Vermont Republic Second Vermont Republic
How was it possible for President Barack Obama to have accomplished so little in four years and to have completely betrayed the liberal political base of the Democratic Party and yet still defeat Republican challenger Mitt Romney? An underfunded economic stimulus package and a flawed, unsustainable health care program were …
February, 2019
-
12 February
It’s Time to Liberate Ourselves From the Use of the Word Secession
To the vast majority of Americans, whether they be from the political Left or the political Right, secession is anathema. Abraham Lincoln really did a number on us one hundred fifty years ago. He convinced most of us that secession is immoral, illegal, and unconstitutional. Secession may very well be …
-
12 February
Albert Camus: Life is Absurd, Rebél, Live, and Try To Die Happy
When I first read Albert Camus’s The Stranger as a college student in 1957, it went right over my head. I was clueless as to what this book was about. When I re-visited it twenty-five years later, I was so taken by Camus that I soon read everything that he had written …
-
12 February
Vermont’s Declaration of Independence (1777)
To the honorable convention of representatives from the several towns on the west and east side of the range of Green Mountains, within the New-Hampshire grants, in convention assembled. Your committee to whom has referred the form of a declaration, setting for the right the inhabitants of said New-Hampshire grants …
-
12 February
The Kairos Radical Imperative
Kairos: A Greek word for a very special time fraught with decisive consequences for good or evil when momentous things are happening, new possibilities arise, more degrees of freedom emerge, and the opportunity to seize the moment appears. A time for renewal and nonviolent action when the forces of light rise …
-
11 February
Neoliberalism: Neoconservatism Without a Smirk
It has become increasingly obvious that the only difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush is that the famous Bush smirk has been replaced by the Obama smile. The neoconservatism of Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Bill O’Reilly has given way to the neoliberalism of Bill Clinton, Timothy Geithner, …
-
11 February
History of the Second Vermont Republic
Nearly three years before I moved to Vermont, on October 9, 1990, the Bennington Banner published my article entitled “Should the U.S. Be Downsized?” Four years later in Challenge(Nov.-Dec. 1994) I wrote: “The time has come both for the individual states and the federal government to begin planning the rational downsizing …
-
11 February
Independent Kosovo? Why Not Vermont?
Sean Connery thinks the Scottish nation is a bonnie notion. How about Spain’s Basque country becoming a REAL country? And what’s wrong with a People’s Republic of Vermont? Kosovo‘s looming independence raises all those questions and more. For starters: Why is statehood OK for some people but frowned on for …
-
11 February
Americans Rediscover the Right of Self-Determination
After a hiatus of nearly 150 years following the Civil War, over a million Americans have recently rediscovered the word secession, one of the most toxic, politically incorrect words in American English. Never mind the fact that our nation was actually born out of secession from England back in 1776. Since …
-
9 February
Website ADA Compliance: A Beginners Guide
If you aren’t already aware, the ADA stands for the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was enforced several decades ago as a way of preventing discrimination against disabled people. Their policy states that disabled people should have full or equal access to the enjoyment of goods, services, privileges, advantages or …