent Vermont. not possess the lands south of Lake Champlain, recently, a quest for state and federal recognition. and that they belong to the Abenakis. Vermont’s independent legal status (Explanatory italics are Wiseman’s additions) A deputation of the St. Francis (Abenaki) I suspect that the specter of antecedent and ongo- — National Archives of Canada, ca. 1804 Indians, at Montpelier, claiming compensation ing historical Abenaki rights weighs on Vermont’s RG 10 bob. C-11471, vol. 99, p. 41090. for all that territory in Vermont west of Otter historical and collective ethnic conscience. It lies Creek, and between Lake Champlain and so far from Vermont’s protestations of being a ndependence. It is a sweet sounding word. It where the waters begin to flow into the progressive state, the first to outlaw slavery, and its Iimplies freedom and the charting of a future Connecticut… current status as one of the “blue-ist” states in the separate from a past burdened with tyranny, or at The Caledonian. Nov. 26, 1853 union. It underlies the myth of Vermont as a least the necessity of bowing to another’s external “dark and bloody ground,” an uninhabited no wishes. Vermont has always prided itself on its In 1989, VT District Court Judge Joseph man’s land between the “real” Indians of New independent spirit, and this pride has entered into Wolchik found that the Vermont Abenakis had York and the “real” Indians of Maine that we all the nation’s consciousness to emerge as an Amer- never ceded their aboriginal rights to their terri- grew up with. It underlies the dreary years of Ver- ican stereotype. However, there is a little under- tory. But his lengthy, well-reasoned legal opinion mont Eugenics Survey, where the state tried to stood facet to Vermont’s vision of past independ- was overturned by the Vermont supreme court in eliminate the problem by statistics and steriliza- ence, as the Republic of Vermont, and a dreamed- its infamous “weight of history” argument that an tion. And it certainly underlies the fear that blos- of future as perhaps an independent political oppressor can remove Indians from their land soms in the editorial pages of the Burlington Free entity. That vision is clouded by a small yet grow- without any legal instrument or due process. This Press as recognition becomes a possibility (e.g. ing sense of Vermont as Indian country. “Indian ancient fear of local Indians has been promoted April 1999, and May, 2005), or in the former gover- Country,” is a stereotype almost antithetical to many times by Vermont officials, most famously nors’ and current Attorney General’s well publi- that of a free Vermont. It has meant and still by Vermont’s former governor Howard Dean. cized anti-Abenaki rhetoric. means a territory that is more than a “wilderness.” “The Governor fears state recognition would help But try as they might, the lawyers for the state As used by American armed service personnel in the Abenaki gain federal recognition and then in have not been able to come up with that “golden Iraq and Afghanistan, it is a territory full of ene- turn push for a casino and reservation of their own, piece of paper” which shows that Vermont was lib- mies whose desire is to set back the march of civ- says his (Dean’s) spokeswoman Susan Allen. (See erated from the specter of pre-existing Abenaki ilization, enlightenment, and even freedom. But Anne Wallace Allen Associated Press, April 17, 1999.) aboriginal rights by treaty or any other legal instru- all civilized nations have, for many years, recog- In an effort to create a climate of fear within ment. And so it must say that the “real” Abenakis nized that the rights of aboriginal peoples are Vermont regarding the Abenakis, Dean went fur- are safely across the border in Canada, without any inherent, and linked definitively to the concept of ther in early 2002: residual American claims. And it paints the local homeland. This is why European colonial powers people who claim an Abenaki identity as genetic, had to use warfare and treaties to leverage land Not only would it (state recognition of the cultural and political frauds, entirely unconnected from Native peoples in North America beginning Abenakis), allow them (the Abenakis) to open to the original inhabitants of Wôbanakik. in the late 1500s. That is why the United States gambling casinos without any input from the Therefore, when we examine the concept of a codified the idea of aboriginal rights and the legal state essentially; it would also paralyze any- sovereign Vermont entity, whether as a state, a process of cession of those rights through treaty body from getting a mortgage or selling their “semi-dependent domestic nation” (such as was making in the August 1793 Greenville Treaty. That house for the foreseeable future. envisioned by the Marshall Supreme Court for is why the United States has a statute, 25CFR19, Former Gov. Howard Dean, Indian Tribes), or as a sovereign republic of its own, specifically dealing with the process of settling January 18, 2002, telecast on WCAX, Burlington the whole question of “does Vermont even exist? Native claims to lands that were not legally taken under the rule of aboriginal sovereignty and rights by a treaty making process. In order to protect itself from its Indian commu- must be asked. As the process of empire and nation- nities, Vermont pursued a multi-year program state breakdown accelerates, the newly freed micro- Vermont and the Independent Abenaki Nation costing scores of thousands of taxpayer dollars to states, such as we see emerging from the old Soviet When it became important in the late 18th cen- ethnically cleanse its history of Abenakis. Appar- Union and Communist Europe, or even in Fran- tury for Vermont to seek to establish itself as inde- ently beginning in 2001, the State collected evi- cophone Canada, must come to grips with their pendent from New Hampshire or New York, or dence only injurious to the idea