"Loathing Lincoln"

For years the Vermont secessionist movement has been a proponent of Abraham Lincoln historical revisionism. Lincoln bashing by the Second Vermont Republic leadership has been a staple of the local seceshers, along with promotion of the scribblings of Lincoln hating "writers" such as avowed neo-Confederates like Thomas DiLorenzo and Donald Livingston; both served as advisory board members of the then nascent SVR.

Next week the Louisiana State University Press will be releasing John Barr's Loathing Lincoln which examines both 19th century and modern day Lincoln bashers and historical revisionists. Today's Lincoln haters permeate the present day neo-Confederate and secessionist movements. Imagine my utter lack of surprise when I found in the book's bibliography a notation about the neo-Confederate Livington's contribution to then SVR co-chairman Rob Williams' hate journal.

One of the very first times that I heard Williams, a Vermont secesher leader and an adjunct faculty member at Champlain College in Burlington, VT, speak about Lincoln was on a local radio program. Williams railed:

"We have to get over our hero worship of Abraham Lincoln. He really was instead of the "Great Emancipator", we like to call him the "Great Centralizer." (sic) He essentially invented a new and novel unconstitutional interpretation and then foisted it upon half the country that was trying to leave..."

"Lincoln was very clever and maneuvered the South into firing the first shots..."

Hogwash! Or as one caller to the radio program directly challenged Williams, "Academic nonsense." Williams' media acumen was lauded by neo-Nazi and eventual member of Williams' exclusive Free Vermont listserv, James Duncan aka "Donnachaidh," at the hate forum of the Vanguard News Network ("No Jews, Just Right") here. Duncan so loved the Vermont secesher movement that he even minted an SVR coin in silver with his very own profile on the coin face. At the listserv he liked to swap wisecracks about lesbians, race mixing and rounding up Vermont law enforcement for some kind of trials when the seceshers took over. Duncan was the seceshers largest out of state contributor to its gubernatorial candidate, Dennis Steele, who when he learned of Duncan's background still publicly opted to keep the money. Duncan had more than 6,300 deeply anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and neo-Confederate posts on the neo-Nazi hate forum. What he never disclosed there or elsewhere was his predilection for salt and pepper porn. Go figure. Duncan/Donnachaidh disappeared from the Internet (at least using those identities) shortly after his hateful neo-Confederate activities were exposed by this blog.

A noted researcher of the modern neo-Confederate movement, Ed Sebesta, wrote of Barr's new work,

"What I think is going to be interesting is when the public realizes that there is this modern movement that hates Lincoln. Lincoln is the personification of the modern democratic egalitarian America. This is why he is hated so much by neo-Confederates who dream of a hierarchical society. The attacks on Lincoln are attacks on modern democratic egalitarian America."

"Some so-called "heritage" groups are going to seem much more ominous to the American public as the public realizes how hostile neo-Confederates are to Lincoln, that it isn't a few cranks, but a movement, and further realize that this movement is hostile to modern democratic egalitarian America. Also, it will be realized that indulging the Lost Cause view of the Civil War has consequences."

More details about Barr's Loathing Lincoln can be found at Sebesta's anti-Neo-Confederate blog here.

To preorder Barr's excellent work use this Amazon link.

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"By(e,) By(e) Rob Williams"

I recall that a year and a half ago to this very day that Rob Williams peed all over himself when he discovered a typo on this blog. Spell checking seems to be one of those claims to intelligence that neo-Confederats make since they don't really have much else going for them. That's why I just about burnt the biscuits when I saw this at that haven for racists and anti-Semites, LewRockwell.com.

Longtime activist for the neo-Confederate, white supremacist hate group called the League of the South, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a contributor to the Holocaust denial publication, The Journal of Historical Review (here) yesterday publish his boot licking review of a neo-Confederate book repetitive piece of Constitutionally unsound nonsense that he contributed to while making the usual ludicrous claims of historical accuracy that you'd expect from a historical revisionist like DiLorenzo.

