By Greg Guma
Editor’s Note: This essay is adapted from the forthcoming book, “Green Mountain Politics: Restless Spirits, Popular
Movements.”
The idea of defying the forces of
centralized power and wealth can be seductive, especially if you live in a
small, isolated place with a reputation for being contrary and the sense that
it’s different, even exceptional.
In Congress, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders
has reflected this perspective, challenging corporate secrecy and the powers of
international financial institutions by forging alliances that cross
traditional lines. When that strategy was attempted in Vermont during the late
1970s, the two ends of the political spectrum also found common ground, in that
instance by embracing decentralism. Both sides discovered that they agreed on a
preference for small scale energy production to mega-plants, widespread
ownership of land and business, and removal of “government barriers.”
Things became complicated,
however, when the discussion shifted to welfare, environmental regulation,
affirmative action, and abortion – none of these easy topics. The difficulty was
that the same arguments for decentralization and sovereignty that sounded
progressive in some cases could be used in support of isolationism, unfettered
capitalism and discrimination.
In 2003, as former Vermont
Governor Howard Dean was running for president, former Duke University professor
Thomas Naylor launched a related but more ambitious movement, the Second
Vermont Republic. Its aim was to dissolve the United States and, in particular,
to return Vermont “to its status as an independent republic.” Lincoln had persuaded
the public that secession was unconstitutional and immoral, Naylor argued. “It’s
one of the few things that the left and right agree on. We say it’s
constitutional – and ultimately it is a question of political will: the will of
the people of Vermont versus the will of the government to stop us.”
Historian Frank Bryan, whose 1989
book with Republican thinker John McClaughry called for restructuring the
state’s democracy along decentralist lines, has argued that “the cachet of
secession would make the new republic a magnet" and "people would
obviously relish coming to the Republic of Vermont, the Switzerland of North
America.”
Naylor said the question wasn’t
“if” but “when.”
Vermont attorney and historian
Paul Gillies was skeptical, “It doesn’t make economic sense, it doesn’t make
political sense, it doesn’t make historical sense,” he said. “Other than that,
it’s a good idea.” And Vermont archivist Gregory Sanford claimed that some of
the arguments for secession, in Vermont at least, were based on “historical
facts of dubious reputation.” The State Archives often receive requests for
copies of an “escape clause” in the Vermont Constitution, which supposedly
allows Vermont to withdraw from the US.
“The truth, drawn from documents,
is less satisfying; there is no, nor has there ever been, such an escape
clause,” Sanford asserted.
Still, the underlying issue isn’t
whether there is legal authority, but why millions of people across the country
consider secession a reasonable and attractive idea. A 2008 Zogby poll
commissioned by the Middlebury Institute, a think tank studying “separatism,
secession, and self-determination,” indicated that that 20 percent of Americans
thought “any state or region has the right to peaceably secede from the United
States and become an independent republic.”
More than 18 percent told pollsters
that they “would support a secessionist effort in my state.”
Leaving the Empire
In Vermont, the argument has been
“that the US has become an empire that is essentially ungovernable – it’s too
big, it’s too corrupt and it no longer serves the needs of its citizens,”
according to Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a publication that
emerged to cover secession and related issues. “Congress and the executive
branch are being run by the multinationals. We have electoral fraud, rampant
corporate corruption, a culture of militarism and war. If you care about
democracy and self-governance and any kind of representative system,” argue
Williams and Naylor, “the only constitutional way to preserve what’s left of
the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire.”
As its history demonstrates, this
quirky state has been fertile ground for such “outside the box” thinking in the
past. It didn’t immediately join the United States, remaining an independent
state for almost 15 years. It was also the first state to ban slavery.
Explicit constitutional authority
aside, it came close to separating from the new Union before and during the War
of 1812. Between 1809 and 1812, Federalists and other opponents defied national
policies, flirting with secret societies, secession and other forms of dissent.
In 1813 Vermont elected a governor who rejected the necessity of war. Martin
Chittenden’s refusal to let the state's troops defend the lake emboldened the
British. In October 1814, although
Chittenden stopped short of supporting secession, Vermont delegates were among
those who responded to a call by the Massachusetts legislature for a convention
in Hartford to consider more extreme options.
Seventeen years later it was the
first state to elect an Anti-Mason governor during a period when opposition to
elites and secret societies was growing. The Anti-Mason movement lasted only a
decade, and most of its members eventually joined either the short-lived Whig
Party or the more durable Republicans. But along the way it expressed an
emerging anti-monopoly philosophy and, on a practical level, initiated changes
in the way political parties operated.
This wasn’t the only time a
short-lived political movement produced unexpected change in the US. In 1912, the
new Progressive Party, formed by Theodore Roosevelt when he lost the Republican
nomination to William Howard Taft, led to the election of Woodrow Wilson.
