Alphecca

Vermont Secession?

I've already written about the Free Staters who want to move to New Hampshire and create a libertarian state. I've written about Killington wanting to secede from Vermont and become a part of New Hampshire. Now there's a movement within Vermont to secede from the United States. It's called Vermont Commons or Second Vermont Republic. They have a monthly newspaper and a website. You should browse the whole site but here's a quote:

And that is where Vermont comes in. For in Vermont one finds a national reservoir of social capital and real democracy. It is time for us to act. Waiting for incremental reform is too dangerous. The political establishment shows no inclination to see the handwriting on the wall. This is bipartisan myopia. When George Bush and Ted Kennedy join forces to wrest control of our education system from us and place it in the hands of that intellectual wasteland we call Congress, it is time for something different.

What we need must be radical. It must be dramatic.

We should seriously consider the case for Vermont’s secession from the Union.

My principal concern with such a proposal is that, if successful, a Vermont secession might be followed by other states. We don’t want to destroy America. I, for one, still love it. And I believe that, despite its flaws, America remains our best hope for a peaceful transition from a world of warring nation-states to one of truly united nations. Without stability, democracy is impossible, and until a UN-like institution becomes a keeper of that stability, no other nation on the planet is better suited to bear this responsibility.

The moral underpinning of a secessionist movement is the hope that it will not, in the end, be needed. My hope is that America will give Vermont the opportunity to conduct what Langdon Winner calls "niche analysis.” His hope for societal advancement is to allow certain systems broad latitude in socio-political experimentation. We contribute about one-tenth of one percent of the national tax base. Hence while New York or California could not secede without irreparably harming the Union, Vermont can.

I'm guessing that Vermont Commons wants to start the process of secession not to actually do it but to send a wake-up call to Washington. Naturally I was interested in their thoughts on the Second Amendment. I first found this:

7. Nonviolence. Consistent with Vermont's long history of nonviolence, we do not condone state-sponsored violence inflicted either by military or law enforcement officials. However, we do support a voluntary citizens' militia to restore order in the event of political unrest or natural disasters. We are unconditionally opposed to any form of military conscription.

It is in Vermont that a citizen's Bill of Rights guarantee to keep and bear arms is strongly defended -- not for hunting, not for personal protection against wayward citizens, but for what it was intended: to insure that free citizens always have the means to protect themselves against governments, a protection that takes on special meaning as our civil liberties come under attack from Washington, the center of our own nation, our beloved America.

That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State -- and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

Anyway, it's all quite interesting to see and I'll be following it here at Alphecca.