DiLorenzo is well known for his hatred of the 14th Amendment with its pesky guarantees of due process, equal protection for civil rights and citizenship rights. He depises unions and has argued that there are benefits to sweatshops, and justs lu-u-uvs the Confederate flag and white supremacist groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) that has been roiled by turmoil for years over some of their members not being sufficiently racist.

Very much like the Vermont wash ashores such as the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the Dixie singin' Thomas J. Naylor, our own Magnolia Vermonter; the loopy drag impersonator of Ethan Allen, Jim Hogue; the yet-to-be Senator Robert "Needed Killin' " Wagner; Rob Williams; Connecticut native Dennis Steele and the rest of the Vermont historical revisionists, DiLorenzo inflates in his junk history the importance of the spiraling and increasingly irrelevant Nowheremen of SVR.

This is likely the post that got DiLorenzo's Lost Cause panties in a knot.

Now, normally I wouldn't pay much attention to what DiLorenzo has to say about Vermont. Other than being an advisor to Naylor's dying organization, SVR, DiLorenzo means zip here. But he's one of those guys who participates in that neo-Confedrate circle jerk of calling each other "scholars."

(Click on Screen Cap to Embiggen)

You know, you get to be a "scholar," you get to be a "Scholar," and you get to be a "SCHOLAR," unh, Unh, UNH... Problem is though that the neo-Confederate, LOS "scholar" that Rob Williams has gotten into bed with doesn't proof read his own crap so that the Perfesser inadvertently says "by(e) by(e)" to not-so-much a Vermonter and growingly longtime absent from the secesher scene, Rob Williams.

What a bunch of pathetic, self-diddling assholes.

Please pardon any typos.

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Second Vermont Republic's Thomas Naylor Clumsily Attempts to Co-opt the Occupy Wall Street Movement

The first hint that the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, the Dixie singin' Thomas Naylor, was about to make his move to begin his attempt at co-opting what he can of the Occupy Wall Street movement came in a screed pissing on virtually every New Yorker now living in NYC (except for, of course, Brooklynite secessionist flack, Christopher Ketcham). Kind of like Naylor's repeated past condemnation of all Vermonters that I wrote about here.

A week later Naylor showed where he was heading in a post at his website titled, The Wall Street Occupation Gets It, Almost, where he wrote:

"I view myself as an enthusiastic supporter of the Wall Street Occupation (WSO) movement."

Thing is, Tom, that isn't what the movement is called, nor is that the acronym universally used. It's much like the same problem you've had here with Vermonters - you arrogantly label everyone as you wish and then blow a gasket when someone objects, even minutely. Naylor then immediately undermines his claim of being an "enthusiastic supporter" when he notes that the "WSO"(sic) falls short of his own nihilistic standard:

"Unfortunately, many WSO(sic) supporters seem to believe that the United States Government is still fixable. They fail to realize that because of its size, the United States is unsustainable, ungovernable, and, therefore, unfixable."

and

"Regrettably, many of those in the WSO(sic) movement subscribe to the view that campaign finance reform will solve all of our problems."

And then in possibly one of Naylor's most cynically obvious, opportunistic flimflam attempts at co-option, he writes:

"But a word of caution to these idealistic revolutionaries. Avoid like the plague allowing your movement to be co-opted by the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, George Soros’s moveon.com(s/be .org), or political opportunists such as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Also, resist the temptation to get in bed with some particular political ideology. No political ideology can save America from itself.

The Wall Street Occupation(sic) movement could be onto something very big – a paradigm shift in the way Americans view the political process. Is it possible to create a window of opportunity which might be open to heretofore unimaginable political options such as... secession..."

Too bad Naylor hasn't the honesty to tell the OWS movement that he hates Bernie Sanders because Bernie failed to resign his US Senate seat to run as Naylor's handpicked secesher candidate for Vermont governor, as Naylor had demanded years earlier.

