John Klar: Proposed Vermont statute perverts history

Editor’s note: This commentary by John Klar originally appeared at Human Events.

The “social justice” movement that’s taken the nation by storm since last summer has descended upon the Green Mountains as leftists employ absurd lies to impose glaring injustices. Perhaps the biggest of these lies being spread by leftists lawmakers is that Vermonters killed off all the Native Americans, and must now pay economic penance. A vile bill, introduced by 18 misinformed legislators, incorporates fraudulent claims to statutorily inflict hateful vengeance in the name of “social justice.” 

H.273, “An act relating to promoting racial and social equity in land access,” proposes to contribute $10 million to a BIPOC-operated bank which will administer the funds for BIPOC applicants to purchase land or housing in “every town in Vermont.” To justify this, the bill incorporates the following fallacious drivel:

The foundation of our current economic system was built on land that was taken from Abenaki and other Indigenous persons, and the structures of our economic system were constructed with the labor of enslaved persons … The laws and policies of our State and nation severed Indigenous persons from their land while denying them, Black persons, and other Persons of Color from having the opportunity to access and to own land.

That all sounds horrid, of course, but here’s the thing… It never happened. Not in Vermont, at least. This statute re-writes Vermont’s history, replacing its past with fiction. It attributes violence against Abenakis to all Vermonters, when the reality is that the vast majority of white migrants settled lands nearly empty of Abenaki, back in the 1800s. The Abenaki were nomadic and did not “own land” to be “taken” in the western sense, and the “economic system” alleged in the statute was white subsistence farming, which built Vermont’s economy for some two hundred years—after most Abenaki were gone. The bill alleges that “Centuries of genocide, eugenics, broken treaties, displacement, and land dispossession placed persons of the Abenaki Nations and other Indigenous persons living in Vermont at a great social disadvantage.” While it is true that Abenaki were targeted for forced sterilization, that was a progressive policy of which most white Vermonters were simply not complicit—indeed, poor white farmers were themselves targeted.

The statute also conflates the Abenaki and slaves, yet slavery was prohibited in Vermont by its “laws and policies”—the first Constitution in the nation, in fact, banning slavery. Vermont is so extremely white today because slavery was almost nonexistent in the state’s history. There is no record of Vermont “denying… [people of color]… from having access to land.” It just did not occur, not “systemically,” not ever.

In truth, the historic basis for this kind of legislation is entirely imagined.

The true BIPOC Vermont

Black people have never lived in Vermont in significant numbers: the 1960 Census (Table 15) reflects 572 Black residents in 1920, 568 in 1930, 584 in 1940, 443 in 1950, and 519 in 1960. The 1910 U.S. Census identified 34 Native Americans residing in Vermont in 1890, 5 in 1900, and 26 in 1910. But the evidence that this demographic makeup is a result of discrimination—or “barriers to the equal enjoyment and economic benefit of land access and homeownership opportunities based on race and ethnicity,” as H. 273 alleges—is scant.

Instead, the bill makes a huge show of condemning historic grievances that “BIPOC” Americans may have with the federal government: the General Allotment Act of 1887(the Dawes Act); policies started 1934 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation that were criticized for “denying Black and brown residents equal access to home mortgages, often offering subprime loans that came with unusually severe terms”; or the 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Actwhich created the G.I. Bill of Rights (“Funds from the bill were only made available to White soldiers returning from war and not BIPOC veterans.”). None of these policies were enacted in or by Vermonters. At one point, the bill even calls out Jim Crow laws: “The rate of ‘Black land-loss’ can be attributed to Jim Crow, racist practices conducted by the USDA and decades of farm busts.” (Vermont, of course, was not a Jim Crow state).

Still, H. 273 seeks to fund land acquisition for those “who have not had equal access to public or private economic benefits due to race, ethnicity, sex, geography, language preference, immigrant or citizen status, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic status, or disability status.” Hundreds of thousands of white Vermonters, meanwhile, have endured a long history of crushing poverty—a history that “native” Vermonters well know, but a history which those who condemn them recast as “white privilege.”