of an Indian Com- tribal roots. The tribal reality can be savagely dealt even from the United States, it had to somehow munity in Vermont. with as in Bosnia, Chechnya or Sunni Iraq, or it can get rid of the Abenakis and their antecedent legal be handled by ignoring the whole situation, is does claim to Wôbanakik, an ancient aboriginal land It is well known that the historic Abenaki of the pro-independence Quebequois party in Canada. that included the soil of much of Vermont. This Vermont retreated to Canada at the end of the Thus, the founders of Vermont as we know it, goal was met in a variety of ways, the famous 18th century. the Warners, the Allens and their ilk, made a “Captain Louis and the British Flag” scam of Ira Preliminary Report on Abenaki strategic if unavoidable error. They neither killed Allen to leverage Missisquoi Abenakis from their Petition for Tribal Recognition the Abenakis into oblivion, nor took Indian land ancient village in the 1786-1788 period (see “Issues, ”William Sorrell’s Official Website. by any legal instrument that would hold up in any William Haviland and Marjory Power, 1994. The state.vt.us.atg (downloaded in 2002) court (except perhaps the Vermont supreme Original Vermonters. Hanover, NH: University Press court). So the specter of Abenaki sovereignty of New England, pp. 242-244) and the ignoring of This technique of “ethnic disconnection” has remains as a dark, little remembered dream on the the expiration of the famous Robertson’s Lease on been used many times by oppressor states to deny edges of Vermont’s collective consciousness. lands in the Missisquoi Valley (ibid. 273-4) in 1856. indigenous rights. The most recent example is Ser- continued on page 9 8 VERMONT COMMONS JANUARY 2006

Hogue, continued from page 1 examples of people thinking one thing when something else was the case, and that Vermont was in fact independent, and had a right to set up such a scheme of people who disagreed with one another as to the nature of governments. of government as she chose.” (Haiti was an island inhabited by indigenous natives, a slave colony, a repub- This argument comes straight from John Adams, whose recommendation, lic, a dictatorship, and a democratic republic. Is it now a democracy or a delivered to “the Inhabitants of Vermont” by Dr. Thomas Young, led Vermont colony with a new Bwana? Likewise, the people of Chechnya consider them- to form its own government early in 1777. On May 16th of ’76 he wrote: selves Chechnian; and what of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Russian “That it be recommended. . . where no government sufficient to the exigen- republics?) cies of their affairs hath been hitherto established: to adopt such government, We may leave legal and political historians to categorize. They have defini- as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to tively categorized Vermont 1777-1791 as a republic. the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular, and America in But hold . . . I see in the distance a spectral soldier . . . to his enemies, more general.” Adams’ argument goes back to principles established by the Magna dreaded than death and all its terrors . . . to his friends, as firm as adamant. It Carta of 1215, described in Blackstone as “the safety of the whole,” and which is he with the heart of a lion, the deftness of the wind, the courage of Alexan- Ethan called “the law of self-preservation,” or the right of a community to der, and the fierceness of a winter storm. He speaks; and his voice bounds exist. This right is also stated most clearly, and carried further, in the Vermont through the hills as the catamount roars: Declaration of Independence. “I am as Resolutely Determined to Defend the Independence of Vermont, Van de Water states, in The Reluctant Republic (1941), paraphrasing the sen- as Congress are that of the United States, and, Rather than fail, will Retire timents expressed by the Allens, Jonas Fay, Thomas Chittenden, and the with hardy Green Mountain Boys into the Desolate Caverns of the mountains Green Mountain Boys, that: and wage war with human Nature at large.” the land they had defended against the intrusions of New York should be He’s Back.• forever theirs – an independent nation. . . It must be, without qualification or higher loyalty, the property of the folk who now held it and their children and their children’s children – a land of freemen, a republic. Bellesiles, in Revolutionary Outlaws, points out the shocking words heard round the world in Vermont’s Constitution: Subscribe to Vermont Commons That all men are born equally free and independent . . . Therefore, no male Get Vermont Commons delivered right to your door every person, born in this country, or brought from oversea, ought to be holden by month and stay on top of the issues that will shape Ver- law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives at mont’s future. the age of twenty-one, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives at the age of eighteen. J One Year (12 issues) $20 ($30 overseas) The Vermont Constitution of 1777 shamed the U.S. Constitution of 1787, which would not bring itself to reach the same, logical conclusion on the sub- Name ______jects of involuntary servitude and slavery. Make no mistake: the Vermont Address ______Constitution was powerful, and far more revolutionary than any before it. It was based on the Constitution of Pennsylvania, and radicalized (traced to its City/State/Zip ______root) by the Allens, Chittenden, and the Green Mountain Boys; and it repre- E-mail ______sented true republicanism and was anathema not only to the South, but also to New York. (It was also anathema, it seems, to Isaac Tichnenor, Nathaniel Phone ______Chipman, and the moneyed federalists who slid into power in Vermont after Ethan’s death in February of 1789.) Send check to: Bellesiles tells us of an even greater slap in the face delivered by Vermont to