Naylor also failed to disclose to OWS and Occupy Vermont (his real intended target audience) of his Vermont secesher movement's longtime association with white supremacists (League of the South), homophobes (Christian Exodus) and his promotion of virulent anti-Semites (like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to name just one), including past SVR board of advisor members like Franklin Sanders (neo-Confederate executive board member of the LOS), Thomas DiLorenzo (neo-Confederate, anti-union, anti-14th Amendment and whose work has been published in a Holocaust Denial journal), Jason Sorens (who's done work for the Koch brothers, founded the Free State Project and then has failed to New Hampshire as he requires of his followers, and favors limiting the voting rights of public employees) etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Even now, full blown Vermont secessionists like Matt Cropp (Vermont secesher ideologue and former campaign manager for the supremely failed secesher gubernatorial run of fringer, Dennis Steele) have embedded themselves into the Occupy Vermont-Burlington group.

It'll be interesting to see how the secesher crowd will do at co-opting the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Vermont movements. Given the Vermont secesher track record for failure, from elections to print publications like the soon to be defunct Vermont Commons journal, the OWS and OVB movements seem to be safe for the moment.

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Looking for Lincoln

Longtime Second Vermont Republic advisory board member and fellow Lincoln hater of SVR's baas, the Magnolia Vermonter, Thomas Naylor, and secesher propagandist and publisher of the usually uninteresting "Vermont Commons", Rob Williams, Thomas DiLorenzo, who, like Naylor and Williams, dabbles in Abraham Lincoln historical revisionism as an elemental part of the neo-Confederate journey that they would impose upon Vermont's future, gets ably deconstructed by Michael Lynch at the Abraham Lincoln Institute for the Study of Leadership and Public Policy at Lincoln Memorial University here.

Essentially, it puts the whole DiLorenzo "scholarship" thing on a par with this recently discovered Lincoln sighting:



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Second Vermont Republic's Longtime Advisory Board Member, Thomas DiLorenzo, Cites Racist Sources for His Criticism of the Southern Poverty Law Center

Shameless audacity in their endeavors is something of a prerequisite for neo-Confederate, secessionist ideologues.

A recent whine about the Southern Poverty Law Center by the LewRockwell.com blog poster, longtime Second Vermont Republic advisory board member (no link to SVR's advisory board is presently available - it got "disappeared" after the Frank Bryan post on this blog), a past contributor to the now defunct journal of the Holocaust denial organization, Institute for Historical Review, and creator of a fictionalized Lincoln history that is available for sale at a the Holocaust denial website called The Barnes Review, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, has taken chutzpah to a new extreme.

DiLorenzo has jumped the neo-Confederate, racist shark by citing as a source for criticism of the SPLC the website of The Social Contract.

The Social Contract is a publisher of racist, anti-immigrant books like The Camp of the Saints. [1] [2]

The Social Contact's editorial board for the past 20 years has read like a Who's Who of racist. white supremacist, anti-immigrant "big thinkers" such as John Tauton, Kevin Lamb (who's also an editor of the white supremacist Occidental Quarterly and the communications director for the racist National Policy Institute) and Wayne Lutton (a member of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens and has served as editor at Occidental Quarterly and the racist American Renaissance), each of whom is cited in the incredible article for that which DiLorenzo outrageously claims is already known about the SPLC.

Here's what DiLorenzo posted at the LewRockwell.com's blog:

Hate-Group Racketeering

Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo on May 21, 2011 10:56 AM
"A recent issue of a journal entitled The Social Contract contains seventeen articles about the left-wing hate group known as the Southern Poverty Law Center. The journal demonstrates what many of us already know: The SPLC is a neo-McCarthyite, cultural Marxist organization whose basic role within the Democratic Party is to smear all conservative or libertarian critics of Big Government in general, and Obama in particular, as racists. There can be no reasoned debate over immigration policy, for example, for the SPLC informs us that all critics of open borders (including the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and Nobel laureate Gary Becker; and African-American scholars Walter E. Williams [Editor's Note: A search of the SPLC website reveals no such references to immigration and Friedman, Becker and Williams]; Thomas Sowell, a true nutjob, has compared President Obama to Hitler and has a long record of overtly screwball views.) are motivated by nothing but racial hatred of “brown” immigrants. Case closed. Shut up."

