Secession Talk In Vermont

The L.A.Times reports:

This is prime country-fair season, when villages roll out moon-sized pumpkins, maple-flavored everything and, here at Heritage Days, a manifesto on why Vermont should secede from the United States.

At a card table outside the tavern where Vermont first declared its independence in 1777, delegates from the Second Vermont Republic — a.k.a. the secessionists — looked just as comfortable one recent Sunday as the vendors selling goat's milk soap. The "Free Vermont" flag fluttered as fairgoers stopped to discuss whether their state should pull out of the union.


"It's this cool revolutionary thing," said Nicole Fusca, 21, who grew up in this southern Vermont hamlet. "But there is no basis to it. It's something I can't take seriously. I'll joke about it, but it will never happen."

But Thomas Naylor — businessman, economics professor, author and Mississippi native — believes otherwise. "It's not a question of 'if,' " he said. "The question is: When?"

Though the movement for Vermont secession that Naylor helped launch nearly three years ago is little more than an intellectual exercise, it is entirely earnest.

Freedom means the right to secede.