Has The Second Vermont Republic's Bad Penny Turned Up Again?

It's been a quiet month but some things just aren't meant to last.

Thomas Naylor, our Magnolia Vermonter, has been churning out his patented, sententious essays that, for all they lack in reality based quality, more than make up for in offering a glimpse into a mind that's left the rails. His game board mentality for reshaping the world as he would have it, despite its obvious utter misreading of histories and the present, offer insight into just how far into the ridiculous his "plans" have now veered, if you can call his muddled thinking anything like planning.

But today I have something that's not so new from the Second Vermont Republic website, written by someone that Thomas Naylor has described as one his "twenty Vermont Internet cowboys" - James Duncan.

Duncan, you may recall, is the "cowboy" who posted on the not-so-secret (although they all thought so at the time) Free Vermont listserv his disdain for lesbians and race-mixing, and was the largest out-of-state contributor to the utterly failed campaign for Vermont governor waged by Green Mountain Brigade commander, er, anti-war candidate and Connecticut native, Dennis Steele, who was just fine about keeping the money contributed by a bigot.

Duncan also has plans for "show trials" in the new Vermont Republic of current law enforcement members that he discussed in this Free Vermont listserv posting, where he suggested someone for SVR's Very Foreign Minister, Dennis Morrisseau, to contact in the Patriot movement:

From: jd882u at hotmail.com (james duncan)
Date: Fri Mar 12 14:25:53 2010
Subject: [Free Vermont Framework] FW: [New post] Oath Keepers and Oath
Take rs: Does It Really Matter?
Message-ID:

"Sorry, my encounters with law enforcement were always of the non-oath keepers types."

"You know, the socieopathic toadies of the plutocracy whose defense when we put them on trial will be ......"I was only following orders"."

"Remember, most of the servants of the Empire oppress and tyrannize you for a mere pat on the back and a Scobby snack from their masters. If you want to pursue making contact, their leader seems to be a Stuart Rhodes and this is his website http://oathkeepers.org/oath/

On the plus side, he is on SPLC shit list along with the rest of us."

A year before this threatening posting, early in 2009, Duncan had an essay published at baas Naylor's SVR website where he laid out his plans for a new Vermont currency. The plan was comprised of the usual sovereignty movement/Glenn "Hoard Gold" Beck crap, along with economic bilge of the sort usually associated with the likes of former SVR board member and current board member of the white supremacist group, the League of the South , Franklin Sanders, who received a felony conviction for his own financial shenanigans.

Duncan included a dog whistle to racialist politics and separatist ideals with this gratuitous passage in his 2009 essay:

"The Empire is in its death throes. Built on avarice and greed, it has all but eaten itself. How do we protect ourselves as it thrashes around and strikes out? Secession is of course the ultimate answer. We have nothing in common with the gang bangers in L.A., the crack dealers in Detroit, the stock swindlers in N.Y. Why should we be forced to associate with them any longer? Why should the sweat of our brows be used to spread murder abroad and tyranny at home? Enough is enough."

He even signed his piece like SVR board member Jason Sorens has also written in his scribblings that have argued for violence against some leaders - Sic Semper Tyrannis - a favorite closing line among seceshers, both past and present, including Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Later that year Naylor's SVR issued what the baas has called a "token" in this announcement.

Below is from the page at Moonlight Mints that seems to indicate a a somewhat smaller minting than originally described by Naylor- 113 Nearings; 109 Duncans vs the 500 Nearings alluded to by Naylor in his offering.


In his announcement Naylor goes on to say that his "token" will trade at par with the dollar.

"Why clovers, the state flower, instead of dollars, pounds, or euros? As Voltaire once said, “Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – zero.” With the Federal Reserve Bank printing fiat money as though it were going out of style, the value of such money can only spiral downward."

"Why clovers? Why not? Why peg something of value (silver) to a rapidly declining asset (dollars)? Why not a fresh start with a new yet time tested medium of exchange?"

"Clovers will trade at one to one vs the dollar – for now."