"Their purpose is to censor debate, and their tactic is what the cultural Marxists call “ritual defamation,” as opposed to civilized debate of public policy issues. As an example, I recently read one of the SPLC’s “Hate Watch” reports that catalogues several genuinely nutty-sounding characters who ran for political office recently. Some of them were crazed neo-Nazis who received maybe a dozen votes in a some local political race. Then included in the list is U.S. Senator Rand Paul. Get it: Rand Paul is nearly identical to the mentally disturbed neo-Nazi who hides out in the mountains of Colorado reading a dog-eared copy of Mein Kampf. The SPLC race racketeers have personally become very wealthy at this game, as is discussed in the journal."

Source

Here's the list of The Social Contract's journal contributors to their SPLC exposé. Some on the list are regular "contributors" to the racist, white supremacist Internet radio program of James Edwards, called The Political Cesspool, in addition to their role literary mainstays of the white supremacist, conservative, racist, anti-Semitic movement.

Longtime SVR advisory board member DiLorenzo's work has been lauded by Thomas Naylor, "Vermont Commons'" publisher, Rob Williams and VTCommons' white supremacist contributor and author of "Rearing Honorable White Children", Robert S. Griffin. [3]

Given DiLorenzo's choice of fellow travelers in his doomed campaign against the SPLC, is it little wonder then that Loyola University has been "looking more closely into" his activities and his "hateful messages," as desribed by one Loyola librarian?" This isn't the first time that one of DiLorenzo's racialist sole-mates has caused a problem for him at Loyola University. In 2008 his Economics Department offered an apology for a visiting professor's racialist, economic views that "indicated poor-quality scholarship." Naturally, taken as he is with racialist "theology," DiLorenzo took issue with that reasonable view.

DiLorenzo's citation of known racist trash as qualified critic's of the SPLC, much like his own past bad acts on behalf of a racialist professor's "poor-quality scholarship," says it all.

Two weeks after DiLorenzo's post citing the work of his racist colleagues he reloaded and fired off another salvo at the SPLC, citing the 'research" of the profoundly racist and anti-Semitic VDare website here.

The VDare.com hypothesis lashes out at SPLC's "anti-majority" work and, while making poorly evidenced economic extrapolations about SPLC, warns that the SPLC is "anchored by wealthy Jewish contributors on the East and West coasts." The fervently anti-Semitic VDare writer even tries to make a Kevin Bacon-style link to Bernie Madoff in the year old piece DiLorenzo found of such value that he added it to his anti-SPLC diatribe. VDare's founder, Peter Brimelow, has counseled the GOP to concentrate its electoral efforts on white voters. He predictes that:

"Obama will do something 'that will start to shock people right away. I think that whites — that is to say, Americans — will organize...'"

Source

Tea Party, anyone?

Will Rob Williams and Thomas Naylor now care to explain to Vermonters why DiLorenzo should be advising Vermonters on their not-so-likely, inchoate future republic, although I'd say that we'd best not hold our breath waiting for that explanation.

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Thomas Naylor and Sexist Stereotyping

The Second Vermont Republic baas, Thomas Naylor, posted yet another of his tedious essays, this time about Egypt.

As I've said before, his "essays" are an assemblage of shopworn Naylor clichés and codewords devoted to his misrepresentations of the real world that could be reproduced on a few refrigerator magnets and swirled about as needed for an "essay."

But in his utterly predictable "oil-Empire-Internet bad-Obama-Israel" whine, Naylor veered off into a sexual stereotype designed to trivialize and marginalize women.

