"Secessionists Seek To Balkanize America"

In a piece published last Friday, August 19, 2011, at Business Insider, writer Vincent Trivett handicaps the meager secessionist efforts in several states, including Vermont's own Second Vermont Republic. While quoting SVR's baas, the Dixie singin' Magnolia Vermonter, Thomas Naylor, Trivett handicaps the likelihood of the seceshers succeeding at seceeding by saying in this understatement of the matter,

"The movement has faltered since Bush left power."

Trivett also quotes from the Boston Globe's Alex Beam's New York Times Op-Ed that I first wrote about here:

"'Our mission was a lot easier when Bush was in power,' Naylor told The New York Times back in July. 'In a left-wing state like Vermont, politics are basically grounded in anger and fear. Vermonters really disliked Bush, and when Bush went away, there was this notion that Obama walked on water.' In the last election, Steele, the party's gubernatorial candidate came in third, winning less than one percent of the vote."

Read Trivett's entire piece at the Business Insider here.

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

New York Times Secesher Op-Ed: "The Dubious Dream Lives On," Though "Not So Well"

Treated in today's New York Times for the roadkill Vermonters now know it to be (full piece here), the Second Vermont Republic gets the evisceration it has so long deserved from a mainstream media columnist, Alex Beam of the Boston Globe.

The normal treatment by the MSM has been driven by SVR's baas, Thomas Naylor or one of his lackeys, promoting some of their "aw, ain't we cute; we're gonna leave 'the Empire'" bits of nonsense that proves to be the perfect, soft news drivel that papers need to offset the daily barrage of "negative" stories, sports, obits and obligatory feature sections.

Once in a while, usually when they don't have to do the work themselves and they just rely on the crap that spews forth regulary from the Magnolia Vermonter's pen, you get pieces like last January's throwaway "feature" in Time about the Top 10 Aspiring Nations. It was an error laden paragraph based on an earlier piece by a secession hack who later admitted to doing free advertising for the Vermont seceshers in the pieces that he submitted for publication to several online sources. No mention was made in the Time junk of their candidate's dismal, barely three quarters of one percent showing in last year's gubernatorial run, though I think that it may be no coincidence that SVR came in dead last even on the Time list.

About our local losers, Beam writes in his New York Times Op-Ed piece:

"The dubious dream lives on..."

"For years I have been receiving mailings from the Second Vermont Republic, a secessionist movement that seems to operate out of the personal computer of Thomas Naylor, a former Duke University economics professor who now lives in Charlotte, Vermont. Encomia from deceased luminaries festoon his Web site: “I must assure you of my pleasure in and approval of ... the Second Vermont Republic,” wrote the Canadian-born John Kenneth Galbraith, who owned a lovely second home in bucolic Dorset, Vermont. “All power to Vermont in its effort to distinguish itself from the U.S.A. as a whole,” quoth the late diplomat George F. Kennan, whose famous “containment doctrine” apparently did not apply to the New England states."

"I touched base with Naylor to find out how his secession plans were faring. Not so well, he reported."

“Our mission was a lot easier when Bush was in power,” he explained. “In a left-wing state like Vermont, politics are basically grounded in anger and fear. Vermonters really disliked Bush, and when Bush went away, there was this notion that Obama walked on water.”

"His movement sponsored 10 candidates in last year’s state elections, and their most respectable showing was four percent of the vote. “That man’s name appeared first on the ballot,” is how Naylor explains that result."

"For the time being, it would appear that... Vermont will probably remain under the jurisdiction of what Naylor calls “the Empire” — “a global system of dominance and deceit in which ostensibly free individuals allow transnational megacompanies and big government to control their lives” and so on."

"And so on," indeed Mr. Beam. Thank you for doing your homework; now fuhgeddaboudem.

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