Most “native” Vermonters (now a pejorative term) understand and are humbled by this history. Poor houses existed in numerous Vermont towns. Sheep farming was once relatively profitable, but the wool market peaked in 1851. Then, Vermont shifted its agriculture to dairy—first butter and cheese lugged to Boston; later, fresh milk. But the opening of the railroads undermined dairy prices, and Vermont dairy farming has been in decline ever since. Over the decades, from 1930 to the present, Vermont dairy suffered an “economic freefall.” Vermont’s dairy farms—its primary industry—shrank from 27,000 in 1927 to barely 600 today. Milk prices dropped by more than half during the Great Depression and never fully rebounded.

There were a few black farmers through this period, but blacks were mostly spared the abject misery, alcoholism, and despair that strangled white farm families who often lacked food, clothing, and dental or health care. This is what H.273 now fantastically alleges was a period of white privilege enabled by the exploitation of black and Abenaki labor.

Now Social Justice Warriors proclaim that today’s black Vermonters are owed money and land by their white neighbors, for nebulous crimes such as those routinely alleged (and far from proven) against Abenaki natives. “Native peoples” are routinely invoked by just-off-the-bus agitators who claim that only Native Americans (and them) have the right to declare who owns the land. As former legislator Kiah Morris proclaimed, “Unless you are First Nations, you have no right to claim who are real Vermonters. Nativist political platforms are the basest level of discourse.” SJWs use allegations of historic Native suffering to stake their claim—Kiah herself moved to Vermont from Chicago (where presumably, only native people have a right to claim who are really Chicagoans).

Xusana Davis, Vermont’s Executive Director of Racial Equity, echoes this same manipulation. Having moved to Vermont from New York City six months before COVID-19 struck, Xusana stated in a recent podcast:

What’s most interesting to me is that when we think about a typical Vermonter, it is often the case that people envision somebody who may be white. Oftentimes, people who are white who maybe are born and raised in Vermont, they’ll say, ‘I’m a native Vermonter.’ And I always think, oh, you’re Abenaki? Because if you’re really a native Vermonter, then you’re probably indigenous to the land.

But there are no Abenaki “indigenous to the land” in that there are no Abenaki with intact culture, language, or genetics. The Cro Magnon have no indigenous sites remaining either, so perhaps exploitation of them can be similarly understood. Why do newly arrived BIPOC ideologues possess the authority to exact retribution from white Vermonters who have lived on family land for 200 uninterrupted years?

Note how Davis invokes Native American history as a claim of right for black people:

[T]he message around who’s a real Vermonter circulates so much around whiteness and proximity to whiteness, as opposed to being rooted in the recognition that this remains unceded land, and that we all exist on this territory as a result of force, biological warfare, and the manipulation of laws that keeps some people buoyed by the system and others oppressed by it. So when it comes to a sense of belonging, I think we really have to reckon with that.

Davis attended Fordham University (the 14th most expensive American college), and New York Law School in New York City, even though NYC suffers from horrid wealth disparity, and sits on unceded land, stolen from the Lenape Indians. By what logic is Xusana Davis more of a Vermonter than those who have lived here for centuries? Is she “entitled” to claim their land because of ancient, generalized grievances? And under that logic, couldn’t Vermonters pack their carpetbags and employ the same exploitation and subjugation in NYC? This language of denigrating and condemning native white Vermonters resembles the colonizing languageof those who robbed the Inuit of their culture, or robbed Vermonters of their fertility during the eugenics movement.

Most Vermonters would be receptive to a law that acknowledged historic socio-economic racial disparities arising from slavery, and would seek to eliminate those inequities. But H. 273, which insists on denigrating Vermonters, is a bridge too far. Vermonters and their history are being unfairly (racially) vilified by opportunistic ideologues.

The true about Native American Vermonters

Leftist history revisionists frequently romanticize Native American culture, what they see as some Utopian hippie commune of peaceful weavers disrupted by murderous capitalists. Indeed the Abenaki were more peaceful than the neighboring Iroquois, but their life expectancy was very short, living conditions harsh, and famine was common. Native American life was hardly the Kumbaya Shangri-La that those who seek to exploit it pretend.