In a dozen paragraphs of his essay, never once did Naylor offer his snark about the sartorial shortcomings of President Obama, VP Biden, Mubarack, Suleiman, El-Baradei, Lech Walesa, Va’clav Havel, or the predominately male demonstrators at Tahrir Square in Cairo. Yet, when he came to the US Secretary of State, here's how he dismissed her without offering a single example of substance other than a vague accusation of something he engages in all the time, doublespeak:

"With her mindless political doublespeak about Egypt, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton makes one wonder whether she represents the Second Coming of Madeleine Albright."

"She and the former Secretary of State not only sound alike on Egypt, but they dress alike too."

That's a twofer for Naylor - political bullshit and sexism.

It's an important disclosure by the Godfather of the Vermont seceshers about where women will place in his agrarian, male dominated society comparable to that planned by his allies at the League of the South. Unsurprisingly, his SVR advisory board member, Thomas J. DiLorenzo has written about "the phantom nature of the wage gap."

According to,

"Ruth Mandel, director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, 'To focus on their attire, the cut of their clothes … is to be in danger of trivializing who they are, the important role they play and the meaning behind women's advancement to positions of power: That is, we're moving to a true democracy of shared leadership.'"

No doubt he'll get strong support for his sexist jab from the expert at sexist doublespeak, that dreaming-of-castration-fantasies, anti-Semitic, lying blogger, Carol Moore, who has the full support of "Vermont Commons" publisher and Vermont historical revisionist, Rob Williams. Here's just one of her threatening comments directed to me when she became, ah, overstimulated by a photo in which a squirrel's testicles were visible:

"(A)ny female - and most men - can guess what my real response to it was. (Hint, where's(sic) the rubber bands - or the anesthetic and the proper tools.)"

Classy, Carol.

The group of them - Naylor, DiLorenzo, Williams & Moore - are a match made in hell.

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Secession Myths & Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Thomas J. DiLorenzo

In a piece by Corey Meyer entitled "Secession: It’s All the Rave These Days", Meyer does a spot on job of refuting some of the historic untruths routinely repeated by secession scholars bullshit artists like Thomas DiLorenzo, Second Vermont Republic baas Thomas Naylor, "Vermont Commons" publisher Rob Williams, Kirkpatrick Sale and their associates at the "old times there are not forgotten," neo-Confederate, Abbeville Institute.


Here's a sample:

“(This) letter is one written by George Washington in 1783 to John Hancock,"

“There are four things, which I humbly conceive are essential to the well being, I may even venture to say, to the existence of the United States, as an Independent Power–

•1st An indissoluble Union of the States under one fœderal Head.
•2dly A sacred regard to public Justice.
•3dly The adoption of a proper Peace Establishment, and
•4thly The prevalence of that pacific and friendly disposition among the People of the United States, which will induce them to forgit their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrafice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.

These are the Pillars on which the glorious Fabrick of our Independency and National Character must be supported–Liberty is the Basis, and whoever should dare to sap the foundation or overturn the Structure, under whatever specious pretexts he may attempt it, will merit the bitterest execration, and the severest punishment which can be inflicted by his injured Country.”

You can read Meyer's entire piece here. I especially liked the "D'oh!" moment in Meyer's description of his gotcha of Thomas DiLorenzo, the perpetrator of the Lincoln historical revisionist history fraud so loved by VTCommons' (and then SVR co-chair) Williams and his early VTCommons contributor, white supremacist and UVM professor, Robert S. Griffin. (More on that sorry chapter at VTCommons and SVR here.)

