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For all the obvious inferences attached to the word, the very idea of secession is widely repudiated in American culture–except maybe in some areas of the nostalgic deep south. But recent murmers of secessionist sentiments in the state of Vermont have revealed the issue to a larger audience. In a Washington Post op-ed from Sunday, two secessionists–Ian Baldwin and Frank Bryan–enumerate the reasons for which they wish the “state of Vermont” to become the “Republic of Vermont”:

Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be one again. We think the time to make that happen is now. Over the past 50 years, the U.S. government has grown too big, too corrupt and too aggressive toward the world, toward its own citizens and toward local democratic institutions. It has abandoned the democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans’ fundamental freedoms.

Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire.

Some of us therefore seek permission to leave.

The point being made, in essence, is that the Government of the Union has become too big and too coercive and has simultaneously infringed upon state and individual rights and thus Vermont no longer wishes to leave.

Secession lacks legitimacy in the court of public opinion because Americans unconditionally attach the idea to the old slave south; but in all their endless ignorance, the masses have made an unnecessary association. Perhaps America’s memory only can stretch as far back as the War Between the States; perhaps it forgets how America was born–it suceded from the British Empire. If the first American patriots did not believe that secession was a viable political tool, then we would have been under the tyranny of empire for generations more.

The point I am trying to make here is not that Vermont should seceed from the Union–quite frankly Vermont is no special state and demonstrates few viable, exceptional characteristics that give reason for its separation.  Rather, as an aspect of political theory, the idea of cedession is very viable and should be viewed with perspective and analyzed with rationality, for if a region presents itself as legitimately more free than the nation as whole it has the right to “declare the causes which impel them to the separation” and procede to do so.

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