VERMONT INDEPENDENCE CONVENTION SPEECHES
Remarks by James Howard Kunstler
Author of The Long Emergency
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When we think about the destiny of our land, there are a few questions we might ask:
What do we mean by ‘our land?’
What has been holding it together?
Who are we?
And who will we become?
For about 210 years we have been a federal democratic republic composed of more than a few states, eventually adding up to fifty. At times, the citizen’s identity has shifted from allegiance to a particular state to the republic as a whole – as when Robert E. Lee, for instance, famously declared that he was first a citizen of Virginia.
Lately the tendency has been for citizens to think of themselves first as Americans, and secondarily as New Yorkers or Virginians or Vermonters.
What has held us together – at least since the convulsion of the Civil War – is a common culture and especially the common enterprise of a great industrial economy.
For much of our history, including the first half of the 20th century, we were a resourceful, adaptive, generous, brave, forward-looking people who believed in earnest effort, who occupied a beautiful landscape full of places worth caring about and worth defending.
Since then, lost in raptures of easy motoring, fried food, incessant infotainment, and desperate moneygrubbing, we became a nation of overfed clowns who believed that it was possible to get something for nothing, who ravaged the landscape in an orgy of wanton carelessness, who believed they were entitled to lives of everlasting comfort and convenience, no matter what, and expected the rest of the world to pay for it. We even elected a vice-president who declared that this American way of life was non-negotiable.
We now face the most serious challenge to our collective identity, economy, culture, and security since the Civil War. The end of the cheap fossil fuel era will change everything about how we live in this country. It will challenge all of our assumptions. It will compel us to do things differently – whether we like it or not.
We are at or near the all-time maximum global oil production peak. We do not have to run out of oil to find ourselves in trouble. When world demand for oil exceeds the world’s ability to produce oil, all the complex systems we depend on will de-stabilize.
Everything from national chain retail, to the Archer Daniel Midland Cheez Doodle and Pepsi model of agriculture, to the arrangements for heating our homes and lighting our cities will begin to wobble. Some of these things will fail us and begin to change our lives.
At the same time, we will be tempted to join a worldwide scramble for the world’s remaining oil – most of which belongs to countries whose people don’t like us – and the nature of this contest may be very violent.
Our suburbs will prove to be a huge liability.
They represent the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.
The project of suburbia represent a set of tragic choices because it is a living arrangement with no future. And that future is now here in the form of the peak oil predicament.
Because they have no future, our suburbs entail a powerful psychology of previous investment that will prevent us from even thinking about reforming them or letting go of them. That’s why vice-president Cheney said the American way of life is non negotiable.
There will be a great battle to preserve the supposed entitlements to suburbia and it will be an epochal act of futility, a huge waste of effort and resources that might have been much better spent in finding new ways to carry on an American civilization.
We might, for instance, have invested in restoring our national railroad system, which we will need desperately, because no other project we might undertake would have such a profoundly positive impact on our oil consumption.
But instead we will try desperately to make cars that get better mileage, so we can continue being car dependent and continue building out and elaborating the infrastructure for a living arrangement with no future – the subdivisions of the McHouses, the strip malls, the big box pods, the deployments of hamburger shacks and pizza huts.
In the service of defending suburbia, the American public may turn to political maniacs, who will promise to make the country just like it was in 1997, before we started having all these problems.
In the course of this long emergency we face, life and politics are apt to become profoundly local. Many of my friends wring their hands over George W. Bush, whom they regard as the second coming of Adolf Hitler and who think the Federal government will regulate every inch of their lives. I tell them, in the long emergency the Federal government will be impotent and ineffectual – just as they were after Hurricane Katrina – and that the Federal government will be lucky if they can answer the phones five years from now, let alone regulate anybody’s life.
I tell them, life in America is going to become profoundly and intensely local, and it will be the local politicians you’ll have to worry about.
American life will become intensely and profoundly local because the complex systems that hold this nation together are going to fail.
We will have to grow a lot more of our food in the regions where we live. That won’t be easy. A lot of our best ag land close to our towns and cities has been paved over. A lot of knowledge has been lost.