So Naylor's token isn't really a "token"; it's intended to be a what's called a private currency - and it seems that just might be illegal enough, based on the offer to trade for dollars, for the FBI or the Secret Service to take an interest. Recently a similar private currency issuer was convicted for another version of these money schemes. [1] [2] After I'd begun research for this post, a Vermont Commons blogger, Sherry Ackerman, expressed last week her own concerns about the SVR funny money.

So perhaps that's why this announcement now appears on the SVR website:


But the question that really needs an answer from Naylor, Williams, Flomenhoft, Wagner and/or any of the other SVR secesher braintrust of wingnuts is, "Why the hell does the Second Vermont Republic need a James Duncan coin?!?!" Maybe James Duncan would like to throw in his own two cents to explain the "Duncan" and, while he's at it, explain the Donnachaidh thing from a few months ago.

Comments are temporarily on - wingnuts start your propellers.

Oh, and don't take any wooden Naylors. (I know but I couldn't resist, having heard wa-a-ay too many yak puns from Rob Williams during the past year.)

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

Second Vermont Republic Founder Thomas Naylor Is Now Down to "Just Whistlin' Dixie"

Second Vermont Republic founder, Thomas Naylor, was the largest financial backer of what ended up being an abysmal showing by Vermont secesher candidates in the 2010 election cycle due to "the paucity of votes attracted by candidate (Dennis) Steele." Steele, the head of the secesher ticket did so poorly that he came within a few votes of having his 0.79% finish bested by a perennial kook candidate who alleges discrimination because of a purported disability that supposedly arises from an STD, and secession supporter, natch.

For those who have followed the saga of the Second Vermont Republic's baas, Thomas Naylor, he has continued to try to separate the modern day secession movement from its deeply troubling racist history. That effort that's been made all the more difficult for him by his longtime association with the League of the South and its perverted view of the Land of Dixie as it supposedly was.

Naylor swerves from distancing himself (sort of) from the LoS types when speaking to media, to then embracing the Lost Causers and their various tropes at secesher meetings.

"Vermont Commons" has a new Spring issue out. In addition to all the usual sky-is-falling, doom and gloom prophecy that permeates its pages, there's an unexpected disclosure of an about-face by the Magnolia Vermonter.

It has to do with one of those symbols so important to Southern (or
Southron, as they prefer to say) seceshers - the singing of the song known as "Dixie".

The song "Dixie" is usually attributed to blackface ministrel show creator and impresario, Ohioan Dan Emmett, and is considered to be a racist view of antebellum Southern black culture.

Sung in an affected style meant to mimic how the white, racist ear hears blacks, the lyrics confirm that fact:

I wish I was in de land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land whar I was born in,
Early on one frosty mornin,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

"The remaining verses drift into the common minstrel idiom of a comical plantation scenario, "supposedly [depicting] the gayer side of life for slaves on Southern plantations:"

Old Missus marry "Will-de-weaber,"
Willium was a gay deceaber;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
But when he put his arm around'er,
He smiled as fierce as a forty-pound'er,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Dar's buck-wheat cakes an 'Ingen' batter,
Makes you fat or a little fatter;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Den hoe it down an scratch your grabble,
To Dixie land I'm bound to trabble.
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

"In short, ["Dixie"] made the case, more strongly than any previous minstrel tune had, that slaves belonged in bondage."

Source (The 1916 rendition of "Dixie" may be heard here; click the play button when the window opens.)

Those who have flacked for Naylor in the past usually bring up an unconfirmed assertion by Naylor that he would refuse to stand for the playing of "Dixie" when he was at University of Mississippi, as though that assures that he couldn't possibly be racist. This bit of literary legerdemain from Bill Kauffman, author of "Bye Bye, Miss American Empire":

"Thomas Naylor, who as a young Mississippi liberal took pride in refusing to stand for “Dixie” when his beloved Ole Miss Rebels played, told me that he was so disarmed upon attending the 2006 League of the South convention that for the first time since before the civil rights movement he actually sang the words to that tuneful ode to the land where old times are not forgotten."

