Now Comes Jon Margolis

Last month the proponents of Vermont's self-appointed vessel of secession, the Second Vermont Republic, struck yet another significant mine in their odyssey, that time in the form of Vermont's State Archivist, Gregory Sanford (see the previous post below).   Sanford directly challenged the historical accuracy of the SVR leadership's assertions about Vermont's past - a challenge they have not responded to in any meaningful way.

Today, in a piece published today in the Sunday Rutand Herald/Times Argus', Vermont Sunday Magazine on "whiners," Jon Margolis, a freelance writer from Barton and former national political correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, writes without naming them directly that SVR is "polically impotent," "racially tinge(d)" and "intellectually unimpressive." One need look no further than Thomas Naylor's own rambling writings, Rob Williams clumsy handling of his group's making nice with racists, as well as their educational website, "Vermont Commons", to find comfirmation of Margolis' thoughts:

In This State of Whiners
by Jon Margolis

When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and the feeble go away.

Well, they threaten to go away. Being feeble, they don't actually go anywhere.

Such was the threat by the town of Vernon to secede from Vermont should the state increase taxes on the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Forget for a moment the absurdity of what passed for Vernon's logic — a fear that Vermont Yankee might leave town. How? By loading the reactor onto a wheelbarrow and carting it away?

More important is that the initial response of town officials was to mumble about secession, following the model of Killington, where town bigwigs started talking about seceding a few years ago because homeowners there must now pay the same statewide school tax rate as the rest of us. The poor itty-bitty babies.

All this is disturbing, but not because anybody will secede. They will not. In America nobody ever has, successfully, except the 25 northwestern counties of Virginia which became West Virginia in 1862. But that wasn't secession; it was counter-secession.

No, what is disturbing is that only in Vermont is there much talk of secession. There are even a few people who want the whole state to secede. They need not be taken seriously. Their movement is politically impotent, and — even without its racist tinge — intellectually unimpressive.

(Read the rest of Margolis' article here)

I'll have more on SVR's self-inflicted political impotence later this week.

UPDATE:   Rob Williams offers testy commentary on Margolis' article and incorrectly tries to characterize the article as an editorial here.   And then he, as well, slams this blog without showing the courage to name it.   Oh, well.   I'd say, Rob (or is it Maul Man that you now like to be called?), that since you've now started to drop your strategy of completely ignoring this blog:

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

Don't forget to stop back to see my upcoming post on SVR's "political impotence" later this week, Rob.   Oh, and there's a post going up soon that'll show the parts you and/or Naylor left out of the O'Reilly interview.   I can understand why you'd not want to include that in your "transcript" that professes O'Reilly's support for secession - it'd make you guys look like liars.