Some New England tribes were brutally warlike: the Mohawks (an Iroquois tribe) regularly conducted violent raids into Vermont against more peaceful tribes. In his thorough study of the life of Samuel de Champlain, the navigator and colonist who established French settlements in Quebec and New France, Pulitzer-prize winning historian David Hackett Fischer relays this:

Torture and cannibalism was an ancient custom among these nations. Not all Indians in the northeast practiced it. Acadian nations did not usually treat warrior-captives that way … Champlain understood this ritual atrocity better than some ethnographers have done, and he refused to accept any part of it. He hated Indian torture. It offended his deepest ideals and created a major obstacle to his grand design. He observed that the explicit purpose of torture was to commit an act of vengeance and retribution, designed to exceed the horror of tortures past. This was the foundation of Champlain’s judgment that the Indians had no law. He meant that their conception of justice was to punish a wrong by a greater wrong. That way of thinking was very different from an idea of law and justice as the rule of right.

Champlain’s desire was to create a new colony where Natives’ lives would improve, and he did contribute to growing amiability between the tribes. But the history is a complex one in which many Abenakis perished in wars fighting beside the French against British troops allied with other tribes. Fischer relates that, in 1755, 6,000 Abenakis were expelled from their lands in Nova Scotia by British governor Colonel Charles Lawrence. Singling out white Vermonters, who themselves were killed in both sides of these battles, is folly.

This humbling history is a far cry from the oversimplified assertions of H.273, which claims that Vermont’s white settlers employed slavery and genocide to obtain land. The statute conflates the two grievances of slavery and Abenaki abuse while clouding (re-fashioning) Vermont’s history relative to both. Proponents seem less interested in advancing the fortunes of black people than penalizing present-day Vermonters for wrongs past. And it does not appear that any Abenaki Vermonters were involved in its drafting.

Doing more harm than good

Douglas Murray sharply chronicles this dangerous propensity toward hate and thuggery from the New Left in his 2019 monograph, The Madness of Crowds. Murray writes, “this spirit of accusation, claim and grudge has spread with a swiftness that is remarkable… this form of dogmatic, vengeful liberalism may, among other things, at some stage risk undermining and even bringing down the whole liberal era.” Murray describes this leftist propensity for “making insincere claims and catastrophizing minute events” as the new ideological methodology to impose race-based judgments: “It took only half a century for Martin Luther King’s vision to be exactly inverted.”

It’s not just race-based judgments; it’s gender too. Murray explains how, “There seems to be a move less intended to improve men than to neuter them, to turn any and all virtues around on them and turn them instead into self-doubting, self-loathing objects of pity. It looks, in a word, like some type of revenge.”

America’s future faces a clear fork in its constitutional road: should we move toward forgiveness, reconciliation, and continued progress on the trail of constitutional aspirations toward equality and healing, or, should we hurtle forward on a rocky trail of recrimination and falsehood, one so often used to mask a toxic coup for total domination?

Setting aside the moral views of the 16th-century, Americans must decide what their value system is in 2021. Whatever the morality of individual settlers, or disparate Native American tribes, the yearning for healing and growth stems from forgiveness and moving forward. Though this concept has been embraced by many faith traditions, we must fashion a “modern” definition for application, which one author has framed thusly:

‘[T]he modern concept of forgiveness,’ which is not a simple notion, but is part of a constellation of ethical and emotional concepts. First, in order for A to forgive B, B must have done wrong to A, bear some responsibility for that, acknowledge the wrong, and manifest remorse, confession, and a change of the self; and A must be aware of the wrong or be reminded of it.”

A horde of C’s (Social Justice Warriors) has descended on Vermont, invoking unnamed B’s (racist Vermonters who allegedly ejected blacks or Indians from their lands) to extract money from on behalf of dead A’s (the Abenakis, whose numbers now are minuscule). There are no B’s alive who did wrong to long-perished A’s, and no real justification for awarding land and money to Cs.

But even if there were evidence of a pattern of past oppression by all white Vermonters against Abenakis, is there any component whatsoever in all this language of “equity,” and “justice,” and “reparations” of a concept of forgiveness? Is this “social justice” ideology a philosophy of forgiveness and healing, or endless strife through unforgiveness? How much money or contrition can today’s white Vermonters offer BIPOC people to satisfy what was done by French and British people to Abenaki people 400 years ago? Can there ever be a point where forgiveness is achieved or even possible, and then perhaps America would return to that aspirational path of healing through the equality and mutual respect ensconced in the Constitution?