We are going to have to reconstruct local economies, local networks of interdependency – and that will not be easy given the methodical destruction of economic infrastructure to our communities by Walmart and the rest of the national chain companies over the past forty years.
As these severe challenges arise, different regions of the United States will cope differently.
The sunbelt will probably suffer in equal proportion to the degree that it benefited from the cheap oil fiesta of the past several decades – because it squandered its wealth in building gigantic suburban metroplexes that have no future. Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Charlotte. The people in these places will be full of grievance and bewilderment, and they may seek comfort in the romance of firearms in seeking to defend the indefensible entitlements their failing suburbs.
The people in Phoenix and Tucson will have dreadful problems with water on top of their problems with oil and the loss of cheap air conditioning. They may not be able to grow any food of their own, locally.
In Las Vegas, the excitement will be over. The capital of a something for nothing culture will be left to the wind, the tarantulas and the gila monsters.
California, the most tragic part of our country –because it was once the most beautiful and is now most lost – will have many of the previously mentioned problems and the prospect of awful ethnic conflict.
I am describing a nation that may not hold together far into the 20th century. I would like to be wrong about this, but it hard to look at the big picture and come up with a different set of conclusions.
All parts of the United States are going to endure hardships in the decades ahead, but some regions or states may be better prepared, or just luckier. I tend to me more optimistic about the future in New England, The mid-Atlantic States, the upper Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest (if it can escape the wrath emanating out of California.)
I include Vermont in this list, of course. This part of the country enjoys some advantages: an armature of towns scaled to the requirements of life in a lower energy world; a lot of good agricultural land; a civic tradition of responsible local governance; a set of regional collective character traits we associate with New England Yankees at their best: rectitude, discipline, perseverance, and allegiance to the community.
I’m personally not an advocate of national breakup or secession. I grew up with United States and I have been, until recently, been pretty comfortable with the idea that we would stick together no matter what.
But in the Long Emergency all bets are off for politics, economics, and social cohesion. Turbulence will be the rule and we will have to do our best to make sure that the just prevail over the wicked, and that the weak are not trampled, and that the best that was in us as a people can somehow be rescued from dumpster of memory.
Anyway, I’m a New Yorker, an upstater, and I don’t relish the idea of patrolling the waters of Lake Champlain in a solar electric gunboat to keep you Green Mountain boys and girls from chopping down the Adirondacks so you can bake all that granola you are reputed to subsist on.
However things turn out, I hope you’ll let me across the border from time to time to see how things are going.
Thanks very much for your attention and good luck figuring all this out.
Kirkpatrick Sale
The Middlebury Institute: The Logic of American Secession
Vermont Convention speech
October 28, 2005
Montpelier, Vermont
Kirkpatrick Sale
IT has been well and truly said that an effective speech should last no longer than the time it takes the average man to make love.
So in conclusion…
No, I can’t wrap up just yet…. Let’s pretend we’re talking not about the average man but about Vermonters---that will give me a few more minutes.
So that I can tell you about The Middlebury Institute. This is a think tank, devoted to the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination, born out of the Radical Consultation that we held just a year ago at the Middlebury hotel, and at present exists in Cold Spring, NY, not coincidentally at my house. That can be so because the Middlebury Institute is an IDEA, a VISION, that can locate anywhere, not necessarily in Middlebury—though indeed I would hope someday that we could have a real presence there.
That idea, that vision, is essentially to make separatism a poltical reality and put secession on the national agenda, encouraging and supporting secessionist movements, and working toward the eventual dissolution of the American empire. Our initial letter setting out our aims and rationale is available, along with the Middlebury Declaration that came out of the same Radcon meeting, in envelopes at the front of the hall. And if you wish to be a part of our processes, please provide your name and addresses at the sign-up sheet there.
But in a word, the Middlebury Institute exists to make secession in this country REAL. By showing that it is
1. Legally feasible
2. Economically viable
3. Politically possible, and
4. Eminently desirable.
ONE--Legally feasible, because the Constitution, which says nothing about secession, reserves powers not delegated to the U.S. to the states or the people, and that has to include the power of secession. In addition, when the Confederate states were seceding in the 19th century, Congress considered an amendment forbidding secession—meaning that such a provision wasn’t there in the first place. Moreover, “any people anywhere”—and here I am quoting---“being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right.”—that was said by none other than Abraham Lincoln, in 1848. (Would that he had still felt that way 13 years later.)