Roosevelt soon left his own party, but it continued under the leadership of
Robert La Follette. Although La Follette’s run for president in 1924 netted
only 17 percent of the vote, he won in his home state of Wisconsin, and successful
reforms were implemented there.
Secession advocate Kirkpatrick
Sale has described decentralism as a “third way,” evident in bioregional
movements, cooperative and worker-owned businesses, land trusts, farmers
markets, and a variety of grassroots initiatives. Assessing whether Vermont
could “go it alone,” author Bill McKibben has argued that “functional
independence would be the proper first step, and useful in its own right.” He
also has provided a list of practical projects to help create more food
self-sufficiency, energy independence, and local economic power.
On the other hand, the 2008 election
of Barack Obama and the global nature of many pressing problems has also
convinced McKibben that “any political independence movement is going nowhere
now.” Therefore, his advice is modest: to build affection and trust by sharing
information and making small but effective moves in the right direction.
Before he died Second Vermont
Republic founder Tom Naylor defined secession – or independence, as some
supporters of the movement prefer – in idealistic terms, as a rebellion against
empire designed to retake control from big institutions and help people care
for themselves and others by “decentralizing, downsizing, localizing,
demilitarizing, simplifying, and humanizing our lives.”
In some ways, it’s reminiscent of
the Decentralist League, which ultimately disbanded when its Left wing opted
for electoral politics and its Right signed on for the Reagan “revolution.” In
the meantime, however, it did suggest some of what might unite people who find
the current national and global order unsustainable and dangerous. Taking aim
at centralized power and wealth, it asserted that decentralism is the best way
to preserve diversity, increase self-sufficiency, and satisfy human needs.
“Decentralists believe in the
progressive dismantling of bureaucratic structures which stifle creativity and
spontaneity, and of economic and political institutions which diminish individual
and community power,” the League’s Statement of Principles said. The political
platform included support for local citizen alliances; widespread ownership of
industry by employees; a viable and diverse agricultural base; a decent level
of income for all; education that stresses self-reliance, creativity, and a
combination of learning and work; technologies that increase energy
self-sufficiency; and mediation of disputes rather than reliance on regulations
and adversary proceedings.
While promising in theory, its
demise underlined the fragility of such a left-right alliance. Similar
difficulties have faced the Second Vermont Republic. For the more recent
movement the first significant controversy involved an accusation by the
Southern Poverty Law Center that Naylor and other Vermont secessionists were
talking to an allegedly racist group, the League of the South.
Critics pounced, and Seven Days,
the liberal Vermont weekly that was distributing Vermont Commons as an insert,
decided to end the arrangement. Labor groups demanded the removal of offensive
web links, disassociation from certain groups or individuals, and a statement
clearly opposing racism, fascism, bigotry, and discrimination. There was no
evidence that Vermont secessionists actually condoned such things, but they
were being forced to prove it.
In a 2009 article for Vermont
Commons, educator Ron Miller attempted to define the difference between
progressive and conservative decentralists. Supporters of Vermont secession are
motivated by opposition to war, exploitation, and government violence, he
explained. These “liberal decentralists” support equality, human and civil
rights, nonviolence and multiculturalism. “Conservative decentralists,” in
contrast, are usually free market libertarians who are hostile to cultural
change. The former welcomed some aspects of the Obama presidency, the latter viewed
it as a deadly threat to liberty and identity.
Left-leaning decentralists face a
paradox, Miller argued. Expansion of the federal government had led to social
progress in the past, “but always at the cost of siphoning off local, state and
regional sovereignty.” There is also the risk that bad leaders will do
appalling damage, or that progressive reforms spark such an extreme reaction
that civil dialogue is impossible. The federal government hasn’t resolved most
conflict, he wrote. It has merely papered over deeply held but divergent
values.
The solution he proposed was to
have Vermont, or a confederation of progressive states, break away and “become
a model of enlightened governance.” What about the conservative, “red” state regions?
Since past progressive reforms have failed to transform southern culture or conservative
populists he suggested leaving them to “live by the values they prefer.” But that
sounded a bit like saying it would be acceptable for almost half the US – or
half the world, for that matter – to live under repressive conditions and various forms of
fundamentalism.
Sovereignty and Nullification
By 2011 secession organizations
were organizing across the United States and a dozen states had active
movements. Even more legislatures were debating laws designed to “nullify”
federal actions in areas from gun control and health care reform to marijuana
possession and overseas troop deployments.
In Alaska, even though the State
Supreme Court held in 2006 that secession is illegal, the secessionist
Independence Party has influenced state politics. Former Governor Sarah Palin’s
husband was a member and she publicly endorsed the party while in office.