Vermont Commons • P.O. Box 674 Moretown, VT 05660 the entire colonial structure. The French historian Achard de Bonvouloir in 1778 wrote that Vermonters, led by Ethan, held all colonial charters to be void, their powers superseded by the will of the people. This means that Vermon- ters did not rely upon legitimacy from a superior authority, past or present, but rather in their own authority, granted to them by nature and nature’s God. In the story of Vermont’s independence, there are some fascinating inci- America dents. Ethan took Fort Ticonderoga with the Green Mountain Boys, refusing to serve under the duly appointed, would-be commander, Benedict Arnold. General Starke and Colonels Warner and Herrick refused to obey the orders of General Schuyler regarding the deployments of their men in the retreat from at the edge. Ticonderoga. (This refusal led to their defense of and victory at Bennington, and foiled Burgoyne’s advance.) The young republic attracted the secession of 16 towns from New Hampshire and several from New York. This could not “America is lost in a gnarled have been a decision that the towns took lightly. Vermont eventually surren- thicket of bought politicos, dered these towns in order to join the union. That Vermont had the sole corporate con men and media authority to surrender them is recognition on the part of Congress, New York hucksters. But we're lucky: and New Hampshire that Vermont was sovereign. Another amusing story in Lappé has drawn the map that the saga of Vermont independence is the threat by Congress in 1783 to invade will get us out alive. Read it the Green Mountain republic. General Washington advised against it. and get going.” In their passion for liberty and their hatred of privilege and arbitrary power, —GREG PALAST the leaders and the people of Vermont considered statehood to be their goal, author, The Best Democracy because in statehood they found sovereignty, freedom and unity. It was the Money Can Buy continued rebuffing of their application by Congress that made Vermont a republic. Whether or not most of the settlers realized that they were living in a republic is debatable, but of little importance. Governor Chittenden would agree that “public acknowledgement of the powers of the earth” is “a mis- taken notion of government.” Bellesiles contends in Revolutionary Outlaws www.josseybass.com that “the region considered itself an independent republic.” However, from the beginning of recorded history to the present time, there are countless JANUARY 2006 VERMONT COMMONS 9

Bryan, continued from page 1 ship to be humane it must be complicated and Above all let us be civil, tolerant, and aware of “Life is the art of reaching sufficient conclusions dutiful. These characteristics are learned best in the common humanity we share with those with based on insufficient evidence.” My friend Bill communities where human interaction is maxi- whom we disagree. Let us always “walk a mile in Mares says: “Maturity is living with ambiguity.” mized. I will stop and help someone who drives their shoes” before we criticize. For this is the way Either way, sustained action in the face of ambigu- their car into a ditch in Starksboro not because (as of Vermont democracy. ity spells courage. As with love, the greater the Jefferson said) I am a rural person and thus one of This means we have more to do than secede from cause, the greater the ambiguity. “the chosen people of God.” I will stop because I the Union. We must sustain the passion that drove Question: Do we have the guts to sustain our have learned over the years that because the per- us to it. And that passion is about what Vermont is action in the face of doubt? What we are up to is son in the ditch may know it’s my truck going by, and only secondarily about what America is not. intellectually complex. To survive we must work I may have to explain to him the next time I see For it is not an independent republic we seek. It through that complexity over the long haul. Tom him why I didn’t stop. is an independent Vermont republic. If we achieve Wolfe (author of The Right Stuff) says that the Were Kunstler a citizen of Williamstown, Ver- the Republic and lose Vermont – what would be most courageous act a human being can attempt mont or Wilksboro, North Carolina, if he were the point? is to land a high performance aircraft on an aircraft not separated in time and space from the citizens Listen with me, therefore, to the words of carrier at night. Why? Not because it takes the of these places, if indeed they were his neighbors Ralph Nading Hill as he describes Vermonters in “Powder River let’r buck!” mentality of a cowboy and not just statistics he would act differently. He his classic Contrary Country. bull rider, but because it takes absolute concentra- would act humanely. Rebellions runs through the entire fabric of tion on the end in sight, while fighting off the fear Thus it is that we must imagine ourselves before the lives of this resilient people whose ances- involved in making a dozen adjustments in your a winter’s fire. The birds have flown south. The tors first came to till a resistant soil. Perhaps actions during which any single misstep means cold is upon us. A long winter lies ahead. And there because Vermont has so clearly diverged form death. It is being careful and precise when every is time — a lot of time — that we will be sharing twentieth century streamlined living, the trait atom of your being screams, “Go for it!” together. For after secession, we will be alone. of waywardness has recently been the subject We can either be an organization based on easy The conditions of life on a human scale have for of intense rediscovery by transplants and slogans and gutless emotions like hate that we more than two hundred years fashioned the very humorists, as if it were a new discovery on the employ to cover our own insecurities – and if we place we seek to preserve in a new form — an inde- landscape of New England. don’t have any then our critics are right and we pendent republic, the Second Vermont Republic. But it is not really new… ARE nuts – or we can use the right stuff. Under- This is our heritage. This is what makes Vermont Rebellion is their birthright [and] fires of stand, this does not mean that the movement special. It is not the scenery. It is not our mountains rebellion, which flamed for a hundred years, should be “intellectualized.” Hell no. Without sus- “stretching straight and true” as Frost said. It is us have not gone out. Coals of protest still smol- tained and bold action we die. But it also means, as as we live in our communities – our small towns. It der in town meetings, under the dome of the Hemingway said, grace in the face of danger. For is neither the easy days of summer nor the tourist- state capitol and by phrases spoken by us grace is not a flowing cape and precise dancer’s filled weeks of autumn. We find ourselves when Vermont legislators in Washington… steps. It is hard and honest thinking. the colors fade into gray and then white (as Bill Clinton was a draft dodger. Mosher says in his incandescent final paragraph of These words are as true today as they were George Bush Jr. was a draft dodger. Alabama Jones.) We find ourselves when we hunker when they were published in 1950. Both statements are cowardly. What we are down, dig in, and see the winter through. We find Rebellion remains our birthright. • doing is justified because the most passionate ourselves when we are alone with each other. members of both the political parties that rule Most of all we find ourselves in our governance. America subscribe to one of them and not the In our two-year term for governor, in our citizen other. Worse, the other members of America’s legislature, in our town meetings — the planet’s Wiseman, continued from page 7 ruling elite don’t seem to give a damn if leaders of best single example of real democracy — of our major political institutions thus continue to democracy as it was meant to be. Quo vadis Vermont? soil themselves in public. Vermont is a strange place, with arch-conservative When James Howard Kunstler nastily attacked A Final Word roots that somehow contribute to its odd allure for race car drivers at the Montpelier convention he As we work toward our independence let us never the most liberal and progressive Americans who still gave us a perfect example of gutless simplicity – this forget what drives us. We are not doing this to rid seem to flock here. Is it more than its current image time (I assume) employed to ingratiate him with his ourselves of America. We are doing this to preserve as a theme park for people who have made their audience. It should have been a learning moment the one place that best represents what America money elsewhere and want to come here to get for us. Hate was in his voice. I think he must have was all about, the one place that best exhibits the away from it all? The battles against Wal-Marts and felt insecure. But why? Until that moment we were values that made America great. We are doing this wind farms seem to reinforce this idea. The Ver- with him! Perhaps calling these kinds of people to re-establish a new smaller America as it was mont conservatives of the 1970s had their say when those kinds of names has become a habit for him. before big government and big business and big they derided the Abenakis for wanting to over-fish Whatever the case he exhibited the importance media forgot what America was all about. and over-hunt Vermont for food, so that game col- of the third theme that flows from Judy Collin’s Let us form a new coalition of left and right lected by sportsmen would become scarce. The Ver- lyrics. fashioned not on the opportunity for political mont liberals of the last ten years had their say gain, but rather an appreciation for what we have through their concocted, far fetched scenarios of Humanity in common — a fear of giant institutions of influ- Abenakis deflating big and growing government by Question: If there were race car drivers in the ence whether they be seen as under public or pri- setting up casinos to compete with state-sponsored audience and Kunstler knew it, would he have said vate control. Exxon or the Defense Department, gambling through the Vermont Lottery, and having the same things? the U.S. Department of Education or Wal-Mart, a land base, perhaps with health and educational Perhaps. What if, however, he lived in a small Verizon or the FCC, who cares? institutions, not entirely under “their” government’s town in Vermont (Let’s say Washington or East The problem is size. For size precludes popular control. Thus, it is hard to predict how those who Montpelier near Thunder Road International control of either public institutions or the market feel most acutely the uniqueness of Vermont and Speedway). Would he have made these remarks at place. hope for a measure of autonomy, would consider town meeting in these towns? Let us be as opposed to the governmental imperi- and treat its aboriginal, tribal origins. No. alism inward toward citizens in their states and But neither Vermont historian nor Vermont Such behavior does not meet the test of human localities, as we are opposed to imperialism outward pro-independence activist can leave for long the scale. Life is different when you meet folks on the over the markets and cultures of the world. Let us knowledge that somewhere, some time, the street, at the gas station, in the store. Playwright always understand that for all but the very wealthy Abenakis will have to be full partner in the “real” Jonathan Miller said it best: in order for a relation- in America, mega-bureaucracy is always totalitarian. Vermont of the future. • 10 VERMONT COMMONS JANUARY 2006

Independent Media (Un)Covers The Empire: Project Censored 2006 BOOK REVIEW by Rob Williams