TWO--Economically viable, because nearly every state in the union has land sufficiently richly endowed to provide for basic necessities, and any secessionist state would work to increase its self-sufficiency through careful development of these existing resources instead of letting them be exploited by out-of-state interests. Besides, it would no longer have to pay Federal income, gasoline, telephone, and other taxes, or support Federal army bases and offices. Right now seventeen states pay more to the Federal government than they get back in benefits, some way more, and they would get to keep these funds—another 25 get only a negligibly greater return from Washington over what they pay in. And besides, a secessionist state doesn’t cut itself off from the rest of the world just because it is independent--it could continue to trade with other states and nations for what necessities it could not produce itself.
THREE--Politically possible, because as James Kunstler [author of The Long Emergency] convincingly told us this morning, the crises around peak oil and the end of a gasoline economy, and the disruptions caused by the alarming increase of global warming, will require greater dependency on local communities, bioregions, and coherent states. I’ve been told that secession is no remedy because we all will be hit by the consequences of a global warming that respects no boundaries. But the fact is that an independent state is far more able to come up with means of dealing with these consequences because it could confront them on a local and doable level, and if anyone thinks that comprehension of these problems, much less solutions to them, is going to come from a national level, they’re living in Cloud CooKoo Land whose capital is Crawford,Texas. Moreover, if secession becomes simply a necessary way for certain populations to survive in the Long Emergency, no Federal government is going to be able to stop it.
And finally, FOUR—it is eminently desirable, because as has become increasingly evident in the last four years it is intolerable for a citizen to succumb to a government that is OPPOSED TO the Geneva Convention, the international criminal court, international law, the U.N., test-ban treaties, the Kyoto treaty, budget controls, civil rights, Social Security, an independent judiciary, OPPOSED TO homosexuality and gay marriage, condoms, abortion, Plan B pills, medical marijuana, stem cell research, evolution and all of science, gun control, democratic elections, clean air and water, conservation and alternative energy, endangered species, and a free and democratic republic with the right to secession—and is IN FAVOR of
unjust and unjustified warfare, brutal torture in defiance of all conventions, illegal detentions, the fostering of terrorism, war profiteering, sky-high trade deficits, cronies and corporate insiders in high office, weak and incompetent Federal agencies, IN FAVOR OF Patriot Act infringements, illegal surveillance, tax cuts for the rich, corporate control of elections, lawmaking by lobbyists, political and corporate corruption, government secrecy and unaccountability, IN FAVOR OF global warming, acid rain, smokestack pollution, creationism, born-again evangelicalism, imminent Armageddon and Rapture, and a deceitful and dangerous neocon commitment to global hegemony—it is intolerable, I say, for a citizen to live under such a government, in such a country.
That is not a country I want to live in. That is a country I am incapable of loving. But I have no intention of going to Canada, or France. I love my home… and I want to leave this country without leaving home. And the only way, ladies and gentlemen, the only way to do that is…SECESSION.
I know that even now some of you are doubtful about whether such a course can succeed, so I want to conclude with a favorite story of mine for doubters and naysayers, about how things can work out when they seem most impossible, if we are but willing to use our imaginations and a little common sense.
A story about a man in a far-off tribe who had 17 horses, which he left to his sons in his will with the proviso that the eldest son get one half of them, the middle son one third, and the youngest son one ninth. Well this was a great puzzlement to the sons, because it was impossible to divide 17 horses that way, so they went to the village elder, an old woman known for her wisdom in all matters.
Hearing their predicament, she said, well I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll give you one of my horses, and then you’ll have 18.
The rest is easy—half of 18 is 9, for the eldest, and a third of 18 is 6, for the next, and a ninth of 18 is 2, for the youngest. And then you there will be 9, plus 6, which is 15, plus 2, which is 17—and then you can give me my extra horse back when you’re done!”
The Middlebury Institute, I am here to say, will be that village elder.