(h/t to a regular reader)

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Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Thomas J. DiLorenzo Gave A Lecture to Another neo-Confederate Group, That Wasn't the League of the South

Ten days ago, Loyola University Maryland economics professor and a longtime advisory board member to the secessionist group, Second Vermont Republic, Thomas J. DiLorenzo was a guest lecturer on February 5, 2011 for the neo-Confederate organization called the Sons of Confederate Veterans, at their Stephen D. Lee Institute gathering.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans has a checkered history and many members are also present or former members of hate groups such as the League of the South, the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (formerly known as the White Citizens Council), as well as former Klansmen, a Holocaust denial journal editor and neo-Nazis who hold leadership roles in the SCV. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

"From the Mississippi Division of the SCV, comes this new gem: The group wants the state to issue a special license plate, keyed like the Montgomery march to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest — a millionaire Memphis slave trader before the war, an apparent war criminal who presided over the massacre of surrendering black prisoners at Fort Pillow, Tenn., during it, and the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan afterward..."
Source: Southern Poverty Law Center

DiLorenzo, in addition to lecturing the Lost Cause crowd at SCV, serves as a scholar shill for the neo-Confederate movement at the Abbeville Institute [6] as does the baas of the Second Vermont Republic, Thomas Naylor. [7]

As UVM professor Frank Bryan (who left the SVR advisory board last year) told the SPLC Intelligence Report in 2008,

"You've got to watch whose conference you go to. There's no doubt about it."

DiLorenzo may not have gotten that message - yet.

(h/t: Ed Sebesta, Anti-Neo-Confederate)


An excellent overview of the neo-Confederate movement can be found here.

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A Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member's Paean to the Neo-Confederate Cause Was Published in a Holocaust Denial Publication

Before Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board member Thomas J. DiLorenzo seriously started his Lincoln historical revision shtick, he was a denialist for the Confederacy. Little surprise then that in all the coverage surrounding DiLorenzo's dog and pony act for Ron Paul's (R-TX) committee this bit of info came out, thanks to the good folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"DiLorenzo has other extremist connections. He has spoken at events that included other hate group members, and has been published by neo-Confederate outfits. In 1995, he wrote an essay entitled “A Defense of the Confederate Cause” published in the Journal for Historical Review, a Holocaust denial publication. It argues that “slavery was not one of the rationales” for the Civil War. “Since the battle flag represents a fight against high taxes and centralized government, every freedom-loving American should honor it,” DiLorenzo’s essay concludes."

Source

The Southern Poverty Law Center also revealed that DiLorenzo, despite denials, maintains a continuing relationship with the League of the South white supremacists, lecturing for the knuckledraggers as recently as the summer of 2009.

Here's the cover from the Holocaust denial rag:


The entire issue can be seen on this PDF, with DiLorenzo's Confederate love letter starting on page 36. You'll want to wash your eyes when you're done.

And, yes, you'll find that DiLorenzo is considered "essentially reading" according to the seceshers at "Vermont Commons". Dilorenzo's book of Lincoln historical revisionism was pimped by none other than VTCommons publisher, Rob Williams, as well as VTCommons' white supremacist contributor, Robert S. Griffin (See here).

Loyola University is conducting an investigation of DiLorenzo's possible ties to the extremist, white supremacist, hate group called the League of the South.

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Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Under Investigation

BREAKING!

The Baltimore Sun reports tonight (10:24 PM) that Loyola University Maryland is looking into allegations that Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board member Thomas J. DiLorenzo "has ties to" the League of the South.

"Timothy Law Snyder, Loyola vice president for academic affairs, said on Monday that the school "would not support anybody confirmed to be a member of a confirmed hate group. His response has been a denial of having that association."

"Asked if the school believes the League of the South is a confirmed hate group based on the Southern Poverty Law Center's listing, Snyder said, "It's something we would have to look into. And we're certainly aware of the allegations here, and based on the recent conversations that are taking place we are looking into them."

"Professor DiLorenzo has denied any affiliation," Snyder added, "so if we find there's more to this, certainly we would take appropriate action."

The complete story may be found here.