Hawaii’s sovereignty movement has won small victories, and Georgia’s State
Senate passed a resolution in 2009 endorsing the right of states to nullify
federal laws. If Congress ever dares to restrict gun rights, that resolution
added, the federal government will cease to exist.
In April 2009, Texas Governor
Rick Perry directly threatened secession at a protest of the recently launched
Tea Party movement. Afterward, a Rasmussen poll of Texans found that almost one
third thought the state had the right to secede – although, at that point, only
18 percent actually backed such a move. According to Vermont secession leader
Naylor, “Although thirty or so states now have some form of independence
movement, in most states it’s all talk and no action. Some so-called secession
movements are little more than computer websites.”
At the time he said that Vermont and Texas
were the most notable exceptions, Naylor acknowledged. By 2013 Tea Party Republicans
in at least seven states were introducing legislation that challenged federal
authority or flirted with secession.
A related, larger and predominantly
conservative movement has pursed nullification. If the federal government fails
to check itself, goes the argument, it’s up to the states to call a halt. This
rebellion rests on the theory that the states created the national government.
Therefore, they have the right to judge the constitutionality of federal laws
and potentially refuse to enforce them. Nullification was used when American
Colonists nullified laws imposed by the British. Since then states have used
nullification to limit federal actions, from the Fugitive Slave Act to
unpopular tariffs.
Vermont had direct and dramatic
experience with nullification early in its history. In November 1850 the state
legislature approved a so-called Habeas Corpus Law that required officials to
assist slaves who made it to the state. The law rendered the Fugitive Slave Act
effectively unenforceable. It was a clear case of nullification, a highly
controversial concept even then.
Poet John Greenleaf Whittier
suggested such tactics, while Virginia governor John B. Floyd warned that this
form of resistance could push the South toward secession. President Millard
Fillmore threatened to enforce federal law in Vermont through military action
if necessary, but nothing happened.
Even earlier, support for
nullification emerged in reaction to the Sedition Act and the jailing of Vermont
Congressman Matthew Lyon. These two events prompted the Kentucky Resolve of
1798, written by Thomas Jefferson, and the almost identical Virginia Resolve
penned by James Madison. In Section One of his version, Jefferson wrote:
“Resolved, that the several
States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles
of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under
the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments
thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated
to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the
residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the
General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative,
void, and of no force . . . . That the Government created by this compact was
not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to
itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution,
the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among
parties having no common Judge, each party has an equal right to judge for
itself, as well as of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”
In simple English, this meant
that federal authority wasn’t unlimited, and if it went too far government
actions need not be obeyed. The national government wasn’t the “final judge” of
its own powers, Jefferson suggested, and therefore various states had a right
to decide how to handle federal overreach. Madison’s Virginia version declared
that, in the case of a deliberate and dangerous abuse of power, states not only
had a right to object, they were “duty bound” to stop the “progress of the
evil” and maintain their “authorities, rights and liberties.”
Ten years later, after Jefferson
enacted a trade embargo as president in response to British maritime theft and
kidnapping of sailors, legislatures nullified the law using his own words and
arguments. On February 5, 1809, the Massachusetts legislature declared that the
embargo was “not legally binding on the citizens of the state” and denounced it
as “unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional.” Eventually, every New England
state, as well as Delaware, voted to nullify the embargo act.
In August 2010, the Missouri
legislature used similar logic to reject the health care mandate in the
Democrat’s health care reform, followed by a flood of legal challenges from
state officials. In recent years, several states have also either passed or
proposed legislation or constitutional amendments designed to nullify federal
laws in the areas of firearms and medical marijuana. Many who support this
approach cite the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution: “The powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Attempts to discredit nullification
as a tactic by branding its leaders extremists, wingnuts and “tenthers” hasn’t
dissuaded them. On the contrary, several state legislatures have introduced
10th Amendment resolutions that serve “Notice and Demand to the federal
government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates
that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”
Nullification advocates can point
to some limited successes. After the REAL ID act was signed by President Bush
in 2005, more than two dozen states passed laws or resolutions denouncing it or
refusing to comply. In response, the feds postponed its enactment. In
Wisconsin, groups like the Grandsons of Liberty lobbied lawmakers to nullify
health care reform by amending the constitution so that the state could opt
out. According to the John Birch Society-backed magazine New American,
activists in 28 states were involved in similar campaigns as of 2010.
Concern about guns rights has
also fueled the movement. The Firearms Freedom Act (FFA), which challenges the
federal government’s authority to regulate firearms, passed in Montana and
Tennessee, and has been considered in at least 11 other states. The bill says
that firearms made and retained in-state are beyond the authority of Congress
under its constitutional power to regulate commerce. The federal position is
that such laws are unconstitutional. In response to state campaigns the
Department of Justice filed a brief in federal court against the FFA.