Antoine Robitaille
Vive Le Vermont Libre
Quebec is certainly interested in the debate being generated by the Second Vermont Republic. Since its inception in the 1960s, the Quebec separatist movement has had a decidedly left-wing bias. That is still true today. In the 1995 referendum debate Lucien Bouchard warned that if Quebec voted against independence, “It would be swept by a wind of ideas from the right.” He was right, and somewhat ironically, he has become an advocate of such ideas.
According to former Prime Minister Pierre-Marc Johnson (PQ), there are four reasons why the percentage of people in Quebec supporting sovereignty has increased from seven percent in 1965 to over fifty percent today:
1. French speaking citizens of Quebec felt they had been personally discriminated against.
2. A majority felt they were the victims of collective discrimination by the Canadian government. Quebec was perceived to have been neglected and treated as a second class province.
3. The francophones wanted to establish a francophone controlled state, the only such state in North America. Ottawa tried to prevent this from happening.
4. Francophones in Quebec wanted to be recognized in the Canadian constitution as a “distinct society.”
According to Johnson, grievances 1, 2, and 3 have either dissipated or have been dealt with. As a province of Canada, which is a federation, Quebec succeeded in achieving what one might call a “Quiet Revolution.” But the fourth grievance, the feeling of not being recognized as a separate people, is still fueling the sovereignty movement. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that the Canadian Constitution was changed in 1982 without the consent of the national assembly of Quebec. Since then the idea of federalism has been undermined throughout Canada with the exception of Quebec where it remains strong. Why? Federalism is the only thing that helped Quebecers survive as a people.
Is secession still necessary, today? Some say it is, because Quebec could easily become the French speaking melting pot that it wanted to be in the era of globalization. Since 1977, it was able to integrate many newcomers because of a law known as Bill 101 that forced all immigrant children to go to French schools. This law was condemned by English speaking Montrealers as a “Nazi law” and they tried and partly succeeded in abolishing it by asking the Canadian Supreme Court (whose judges are appointed by the federal Prime Minster) to declare it ultra vives! But now, everybody acknowledges that Bill 101 actually saved Quebec as a culture and made it much more diverse. People from all over the world became Quebecers. When you think about it, wasn’t it crazy for a minority as we were before 1977, to finance our own assimilation by letting immigrant children go to English speaking public schools?
But some say that is not enough. They think Quebec needs to become an independent country in order to complete this process toward the “melting potization” of Quebec. Others respond by saying that the Quebec culture is vibrant enough and can very well survive in a province.
What can Vermonters learn from Quebec’s experience? That Quebec sovereignty is probably still a form of Utopia. But on its way to Utopia, Quebec has walked a long road, has made a lot of progress. What could be achieved from the Utopian idea of Vermont independence? What could Vermont achieve on its way to Utopia?
Here is a modest suggestion. How about restoring some great American traditions that are considered to be “un-American” by those on the extreme right? Traditions like human rights, civil liberties, equality of opportunity, and the importance of public service. (Hurricane Katrina showed that the free market alone cannot protect people from the effects of a catastrophe.)
But it is the responsibility of those who say, “Vive le Vermont libre” to define Vermont utopianism more thoroughly. They are going to have to live with it.
Antoine Robitaille
Le Devoir
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This piece was written for but not presented at the Vermont Independence Convention held in the State House in Montpelier, Vermont, October 28, 2005.
Bio: Antoine Robitaille is a political reporter for Le Devoir. He was a columnist for this paper for nearly ten years. He co-founded Argument, a journal of ideas. He was a political science teacher at Le Séminaire de Québec, le College Limoilu and Le Collège des Marcellines. With Alain Finkielkraut, he published in France L’Ingratitude, conversation sur notre temps. He lives in Quebec City with his wife and 3 kids.
Jane Dwinell, Executive Director
Remarks for the 1st Convention
October 28, 2005
Jane Dwinell, Executive Director, SVR
Who here loves Vermont?
Who thinks Vermont is a special place?
How many of you are residents of Vermont?
How many of you were born here?
How many of you have ancestors who go back several generations?
My heritage runs deep in this place, this city, this building.
