Are you tired of having your chain jerked by the likes of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama? Have you grown weary of multi-trillion-dollar government bailouts, stimulus packages, and deficits? Are you disgusted by the fact that our government is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street and Corporate America? Are you enraged by our immoral, illegal, unconstitutional foreign policy which is based on the doctrine of full spectrum dominance and has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, and Palestinians? Are you no longer able to live with the fact that our nation has lost its moral authority, is unsustainable, ungovernable, and unfixable? Then, come to Vermont, join our genteel revolution, help us secede from the Union, and escape from the Empire.
“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive…it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness,” said Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Just as a group has a right to form, so too does it have a right to disband, to subdivide itself, or to withdraw from a larger unit.
Living in Vermont is a lot like living in a tiny European country. It is smaller, more rural, more democratic, less violent, less commercial, more egalitarian, more humane, more independent, and more radical than most states. Vermont provides a communitarian alternative to the dehumanized, mass-production, mass-consumption, narcissistic lifestyle which pervades most of America. In the Green Mountain State, the politics of human scale always trumps the politics of money, power, size, speed, greed, and fear of terrorism.
Fundamental to what it means to be a Vermonter is the right of self-preservation. The time has come for us peacefully to rebel against the American Empire by (1) regaining control of our lives from big government, big business, big cities, big schools, and big computer networks; (2) relearning how to take care of ourselves by decentralizing, downsizing, localizing, demilitarizing, simplifying, and humanizing our lives; and (3) learning how to help others take care of themselves.
America needs a new metaphor – an alternative to empire. Vermont stands ready to provide such a metaphor – the Vermont village green.
If Vermont is to remain true to its beliefs it has no choice other than to maintain a commitment to a human scale lifestyle. To remain small, rural, radical, clean, green, democratic, and nonviolent, it must continue to resist being subsumed by an undemocratic, materialistic, militaristic, megalomanic, robotic, imperialistic, global empire of which it is a part. Does it really have any other choice than to extricate itself from the United States of America? Secession represents Vermont’s only morally defensible response to the Empire.
Long live the Second Vermont Republic! Please help us save Vermont, America, and the rest of the world from the American Empire by joining our genteel revolution and helping Vermont lead our nation into peaceful disunion.
Rebél
Thomas H. Naylor
September 1, 2009