Another strategy, especially if
the federal government ever tried to block nullification efforts by threatening
to withhold funds, is a proposed State Sovereignty and Federal Tax Funds Act,
which has been introduced in several states. The objective is to place state governments
between federal tax collectors and individuals. The goal: to stop the flow of
money to the feds before they can use it to intimidate a state. But before
things get that far, nullifiers calculate that the threat of such legislation
could be enough to make the feds back down on any threats to cut off funding.
Bridging the Divide
The Tea Party movement, sparked
in 2009 by widespread disapproval of the federal government’s bailout of
mortgage defaulters, grew into a tidal wave of anti-big-government sentiment
that helped the Republican Party regain control of the US House in 2010.
Supporters said the movement marked a return to core values; critics called it
reactionary and possibly racist. In part funded by wealthy interests who saw it
as a way to advance their own deregulation, limited government agenda, the Tea
Party was a loose association of fiscal conservatives, fundamentalists and
libertarians.
A March 2010 poll estimated 37
percent support for its basic agenda. But that figure has dropped, especially
since the recent Tea Party-fueled government shutdown. In any case, the
movement encompasses contradictory impulses, from libertarian orthodoxy and
neo-isolationism to populist anger directed at elites, deficit spending and any
perceived foreign threat to US interests.
Some liberals, leftists and
Democrats have written off the Tea Party’s anti-federal rebellion as a purely
Republican tactic. But there were also liberal nullification campaigns to
decriminalize marijuana and bring National Guard units home from wars overseas.
“Bring the Guard Home” legislation, for example, would require a state’s
Governor, and/or the legislature, to evaluate the legality of orders for National
Guard deployments and give them the chance to allow or deny the deployment.
Nullification has clearly exerted
influence on federal policies at times. But secession is another matter. Can it
happen? Not according to at least one US Supreme Court Justice, the
conservative Antonin Scalia. In 2006, he responded to a letter from
screenwriter Daniel Turkewitz, who was developing a script about a secessionist
movement in Maine. He wrote to all of the justices but only Scalia replied. And
the message was that a legal showdown in the Supreme Court could never happen.
“If there was any constitutional
issue resolved by the Civil War,” Scalia said, “it is that there is no right to
secede.”
Even assuming that is true, the
Court’s refusal to revisit the issue is not apt to quell the anger roiling in
many parts of the country, or stop anti-federal, independence, secession, and
nullification movements from attempting to rally people with the hope that they
can prevent an “evil,” or just morally and economically bankrupt, government
from seizing more power. Or even roll it back. Part of what unites these
upsurges is clearly anger; another part is distrust and disbelief. They simply
don’t have faith in most political institutions anymore, especially “big
government.”
On the other hand, the left and
right have been culturally polarized for generations, disagreeing passionately
(sometimes violently) over moral issues, racism, abortion, immigration, climate
change, and controlling the distribution of wealth as well as power. In fact,
they often perceive very different “realities.” Post-2008 one side decided that
President Obama was a socialist, maybe even a Muslim Manchurian Candidate. The
other said he was at best a political sell out, and in some ways was doubling
down on the mistakes of the previous administration. One side says climate
change is a hoax, or at least exaggerated, and the government should institute
literacy tests for voting. The other sees ecological (or economic) catastrophe
just around the corner, thinks guns should be strictly controlled, and says states
should seize public resources as “trustees” of the commons.
There is some common ground
between the two ends of the political spectrum, beginning with the idea that in
the face of oppression (however you define it) withdrawal of consent can make a
difference. The idea is that disengagement, whether gradual or sudden, is
preferable to sticking with the team, staying the course, remaining faithful to
or engaged with a system in which you no longer believe. Even active resistance
is justified if necessary.
Left-wing protestors have often
used civil disobedience tactics and generally embrace the philosophies of
Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Early Vermonters resisted outside control,
government pressure to wage war, and human slavery. Tea Party activists have
taken selected pages from the same play book, but so far appear to question the
value of tolerance and peace.
Maybe these political “outliers,”
a disparate collection of subcultures
and “extreme” or “alternative” movements, will someday seize what the media
like to call the narrative – aka mass perceptions – and join together long enough
to sell the idea that it is time to call an end to the Union. Game over. Bring
down the curtain.
It’s more complicated, obviously.
But with the United States looking like an empire in decline, militarily
overstretched, crippled by long-term debt and frequently on the brink of a
crisis, maybe it will happen someday. And if any place does take “the road less
traveled,” it may well be Vermont, the “reluctant republic,” fertile ground for
original thinkers, common sense tolerance, and independent idealism, a
cantankerous maverick that wasn’t sure it wanted in from the start.
There’s even a bumper sticker:
Most Likely to Secede.