I walked past here every day of my high school career, pausing more often than not to admire Ceres on top of the golden dome. My ancestor, Dwight Dwinell, carved that very lovely statue, the symbol of our agricultural richness.
And my great-grandfather sat in these chambers, elected by the men who knew him well in Randolph in 1904. Farmer, and Grange leader, he was respected enough by the men in town that they nominated him in mid-August, he was elected in September, and came to Montpelier weekly on the train – in between getting in the last of the hay and digging the potatoes -- to serve in the legislative session that ran from October to the first part of December. He then served on the Board of Agriculture.
His wife, Emma, said this in a letter to her daughter, Mary (my grandmother), on December 6, 1904:
“This has been a pleasant day. It snowed a little last night, but not enough for sleighing. Have been to both morning and afternoon [legislative] sessions today. In the House they had a spirited debate on Woman Suffrage and will tomorrow vote on it. I presume they will kill it.”
How right she was. As progressive and forward-thinking as we Vermonters are known to be, Woman Suffrage was just too much for the legislature in 1904.
Today we bring forward a new and forward-thinking idea. Secession.
Funny thing is that I’ve been thinking about this for years.
When I learned in grade school that Vermont had once been an independent republic, I thought, Well, why not again? Why do we have to be a state? We could do perfectly well as our own country – in relationship with our neighbors and other political bodies around the world.
I guess I’ve always felt that I lived in a foreign country. Whenever I have traveled and have told people where I lived, it was Vermont, and never the United States. My heart has leapt a beat every time I have come home – whether from Moscow, or Boston, or Montreal, or London or Los Angeles. Vermont is home. Vermont is where my heart lies.
OK, so I’m not a constitutional expert, nor a political scientist, nor any other kind of academic. I do have a perfectly legitimate bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Vermont. But what I do have is experience, and a life lived well here on this hallowed ground.
I have been a registered nurse, trained at UVM, working in 3 of our hospitals, and helping to care for my father as he died in a fourth. I have been a small business owner, and a small diversified farmer, and chaplain to the bereaved and the sick and dying, and a pastor to a small rural congregation. I have been a parent, and a homeowner, and a voter, and an activist. I have lived in 5 of our 14 counties.
And what do I think?
I think there are smart, capable, creative folks here in Vermont and that we could do better to serve the people who live here, and that land that we live, work, learn, and walk upon.
We need health care for everyone. We need an educational system that works for our children, and that is not commanded upon from people who do not know what is best for us. We need a public transportation system that is accessible and affordable for all. We need an energy policy that helps us stay warm through these long winters. We need help for our small business owners and our family farmers.
And I don’t see any of this coming anytime soon from the federal government.
I’m a strong believer in self-sufficiency and self-reliance. I think we could do better for ourselves. I think that by cutting the apron strings to Washington that Vermont could provide better for our citizens, and our land.
My ancestors came here seven generations ago – my father’s side to Calais and my mother’s side to Braintree. Those brave people wanted a new life, a better life. They wanted room to move, and a place to create a home, and a living. They were also looking for community, and a new way to be in relation to their neighbors.
What has changed in 230 years?
Those intrepid people who founded the first Vermont Republic wanted this – and so do we. We seek community, and a responsible and reliable living. We want clean air and water and food for our families. We want to have a voice in our civic affairs. We want to care for our elders, and our sick, and our dying. We want community and a reason to be.
We are Vermonters, and for me, that’s enough.
Some people may fuss about currency, and Social Security, and, and the U.N., and terminology, what would we do about… you name it, x y or z.
You know, I don’t know what we’d do about any of it, because it’s not for me to say alone. We are in this together.
What I do know is that there are many small, successful countries around the world today – Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Denmark, just to name a few – who have figured this all out, and I trust that we can too.
Vermonters are creative.
Vermonters are reliable.
Vermonters care about our land, and our people.
We don’t know what the future will bring us – no one can know.
The best we can do is to work for the kind of future that we want. We can be the change we want to see. We can create new ways that work for all.
We can secede.
And we can succeed.
We are Vermonters after all -- smart, creative, caring and reliable.
What more do we need?