“The Daily Prophet is bound to report the States is now the most powerful Empire in the lization? (The “best-estimate” answer – more than truth occasionally, if only accidentally.” world. And, as citizens of the most powerful 100,000). Wondering if any lingering questions Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, speaking in Empire in world history, Americans had better about the 911 “terrorist” attacks exist? (The answer J Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince know what the heck is going on. But when it — enough unanswered questions to fill several comes to “news,” Americans live in one of the books). How ‘bout that “Oil For Food” program? uring times of great upheaval – election most heavily censored societies in the world. Concerned about Big Brother, the Patriot Act, and Dfraud, militarism, “terror” attacks, corporate The Empire is naked. the arrival of a post-911 “surveillance society”? corruption, and war - it is sometimes useful to “Censorship” in the United States, you say? What happened during the 2004 presidential “elec- take refuge in the wisdom of stories told to us as Preposterous. (Note: we are conditioned from tion” (and I use THAT term loosely) anyway? children. In J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular “Harry birth to believe exactly the opposite). Choices, we Questioning why the new Department of Potter” series, for example, the Daily Prophet (the are told, define our media culture, unlike those Homeland Security seems congenitally incapable wizarding world’s newspaper of record) often oppressive top-down state-run regimes — Cuba, rooting out and then routing the bad guys? serves as little more than a mouthpiece for the say, or the pre-glasnost Soviet Union — in which “Project Censored” (PC) will answer all these ques- Establishment, stenographically serving up state-controlled media tell people what to think. tions for you, but only because mainstream news “news” that reflects the “spin” of the Ministry of We’ve got dozens of television stations, hundreds has done such a lousy job of the same. Magic, while chipping away at the reputations of of magazines, thousands of radio stations, mil- The Empire is naked. those who challenge the Ministry’s power. Helped lions of web sites. Indeed, PC 2006 is a sobering read, but the infor- along by mentors such as Dumbledore, Harry and The Empire is naked. mation is presented in an accessible manner. Each his young school mates, wizards-in-training all, Censorship? Don’t be absurd. Pay no attention “censored story” is summarized in just a few live- begin to realize that much of what passes for offi- to the fact that most Americans surveyed claim to ly pages, complete with URL links to web sites cial “news” in the Daily Prophet is nothing more get all of their news and information about the containing further information for research, and than carefully constructed public relations propa- world from television. Or that we see, on average, an “update” section from experts who’ve contin- ganda designed to manipulate wizard hearts and more than 3,000 advertisements each day. Or that ued to track each “censored” story up to the date minds. 90% of our media content is owned by one of six of publication. Tom Tomorrow cartoons pepper Popular children’s stories like “Harry Potter” transnational corporations. Or that millions of the book, adding retro-spice and much-needed often reveal much about the way the real world taxpayer dollars are funneled into dozens of fed- chuckles along the way. The “Junk News” section works. Remember the classic about the Emperor’s eral agencies for the express purpose of subsidiz- reminds us what stories dominated the headlines – New Clothes? Once upon a time, a rich and pow- ing the manufacture of corporate-friendly “news” Ashton and Demi, the Michael Jackson imbroglio, erful emperor ordered snazzy new garments from VNRS (video news releases) broadcast daily on etc. – no need to remind you of them here. a tailor with a sense of humor, an outfit consisting millions of American TV sets without being iden- Meanwhile, PC 2006 provides more in-depth of nothing more than his birthday suit. The tified as such. Or that Big Business spends more accounts of critical but ignored events of the past Emperor proved so taken with his new threads than 1 trillion dollars each year on powerful year – unanswered 911 questions (Read archived that he refused to acknowledge that he was sans advertising, marketing, and branding campaigns stories from our own “911 Reconsidered” issue at clothing, parading about for the entire world to that influence the ways we think, feel, buy, and www.vtcommons.org/journal); the theft of the see. All of his loyal subjects, busy bowing and behave. Just ignore such inconvenient facts. 2004 presidential “election” (remember, a loose scraping, couldn’t bring themselves to tell him the “Manufacturing consent” is just a well-worn term, subject to slippage); Junk Science; and the truth. cliché quoted by smug Chomskyites in a desper- cozy relationship between the military/industrial The Emperor was naked. ate bid to sell books to cynics and justify their complex and corporate media owners, to name One person in the crowd - a lone child – refuses own pathetic academic existence. but a few. to wallow in this exercise in collective denial, The Empire is naked. The Empire is naked. deciding not to play along with the Game. And “Denial” is not just a river in Egypt. Fortunately, Strangely, perhaps, my annual reading of that one child began telling others, who told oth- though, for those who care about hard-hitting “Project Censored,” like my reading of “Harry ers, who pointed it out to others, and soon – the investigative journalism, we’ve got one of those Potter,” always provides me with some glimmer- story got out. little boys from the fable in our midst. Every year ings of hope. Independent investigative journal- The Emperor was naked. for the past three decades, Sonoma