What do Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Bernie Sanders, Mitch McConnell, Howard Dean, Jim Douglas, Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, Rachel Maddow, and Ann Coulter all have in common? They are all loyal to the American Empire – the largest, wealthiest, most powerful, most militaristic, and arguably most violent empire of all time. These American loyalists pledge their allegiance to a government which condones illegal wars with Afghanistan and Iraq, unconditional support for the Israeli military machine, a foreign policy based on full spectrum dominance and imperial overstretch, multitrillion dollar budget deficits, endless Wall Street bailouts, corporate greed and fraud, environmental degradation, dependence on imported oil, and a culture of deceit. They are the twenty-first century equivalents of the Tories who remained loyal to the British Empire during the American Revolution.
But today there is a whiff of revolution in the air across the Green Mountains – a genteel revolution in which the revolutionists are well-educated, articulate writers, artists, academics, blue collar workers, doctors, farmers, lawyers, merchants, publishers, and other Vermont patriots committed to the belief that the United States has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable, ungovernable, and, therefore, unfixable.
Taking their cues from the 1961 Broadway Musical “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off,” these patriots want to free themselves from the corruption and the tyranny of Wall Street, Corporate America, and the U.S. government. To do so they engage in such radical acts as simple living, energy conservation, buying locally produced food, and practicing sustainable agriculture, business, and trade.
Vermont patriots recognize the importance of the village green as a metaphor for Vermont – a place where people meet to chat, have a coffee, a locally brewed beer, a glass of wine, or a bite to eat; read a newspaper; listen to music; smell the flowers; and pass the time away. They know that the village green is all about the politics of human scale – small towns, small businesses, small schools, and small churches. The Vermont village green is neat, clean, democratic, nonviolent, noncommercial, egalitarian, and humane. It is a mirror image of the way America once was, but no longer knows how to be.
The Vermont village green provides a communitarian alternative to the dehumanized, mass-production, mass-consumption, overregulated, narcissistic lifestyle which pervades most of America – an alternative to the politics of money, power, speed, greed, and fear of terrorism.
Just as America sought an alternative to British rule 233 years ago, so too does it seek an alternative to corporate controlled statism and global imperialism today. America desperately needs a new metaphor. Vermont patriots stand ready to provide one – Vermont.
Rebél
Thomas H. Naylor
May 20, 2009