*** More here tomorrow, Tuesday 2/15, on DiLorenzo's past extremist associations. ***

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Nobel Award Winner Calls the Economic Rhetoric of the Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Thomas J. DiLorenzo "Bizarre"

In a scathing column on Thursday, Paul Krugman, New York Times Op-Ed columnist and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (2008), as well as recipient of the prestigious American Economic Association, John Bates Clark Medal (1991), and professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, ripped Second Vermont Republic advisory board member, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a new one while touching upon DiLorenzo's obsession with Lincoln historical revisionism and other myths of the Old South:

"Mr. (Ron) Paul’s (R-TX) subcommittee called three witnesses, one of whom was an odd choice: Thomas DiLorenzo, a professor at Loyola University and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute."

"What was odd about that choice? Well, Mr. DiLorenzo hasn’t actually written much about monetary policy, although he has described Fed policy — not just recently, but since the 1960s — as “legalized counterfeiting operations.” His main claim to fame, instead, is as a critic of Lincoln — he’s the author of “Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe” — and as a modern-day secessionist."

"No, really: calls for secession run through many of Mr. DiLorenzo’s writings — for example, in his declaration that “healthcare freedom” won’t be restored until “some states begin seceding from the new American fascialistic state.” Raise the rebel flag!"

"O.K., it’s going to be a while before the G.O.P. as a whole embraces neo-secessionism, and Mr. Paul, although highly visible, is, in fact, a somewhat marginal figure even within his own party. But Mr. (Paul) Ryan (R-WI), who led the other hearing — the one at which Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, testified — is a rising Republican star. So it’s worth noting that Mr. Ryan’s hard-money rhetoric was nearly as bizarre as Mr. DiLorenzo’s." (The entire NY Times column may be read here)

Dilorenzo, you may recall, is the Lincoln historical revisionist lauded by "Vermont Commons" publisher, Rob Williams and VTCommons' white supremacist contributor, Robert S. Griffin (See here).

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Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) Invites Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member to Congress

Rep. Ron Paul invited Thomas DiLorenzo, a well known Lincoln historical revisionist whackjob, to the first meeting of the House Financial Services Committee's Domestic Monetary Policy and Trade subcommittee and the shit hit the congressional fan:

"At one point, when Paul opened up the hearing to questions from committee members, Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) directly took on DiLorenzo for his membership in the League of the South, an organization that has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "neo-Confederate" hate group advocating for Southern secession."

"Clay then rattled off a list of some of DiLorenzo's articles, including "More Lies about the Civil War," "In Defense of Sedition," and "The First Dictator-President," which examines "how Lincoln's myth has corrupted America."

"'After reviewing your work and the so-called methods you employ, I still cannot understand you being invited to testify today on the unemployment crisis, but I do know that I have no questions for you,' Clay concluded."

The Washington Post

DiLorenzo is a longtime member of the Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board.

Little surprise then that his work has also been lauded by "Vermont Commons" publisher Rob Williams and VTCommons white supremacist contributor, Robert S. Griffin (See here).

Even less of a surprise is Rep. Paul's own bigoted history documented in The New Republic's piece, Angry White Man, here.

Update 2.11.11, 1:00 PM: DiLorenzo apparently had a hissy fit over what Rep. Clay (D-MO) had to say and, not unlike what I've experienced with Vermont's own seceshers, struck back with what some might call a flat out lie.

He said in his statement that Clay had “lied about my non-existent working relationship with the League of the South” and implied that he'd had no association with the League of the South for the past 13 years. Turns out he was an invited scholar neo-Confederate flack at an August 2009 conference sponsored by the League of the South Summer Institute.

Hopefully, SVR Advisory Board DiLorenzo will drop me a note to clear this, ah, discrepancy up.

(h/t: Southern Poverty Law Center)

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

Second Vermont Republic Advisory Board Member Endorses Violence Against The Government Officials

Not our government at this point - yet.

Second Vermont Republic advisory board member and assistant professor of political science, State University of New York, Buffalo, as well as founder of the floundering New Hampshire Free State Project, Jason Sorens, wrote in a piece he entitled Why Isn't Violence The Answer?:

"U.S. government officials continue to lecture the Egyptian demonstrators on how to go about their business."