State ism has been much marginalized within the main- In a healthy and functioning democratic society, University’s Department of Sociology has pro- stream in the United States, yes, but it is very journalists must play the role of the child in that duced a powerful little book called “Project much alive and well if one knows where to look. well-known fable. It is journalists who ask hard Censored” (PC), reporting on the “top 25” cen- Dozens of bright young college students at questions of the powerful. It is journalists who sored stories ignored or suppressed by our corpo- Sonoma State are receiving the kind of training provide a rigorous accounting of the evidence as it rately-owned commercially-financed mainstream they’ll need to be actual investigative journalists, presents itself. It is journalists who report truths culture of “news” (and remember, I use the term instead of simply serving as “stenographers to about the way the world works, no matter how loosely). More than 250 people – students, staff, power” as they come of age. Hundreds of inconvenient or troubling. community experts, guest writers – all worked thoughtful people collectively bend their minds The Empire is naked. this past year to collectively create one of the most each year to the age-old task of excavating and As the United States enters the 21st century, powerful antidotes to the denial that is rampant in presenting uncomfortable but important truths however, its third century as a so-called constitu- our society. about the world’s inequalities and injustices. tional Republic, most mainstream American jour- The Empire is naked. The Empire is naked. nalists, out of fear, ignorance, or denial, refuse to And what a year 2005 was for obfuscation, diver- Inspired books like Project Censored 2006, mean- acknowledge a simple fact about our great country. sion, spin, disinformation, and yes, denial, on the while, remind us that, here in the Green Mountain The Empire is naked. screens and in the pages of the U.S. mainstream State, it is time to clothe ourselves with the truth, The state of our “news” culture (and I use the press. Want to know how many Iraqis have been and put our energies towards re-invention. term loosely) is deeply troubling. The United killed in modern Mesopotamia, the cradle of civi- Long live the Second Vermont Republic. • JANUARY 2006 VERMONT COMMONS 11

What Is “Independence”? Bill Brueckner

ndependence: not subject to control by others, amendments called the Bill of Rights to further out of contracts, asserting control on people’s Isynonyms: self-government, autonomy, self- protect us from a government of tyrants. Each actions, and creating situation in which the gov- rule, self-determination, freedom, liberty and indi- amendment is a command to government: ernment is superimposing controls on people’s vidualism; the antonym is dependence. Amendment 1: Congress shall make no property and all other rights. The desire for independence of the people law…regarding religion, speech or the press, right This is the antonym of independence! within the colonies from direct, despotic control to assembly and to petition government for This is in denial of each person’s sovereignty, by King George led to the Declaration of redress of grievances. Amendment 2: the right to self-government, autonomy, self-rule, self-deter- Independence, July 4, 1776, that declared we have keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. mination, freedom, liberty and individualism and unalienable rights endowed by our creator that Amendment 4: right of the people to be secure in right to be independent from authoritarian con- include the rights to “Life, Liberty and the their persons, houses, papers and effects shall not trol. Those who hold the seats of government at Pursuit of Happiness.” The word “Liberty” was be violated only exception is probable cause that a every level (federal, state and local) have criminal- used to describe Independence. Other than in the crime has been committed. Amendment 5: ly assaulted Independence and liberty. The title, Independence, it is not mentioned. Liberty requires a grand jury indictment for a capital destruction of our rights has been perpetrated has the same definition as independence and is crime, prevents double jeopardy, prohibits self against “We the people…” by a two party mob used interchangeably. I regard the word inde- incrimination, and prevents government from who violate their oaths, assume and assert powers pendence as the noun form to describe a state of seizing your rights to life liberty or property with- they do not have, with a blatant disregard for the being; liberty as the verb form of independence out due process of law and prevents government commands of fundamental principles placed on describing active participation in any activity. taking your property for public use without just them by the Bill of Rights. Our Constitution provides for a Republican form compensation. Amendment 6: right to a speedy The right of Independence has degenerated to of government and the rule of law, and demon- public trial, impartial jury, to be informed of the nothing more than the gleam in the eye of a few strates continuity to the Declaration of nature and cause of the accusation, the right to remaining patriots. This can never be turned Independence. “We the People of the United confront witnesses, right to council and a compul- around until the governance of the country is States” created our nation to secure to the people sory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor. returned to the authorities and limits of authority Independence, not only from King George but Amendment 7: the right to a jury trial in federal of the Constitutions. also from control by any authority. civil trials. Amendment 8: Excessive bail shall not Vermont Constitution, Article 18: That frequent Independence is not mentioned in the