Thomas Naylor's Ho-Hum Banquet

There's really no other way to describe the turnout for the Second Vermont Republic's so-called Vermont Independence Day Banquet other than to say it was disappointing.

For an organization that originally claimed a membership of 125 [1] and growing, the assemblage of 20+ guests (taking into account that number included North-South Secession Summit participants, SVR leadership family members and a surprisingly small "Vermont Commons", uh, "contingent") was an unusually low turnout.   The Winter edition of VTCommons was nowhere to be seen, just a stack of leftover Fall edition copies in the banquet hotel lobby.

The conversation was pretty much as I expected, just more of Thomas Naylor's Middlebury Institute colleague Kirkpatrick Sale and his cherry-picking facts to arrive at intellectually dishonest conclusions and the like.

Did learn one new thing though.   One League of the South member doesn't have such a peaceable view of the coming governmental response to secession and how that might be addressed.   While speaking to a local author Thomas Moore, a VA LoSer and head of the Southern National Congress, said that "When this criminal regime comes for us," state militias like Vermont's National Guard will have an important role defending the secession process.

Whoa, never saw that one coming!   Naylor, et al, have stressed repeatedly that for secession to succeed in must be a peaceable process or at least that's what they say in their press releases.   Sometimes I guess you have to be the proverbial fly on the wall to hear the real story.   Nowhere have I read in their literature that they plan for potentially mobilizing state Guard units in the event that the federal government might seek to roundup secession leadership, most likely pursuant to the holding in Texas v. White that acts of secession by legislatures are null.   I'd suggest that they learn something about Vermont's National Guard history [2] before they bet the farm on the Guard supporting a secession scheme hatched by our magnolia Vermonter and his racist pals at the League of the South.   When Gov. Chittenden, a newly elected Federalist, sought to return the state militia that was under federal military control from New York state during the War of 1812, "The officers of the brigade... flatly refused to obey." [3]

Perhaps if Tom took his Southern secessionist friends over to Vermont's State House, as I suggested below, and if they stepped into the Hall of Inscriptions that houses Lincoln's large bust they might have looked at the inscription by our thirtieth president and fellow Vermonter,

"If the spirit of liberty should in the other parts of the Union and support for our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont."
- Calvin Coolidge, 1928