Today In Secession History

"South Carolina is too small to be a Republic,and too large to be an insane asylum."South Carolinian anti-secessionist and Attorney General,James L. Petigru (1789-1863)

150 years ago today, on December 20, 1860, South Carolina
became the first state to formally secede from the United States in the South's War to Preserve Slavery.

Similarly desirous of creating safe harbors for dominant cultures, "Vermont Commons" blogger, Carol Moore, has advocated for secession as a mode to provide for "homogeneous (Read: segregated) communities":

"Those "identity groups" of whatever identity who desire separation to preserve their culture or live out a vision or lifestyle should not have to waste time and resources in defending or fighting discrimination lawsuits and onerous zoning laws and can focus it on building community."
Source

Just this past year the Lost Cause Northern neo-Confederates at VTCommons and the Second Vermont Republic gubernatorial candidate accepted and refused to return a contribution from an out-of-state contributor and member of the highly secret (until exposed on this blog) Free Vermont listserv. The contributor, James Duncan, has reservations about lesbians generally and race mixing in particular, and he looks forward to putting members of Vermont's law enforcement community on trial for as yet unspecified charges after the seceshers takeover.

In an often seemingly unhinged campaign that was laced with innuendo, invective and middle finger waving giddiness, Steele and his campaign staff sought to tap into baser emotions.

Since that campaign I've received an email from one secesher that, while toggling back and forth from apology to aggression, revealed the new strategy of the small Vermont secesher community for the coming year. It seems that "old times there are (to be) forgotten," while new lows in fact churning are to be employed so that up will become down, hot will become cold and white will become black - well, maybe not that last one so much. Gone are to be all recollections and rememberances of ties to League of the South advisors; or of former SVR co-chairman and current VTCommons honcho Rob Williams' infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Care" policy regarding the possible racism of contributors to his rag:

"(S)ome of our secession scholars - Don Livingston, for example - happen to be southerners. Anyone who has met and talked with Don knows the man is thoughtful and well-studied. Is he a racist? I don’t know. And frankly, it is none of my damn business, at a personal level."

Or of Thomas Naylor's revealing essay, "Minority States NOT Minority Rights".

And. of course, let's not forget while not forgetting, the early VTCommons white supremacist, racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi contributor, UVM prof Robert S. Griffin, that I first reported on in February, 2007. Griffin, like Williams, had written a fawning review of Thomas J. DiLorenzo's anti-Lincoln, revisionist history. Vermont's press caught onto Griffin two years later, here, here and here (Sadly, the Times-Argus story that began the media hubbub more than two years after I first wrote about Griffin lies entombed behind their paywall.). Griffin's original VTCommons piece, although erased there, can be found at secesher and Council of Censors member Susan Ohanion's "education" website.

No doubt they'll call their upcoming reset for the Vermont secesher movement in 2011 a "Look Away" strategy. More on their re-branding effort in a future post.

Here's The Daily Show on "The South's Secession Commemoration":



UPDATE 12.21.10 12:00 PM: As if to confirm the
deranged turns that the argument for secession can take, Carol Moore has posted at the VTCommons blog that segregation and discrimination is okay if it's secessionists that are doing it.

Truly bizarre.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *For the archive of the Free Vermont Framework listserv, click here.