Sources [1] [2]

Finally, another fiction of the Naylor image goes "bye, bye."

While inadvertently lifting the veil on Naylor, Kauffman jumps the shark with his whitewashing, Michael Hill entry. Hill, leader of the admittedly white supremacist League of the South "call(s) antebellum slavery "God-ordained," oppos(es) racial intermarriage, and defend(s) segregation as a policy designed to protect the integrity of both races," served at a black college, notes Kauffman - which means what? Kaufmann failed to say in his written sleight of hand that,

"Michael Hill was always on oddity at (Stillman College), roaming the campus wearing a Confederate flag pin and waxing nostalgic to his mostly black students about the so-called "War Between the States."

"...In 1998, Hill finally left Stillman, which had been badly embarrassed by his efforts. ...(T)he (L)eague (of the South) grew quickly, as racist white Southerners sought the respectability of a group led by a professor..."

Source

It's truly a toss up as to who is the unseemlier - the seceshers or their flacks.

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

The House Speaker of the Vermont General Assembly Labels Secession as Treason

Vermont began its observance of the Civil War sesquicentennial with a commemoration of the "special session of the legislature called by Gov. Erastus Fairbanks in April, 1861 in response to Abraham Lincoln's request for troops and funds at the outbreak of the Civil War."

House Speaker Shap Smith (as then Speaker Augustus Hunton), Lt. Gov. Phil Scott (as Governor Fairbanks) and Senate President pro tem John Campbell (as Lt. Gov. Levi Underwood) all portrayed the key players at that long-ago session who met in the very same House Chamber and doubled the amount of money requested by the Union from $500,000 to $1,000,000. The reenactment was the final 2011 Farmers' Night performance in the House Chamber at the State House, held on Wednesday, April 6th at 7:30pm.

Of that long ago special session, today's House Speaker, Shap Smith, reading from a House committtee's report said,

"Secession is treason!"

"To yield to its demands is to invite it again."

"If one state may secede, all may."

"However much Vermont deprecates the horror of civil war, she believes that the triumph of rebellion, and that anarchy and confusion necessarily resulting therefrom, would be infinitely more deplorable as it would result in the loss of our blood bought civil liberties and the entire subversion of the idea of free government."

"Vermont on this question has no hesitation in avowing her choice. She assures her sister states and the executive authority of the Union that she is ever loyal and true, and will do her part in this hour of trial and danger."

"We therefore respectfully recommend the most prompt, vigorous and decisive measures to quell this insurrection. We tender to the President of the United States such aid as he may judge to be the duty of Vermont to render in this emergency."

Click here to play video of House Speaker Shap Smith's stirring representation of these words said so long ago. The entire reenactment may be heard here.

It struck me that the truth in those words spoken in the Vermont State House reflecting the universal sentiment in Vermont at that time hold much relevance for today. During this past 2010 election we learned that the new seceshers of the 21st century have their own ideas about how to savage our Vermont civil liberties and society.

The Free Vermont crowd, led by the Second Vermont Republic's Thomas Naylor and his henchman, Rob Williams, had described their own plans to seize private property, suborn civil rights, reinstitute racism, homophobia and anti-Semitic tensions, enact population, asset and income controls, return capital punishment, just to name of few of their fantasies for an "independent" Vermont to be created in a Ernesto "Che" Guevara style liberación movement. [1] [2]

Vermonters have no more interest today in such subversions of their civil liberties than they did 150 years ago.

Re-enactors of the Vermont 1st and 18th Vermont Cavalry and other units attended the session.

Ron Tallman, of the 1st Vermont Cavalry, said he takes just as dim a view of the small secession movement that exists in Vermont today as his predecessors took of Southern secession a century and a half ago.

"They'd better think long and hard about the consequences involved with it," he said.
Source

More information on sesquicentennial events yet to be held may be found at the Vermont Civil War Sesquicentennial website and the Vermont in the Civil War website

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