After the 2004 election, liberals and lefties outraged by the nation's failure to acknowledge their surperior wisdom sought spychological treatment for depression and flooded Canada with requests for immigration information.
Now, some are taking the next logical step: secession.
At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl record store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black "US Out of Vt.!" T-shirts are among the hottest sellers.
But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States -- peacefully, of course.
Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics is plotting political strategy and planting the seeds of separatism.
They've published a "Green Mountain Manifesto" subtitled "Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From Itself by Seceding from the Union." They hope to put the question before citizens at Town Meeting Day next March, eventually persuading the state Legislature to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791.
Whether it's likely is another question.
But the idea has found plenty of sympathetic ears in Vermont, a left-leaning state that said yes to civil unions, no to slavery (before any other) and last year elected a socialist to the U.S. Senate.
About 300 people turned out for a 2005 secession convention in the Statehouse, and plans for a second one are in the works. A poll this year by the University of Vermont's Center for Rural Studies found that 13 percent of those surveyed support secession, up from 8 percent a year before.
"The argument for secession is that the U.S. 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," said Rob Williams, editor of Vermont Commons, a quarterly newspaper dedicated to secession.
"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, the only constitutional way to preserve what's left of the Republic is to peaceably take apart the empire."
In other words, "we don't get to run things our way, we're not going to play anymore." Don't get me wrong, I'll agree about the corruption (Just look at the indictment of William "Cold Cash" Jefferson (D - LA) today.), but let's get real here. Corruption is a constant in any government where a lack of accountability meets the power to write yourself and your buddies a check. These Vermonters think it's bad now, they should read a couple of good books on the Gilded Age.
The rest of their argument is typical of Moonbat mush flavored with a healthy dose of Bush Derangement Syndrome. The economic costs alone of independence would be daunting for a tiny state like Vermont (one wonders how much they would lose in federal subsidies, for example). And who's to say the eeeevil mega-corporations wouldn't descend on the tiny, solitary People's Republic of Vermont and turn it into their own landlocked "offshore haven?"
This kind of silliness comes up every so often, whenever one or another group feels aggrieved and becomes petulant because it can't carry the day through the democratic process. The northern counties of California and the southern counties of Oregon have regularly threatened to secede to form their own state, Jefferson, but the movement never goes anywhere. The Civil War settled the question of states seceding long ago (hint: they can't), so don't expect Vermont secession to get very far, either.
But I'll bet they sell a bunch of t-shirts!
LINKS: More at Little Green Footballs, Blue Crab Boulevard, and Newsbusters.
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