The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public
debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered
and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed
lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. - Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 B.C. –

People should not fear their governments. Governments should fear their people.
- V for Vendetta, 2005 -

If the remarkable economic events of the past six weeks have proved
anything about the United States as a nation, it is this:

Like the Roman republic in Cicero’s time, the U.S. republic is dead.

Forget for a moment the rampant electoral fraud of the past
decade; the September 11, 2001, “terrorist” attacks and the subsequent
“war on terror”; the sudden passage of the USA PATRIOT Act and the
near-instant creation of the Department of Homeland Security; the
“tapeworm economy’s” profitable waging of a $3-trillion war in Iraq at
the expense of thousands of ordinary Americans (and millions of
Iraqis); the systematic shredding of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill
of Rights; and a compliant Congress’s voting for a $750 million
“bankster bailout” one month ago – with the threat of martial law at
their backs, if some Congressmen are to be believed.

Ignore for just a few heartbeats the “meltdowns” in the Arctic and on Wall
Street (neither one an accident); the prophetic prognostications of the
Peak Oilers; and the (not coincidental) creative engineering of a “war
that will not end in our lifetimes,” right down to the mysterious
appearance on American streets of returning U.S. soldiers from Iraq
with a mission to “quell civil disorder” (in direct violation of both
the 1807 Insurrection the 1878 Posse Comitatus Acts).

Forget all of these unpleasant realities for a moment, and focus, as Chris
Martenson does in his lead article for this issue, on the following
three statements.

1. The U.S. government is insolvent.

2. The entire U.S. financial system is insolvent.

3. There is no combination of new debt/borrowing schemes that can possibly correct the first two realities.

It cannot be stated more plainly.

The U.S. republic is dead, liquidated, a victim of financial exhaustion
rendered by an economic “shock and awe” doctrine comprised of fiat
currency schemes, fractional
reserve ruses, usurious interest policies, a private banking system
that has continually placed profits ahead of people (the so-called
“Federal Reserve” is neither), and debt-for-growth dogma that both
Cicero and the Founders of the United States (secessionists to a fault)
all recognized as being ultimately hostile to the health and well-being
of any self-respecting republic.

And let us be clear about this, too.

No amount of banal cheerleading (“United We
Stand!”), false flattery (“ordinary Americans,” Mr. McCain explained
all autumn, “are angry”), or misplaced hope (“Obama will save us!”)
will counter the truth of our situation.

As Vermonters, all of us have arrived at a crossroads. The U.S. republic
is dead, the U.S. Empire looms before us, and we all have to make a
choice about where our loyalties lie.

Will we support the United States as an Empire, or will we work for Vermont independence?

As Vermont citizens, we face difficult choices in the months ahead. And
history and personal experience teach us that it is much easier to live
a life of complacency or compliance, or to strive for ever-elusive
national economic or political reforms that are always just out of
reach, than it is to take a more radical turn and consider something
new – another way of thinking and being, a new and novel (or is it
something old and forgotten?) approach.

That something is secession.

“Ideas are bulletproof,” exclaims the masked protagonist V, in the 2005 film V For Vendetta.

And secession – unmasked – is a bulletproof idea worth revisiting – again.

For
close to four years now, we’ve advocated the nonviolent secession of
the sovereign state of Vermont from the U.S. Empire, and its
reinvention as an independent republic. And while we’re at it, perhaps
it is time – as one crotchety old paleo-conservative recently suggested
– to “liquidate the Empire.”

Indeed.

The Empire has systematically liquidated the U.S. republic. In Vermont, it is our turn to get creative.

Here’s a modest proposal. Four starting points.

The beginnings of a Vermont Independence Platform, if you will.

V for Vox Populi: May the 21st-century Vermont republic
decentralize political power down to the level of individual towns, as
Thomas Jefferson envisioned, and additionally, create a networked
system of ward republics (shires, to use a more appealing term) to
allow for fullest possible citizen participation in republican
decision-making at the most local of levels. Let’s do more than pay lip
service to “town meeting”; let’s harness town meeting to energize
democratic decision-making in a new Vermont republic. And while we’re
at it, as Gary Beckwith suggests in this issue, let’s send the
corporate vote-counting technology back to Diebold marked COD, and
count our citizen ballots by hand.

V for Vegetables: May the 21st-century Vermont republic get
serious about the virtues (and hard work – Cicero understood this) of
re-localized food production. Let us see vegetable gardens, fruit
trees, organic apiaries, and livestock – feathered and hooved – on
every Vermont homestead, diversifying our working landscapes once
again. As a wise soul once noted, a people who can feed themselves are
truly free.

V for Vitality: May the 21st-century Vermont republic take full
advantage of every existing “in state” energy source, building a
decentralized distributed-energy electrical grid that is
watershed-specific, and creating a collaborative approach to renewable
energy that utilizes all existing energy generators – solar, wind,
hydro, biomass, geothermal – to reduce our carbon footprint, decrease
our reliance on imported fossil fuels, and maximize conservation and
efficiency. Easier said then done, of course, but the point is to stop
talking about it and roll up our sleeves.

V for Vermont Freedom Currency: As investors in the know already
understand, the petro-dollar has outlived its usefulness. Amy Kirschner
suggests in this issue that other mediums of exchange are not only
possible, but are already happening. And as Steve Moyer wrote in these
pages one year ago, parallel currency plans like a “Vermont Freedom
Currency” could prove liberating, if we can muster the political will
to adopt them.

The bottom line is this: we will have no political independence
in Vermont without economic independence, and Vermonters, among the
most innovative, entrepreneurial and hard-working people on the
continent, are perhaps the best suited to do what Cicero suggests,
liquidating the Empire and energizing the republic… of
Vermont.

This process will demand courage,
compassion, and commitment.

But let us remember this: secession is
every individual citizen’s historic birthright, and 21st-century
sustainability is our collective challenge.

In the pages of this journal, the two go hand in hand.

The 21st century will look nothing like the 20th.

The U.S. republic is dead.

V for Vermont!

Rob Williams
Editor