Con- be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel recurrence to fundamental principles, and a firm stitution. Liberty is used in its place in the Con- and unusual punishments inflicted. Amendment adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, stitution’s preamble: “and secure the Blessings of 9: Prevents the courts from inferring from the industry, and frugality are necessary to preserve Liberty to ourselves and our posterity”. silence of the Constitution that an unlisted right is the blessings of liberty, and keep government free; The continuity of our nation’s founding princi- unavailable to protect individuals from govern- the people ought, therefore to pay particular ples is evident in the Vermont’s Constitution, born ment. Amendment 10: The people are free to act, attention to these points, in the choice of officers on July 9,1793, as well. Vermont is an independent without permission outside the scope of the feder- and representatives, and have a right, in a legal Republic created under the US Constitution’s al government’s powers. way, to exact a due and constant regard to them, guarantee to all states of a Republican form of The Bill of Rights is a restatement of our right from their legislators and magistrates, in making government. Independence is mentioned once in to independence, and the liberty to participate in and executing such laws as are necessary for the the Vermont Constitution while liberty is used in any act we wish, as long as it does not interfere good government of the state. six articles/sections. Vermont Constitution: “That with the rights of another. The Bill of Rights The burden is on us to reinstate independence. every member of society hath a right to be pro- establishes a legal system of protections that rec- Your government is what you allow. • tected in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and proper- ognizes the imperfections of people, and provides ty, and therefore is bound to contribute the mem- for fairness and equity even when laws are broken ber’s proportion towards the expense of that pro- and the rights of another are violated. tection…” This Article is the authority for state The Constitution also establishes the authorities government to raise money that clearly states the of government and a system of checks and bal- only reason why “every member of society” must ances in its different branches to provide that contribute is to protect our right to enjoy liberty. those who hold the seats of government will gov- With the limitation to use tax money for protec- ern as an umbrella, one under which all people are tion of our enjoyment of liberty, along with the allowed to participate in the enjoyment of their lack of constitutional authority to make law to lives, free from interference and control. All those direct our actions and interrupt liberty, it is clear in federal, state and local government are required government has no authority to be a service to take an oath to support the Constitution, and provider for education, health care, welfare, eco- state legislators and officers must take oaths to nomic development, control the economy, or job both the US and State Constitutions. creation. We no longer have statesmen and stateswomen Our founders understood that the Republican who occupy the seats of government. All are CENTER FOR form of government that places the law above all political hacks of a two party mob that have WHOLE persons including those holding the seats of gov- changed the basic design of this nation. COMMUNITIES ernment was the only means of protecting inde- No longer are laws limited to the authorities pendence, as well as all other rights. This design of granted by the Constitutions that cite penalties to Building stronger connections government was implemented to protect all from those that would violate the rights of another and between people, land, and community tyrants who would rule us rather than represent create injury or harm. The purpose of law has us according to the law. The founders of our been changed to order dependency, creating class- Based at Knoll Farm, Waitsfield, Vermont nation amended the Constitution in 1791 with ten es of winners and losers, forcing people into and www.wholecommunities.org 12 VERMONT COMMONS JANUARY 2006

DISPERSIONS By Kirkpatrick Sale

The Middlebury Institute: The Logic of American Secession By Kirkpatrick Sale

t has been well and truly said that an effective and any secessionist state would work to rights, Social Security, an independent judiciary, Ispeech should last no longer than the time it increase its self-sufficiency through careful OPPOSED TO homosexuality and gay mar- takes the average man to make love. development of these existing resources instead riage, condoms, abortion, Plan B pills, medical So in conclusion… of letting them be exploited by out-of-state marijuana, stem cell research, evolution and all No, I can’t wrap up just yet. interests. Besides, it would no longer have to pay of science, gun control, democratic elections, Let’s pretend we’re talking not about the aver- Federal income, gasoline, telephone, and other clean air and water, conservation and alternative age man but about Vermonters —-that will give taxes, or support Federal army bases and offices. energy, endangered species, and a free and dem- me a few more minutes. Right now, seventeen states pay more to the Fed- ocratic republic with the right to secession… So that I can tell you about the Middlebury eral government than they get back in benefits, And is IN FAVOR of unjust and unjustified Institute. This is a think tank, devoted to the some way more, and they would get to keep warfare, brutal torture in defiance of all conven- study of separatism, secession, and self-determi- these funds — another 25 get only a negligibly tions, illegal detentions, the fostering of terror- nation, born out of the Radical Consultation greater return from Washington