"(President Obama) said he had told Mr Mubarak to respect the rights of the Egyptian people and refrain from using violence against peaceful protesters – but he said the protesters also had a responsibility to express themselves peacefully."

"But why?"

"...Surely many of us of feeling around the world recognize that if the protestors find it prudential or useful at some point to storm the presidential palace and dispense street justice to Mubarak and his minions, there is no conceivable ethical reason for them to shrink from the task. Isn’t it on one of our state flags?"

"Sic semper tyrannis."
Why Isn’t Violence the Answer?
January 28, 2011 by Jason Sorens

Whew! Where to start on this one? Probably right there at the end of his piece. While it's true that Sic Semper Tyrannis is on the Commonwealth of Virginia flag, he wasn't writing about flag heraldry, he was writing about "dispen(ing) street justice to Mubarak."

The last time I heard of the words Sic Semper Tyrannis being used
while dispensing "justice" was when an ardent secessionist, John Wilkes Booth, had leapt to the Ford Theatre stage and shouted them at the audience after having just shot President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head.

Lincoln hatred has a long and deep connection with the Vermont seceshers. Sorens fellow SVR advisory board member is Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a secesher scholar bullshitter with past ties to League of the South's Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History, and who has worked for Big Tobacco. DiLorenzo, in addition to his disdain for the bedrock of civil rights in America, the 14th Amendment, as well as organized labor, has made a business of pedaling Lincoln hatred for the secesher community.

Similarly, "Vermont Commons" publisher, Rob Williams, has repeatedly echoed the Lincoln hatred of these extremists. Eighteen months ago, in a Slate.com piece Williams was quoted as saying "Abraham Lincoln did a number on us". Since the seceshers Lincoln opposed were the ones who sought to preserve slavery by seceeding, one needs to ask just who Williams' "us" is?

Whatever the circumstances, assassinations and dispensing street justice are illegal acts. This isn't the first time that someone associated with the Vermont secession movement has advocated for or solicited lawbreaking. As recently as this past fall (12.09.10 - 5:21 AM), Vermont secesher and a leader of the Free Vermont group of misfits, Gary Flomenhoft, put out a call for "someone to... hack their websites," a direct violation of Vermont law. Such a solicitation is a felony.

The Free Vermont group, who Thomas Naylor calls his "twenty internet cowboys," have advocated for confiscation of private property, population caps, income and asset caps, making certain acts by legislators capital offenses; the complete list is quite long and equally shocking.

One has to wonder how this squares with Naylor's claim
to be leading a "Genteel Revolution." His repetitive, muddled, demagogic rants about Vermonters who fall short of his secesher ideal (meaning: Everyone in Vermont not named Thomas H. Naylor); his latching onto imagery of a self-proclaimed murderer (which Naylor and his candidate, Dennis Steele, dumped one day after it was revealed on this blog); his paranoid delusions about conspiracies aimed at his "revolution," also another quite long and equally shocking list that has been subject of many posts on this blog. Oddly, an earlier "genteel evolution," so-named nearly 70 years ago by Time magazine, was that of Fulgencio Batista, who was himself overthown in part by the man whose image Naylor co-opted onto the flag that he co-opted from the Vermont National Guard.

In one of Naylor's most recent rants, The Politics of Violence in America, Naylor wrote:

"Since violence is inextricably linked to the Empire, there may be no escape from violence in America... "

Nor, it would seem, will violence or the criminal mindset be escaped in the brave new world of the Second Vermont Republic - they'll just apply it more hubristically.

Yeah, I know, confusing rationales and coincidences from the mind, ravings and actions of the SVR baas, Thomas H. Naylor and his minions.

Will Naylor, Williams, Flomenhoft and the rest of the nutters that comprise the Free Vermont "movement" renounce their advisor Jason Sorens' call for violence?

The more I learn of and hear from these secesher clowns, the more concerned I grow for my fellow Vermonters should these people ever get close to the levers of power.

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

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.