over what they ism, war profiteering, sky-high trade deficits, that we held just a year ago at the Middlebury pay in. And besides, a secessionist state doesn’t cronies and corporate insiders in high office, Inn, and at present exists in Cold Spring, New cut itself off from the rest of the world just weak and incompetent Federal agencies, IN York (not coincidentally at my house). That can because it is independent—it could continue to FAVOR OF Patriot Act infringements, illegal be so because the Middlebury Institute is an trade with other states and nations for what surveillance, tax cuts for the rich, corporate con- idea, a VISION, that can locate anywhere, not necessities it could not produce itself. trol of elections, lawmaking by lobbyists, politi- necessarily in Middlebury—though indeed I THREE — Politically possible, because as cal and corporate corruption, government would hope someday that we could have a real James Kunstler [author of The Long Emergency] secrecy and unaccountability, IN FAVOR OF presence there. convincingly told us this morning, the crises global warming, acid rain, smokestack pollu- That idea, that vision, is essentially to make around peak oil and the end of a gasoline econ- tion, creationism, born-again evangelicalism, separatism a political reality and put secession on omy, and the disruptions caused by the alarming imminent Armageddon and Rapture, and a the national agenda, encouraging and support- increase of global warming, will require greater deceitful and dangerous neo-con commitment ing secessionist movements, and working toward dependency on local communities, bioregions, to global hegemony — it is intolerable, I say, for a the eventual dissolution of the American empire. citizen to live under such a government, in such Our initial letter setting out our aims and ration- a country. ale is available, along with the Middlebury Dec- That is not a country I want to live in. That is a “any people anywhere, being inclined and laration that came out of the same Radcon meet- country I am incapable of loving. But I have no ing, in envelopes at the front of the hall. having the power, have the right to rise up intention of going to Canada, or France. I love And if you wish to be a part of our processes, my home… and I want to leave this country without and shake off the existing government, and please provide your name and addresses at the leaving home. And the only way, ladies and gentle- sign-up sheet there. form a new one that suits them better. This is men, the only way to do that is…SECESSION. But in a word, the Middlebury Institute exists I know that even now some of you are doubt- a most valuable, a most sacred right.” to make secession in this country REAL. By ful about whether such a course can succeed, so showing that it is — Abraham Lincoln I want to conclude with a favorite story of mine 1. Legally feasible for doubters and naysayers, about how things 2. Economically viable can work out when they seem most impossible, 3. Politically possible, and and coherent states. I’ve been told that secession if we are but willing to use our imaginations and 4. Eminently desirable. is no remedy because we all will be hit by the a little common sense. ONE — Legally feasible, because the Constitu- consequences of a global warming that respects A story about a man in a far-off tribe who had tion, which says nothing about secession, no boundaries. But the fact is that an independ- 17 horses, which he left to his sons in his will reserves powers not delegated to the U.S. to the ent state is far more able to come up with means with the proviso that the eldest son get one half states or the people, and that has to include the of dealing with these consequences because it of them, the middle son one third, and the power of secession. In addition, when the Con- could confront them on a local and do-able level, youngest son one ninth. federate states were seceding in the 19th century, and if anyone thinks that comprehension of these Well this was a great puzzlement to the sons, Congress considered an amendment forbidding problems, much less solutions to them, is going because it was impossible to divide 17 horses secession—meaning that such a provision wasn’t to come from a national level, they’re living in that way, so they went to the village elder, an old there in the first place. Moreover, “any people Cloud CooKoo Land whose capital is Craw- woman known for her wisdom in all matters. anywhere”—and here I am quoting—-“being ford,Texas. Moreover, if secession becomes sim- Hearing their predicament, she said, well, I’ll inclined and having the power, have the right to ply a necessary way for certain populations to tell you what I’ll do — I’ll give you one of my rise up and shake off the existing government, survive in the Long Emergency, no Federal gov- horses, and then you’ll have 18. and form a new one that suits them better. This ernment is going to be able to stop it. The rest is easy — half of 18 is 9, for the eld- is a most valuable, a most sacred right.” And finally, FOUR — it is eminently desirable, est, and a third of 18 is 6, for the next, and a Those words were said by none other than because as has become increasingly evident in ninth of 18 is 2, for the youngest. Abraham Lincoln, in 1848. (Would that he had the last four years it is intolerable for a citizen to And then you there will be 9, plus 6, which is still felt that way 13 years later.) succumb to a government that is OPPOSED TO 15, plus 2, which is 17 — and then you can give TWO — Economically viable, because nearly the Geneva Convention, the international crim- me my extra horse back when you’re done!” every state in the union has land sufficiently inal court, international law, the U.N., test-ban The Middlebury Institute, I am here to say, richly endowed to provide for basic necessities, treaties, the Kyoto treaty, budget controls, civil will be that village elder. •