The irony in all this is that the desire to break endless cycles of violence and retribution is what motivated the actions of Samuel de Champlain—i.e. the colonizers. As Fischer wrote of Champlain:

He also recognized that Indian torture was also rational and functional in a very dark way. In the warrior cultures of North America, the continuing practice of torture was a way of guaranteeing a state of perpetual war. It meant that the work of retribution would always need to be done, and warriors would be needed to do it. For Champlain it was utterly destructive of peace and universal justice.

The fight for social justice, waged as it is today, will never achieve equity; that is a logistical impossibility. No philosophy can achieve a just end when fueled by unjust revenge. Vermont’s newly-arrived “social justice warriors” are the ultimate colonizers and capitalist opportunists, flocking to Vermont to extract a Shylockian pound of white flesh, exploiting the indigenous man as a fulcrum. Social justice ideology resembles the endless cycle of retribution embraced by warring Indian tribes; today’s white Vermonters are more akin to the peaceful Acadian tribes they plundered.

The question for Vermonters is not: “What was the morality of the Native Americans, or those who slew them?” The question for Vermonters (and Americans) remains: “Is our future one of forgiveness, or endless perpetual social war?”

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and the former pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield.

Image courtesy of Bruce Parker

24 thoughts on “John Klar: Proposed Vermont statute perverts history

  1. “Perhaps the biggest of these lies being spread by leftists lawmakers is that Vermonters killed off all the Native Americans, and must now pay economic penance”

    The Pilgrims had been told “The Cost is Clear” by returning sailors.

    At that time, they were living in the Netherlands, because they, as Protestants, were prosecuted by the English Crown.

    As soon as they heard, they came to “THE NEW WORLD”

    They found out about 90% of the Natives had been wiped out by a plague starting in 1616 through 1619, about 3 to 4 years, just as had happened when sailors from Asia landed in Europe and spread a plague, via rats, in the 1300s.

    The rest of the Natives had moved inland, towards Narragansett and beyond.

    At that time there were about 2000 to 3000 Natives in Vermont, because there were not many places to survive of the land.
    Each person needed about one square mile of territory for survival; hunting, fishing, gathering. Try it. You will hate it.

    At that time there were no “white” people in Vermont.
    They arrived from MA and CT in southern Vermont about 1750, and gradually moved north, up the river valleys.
    There were 10,000 in 1770, about 47,600 in 1780; 154,500 in 1800
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/vermont-population

    Initially, in the early 1700s, the Natives resisted, but when the “white” people numbers became too large, they gave up, AS HAS HAPPENED THROUGHOUT HUMAN HISTORY

    For example: The Huns had come from Asia to sack ROME in the 300s and 400s.

    Earlier, the Natives tribes had on-going feuds, killing each other, enslaving each other, that lasted for centuries.
    The feuds among Natives died out after the “white” people arrived.
    The “white” people brought peace and Christianity, did not enslave the Natives.

  2. This is the real problem / situation that defines a lot.

    SAUL ALINSKI & CommieCrats doing to the US

    This is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do to our country. Obama, Clinton, Biden, Harris just to name a few are students of the Saul Alinsky rules. Note when this is accomplished, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are history.

    Based on Saul Alinsky’s 8-steps from democracy to a socialist society. Obama quoted him often in his book and Hillary did her thesis on Alinsky. Of the 8-levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a socialist / communist State, the first is the most important; 5 OF 8 ARE DONE, AND THE LAST 3 ARE ALMOST THERE!

    1. Healthcare: “Control Healthcare and you control the People” DONE!

    2. Poverty: Increase the Poverty level as high as possible. Poor People are easier to control and will not fight back if the government is providing everything for them to live. DONE!

    3. Debt: Increase the National Debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase Taxes, and this will produce more Poverty. DONE!

    4. Gun Control: Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a Police State – total local control. ALMOST THERE, AND WORKING HARD ON IT!

    5. Welfare: Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Livestock, Housing, and Income). DONE!

    6. Education: Take control of what People read & listen to; take control of what Children learn in School. ALMOST THERE!

    7. Religion: Remove faith in God from the Government and Schools. ALMOST THERE!

    8. Class Warfare: Divide the People into the wealthy against the poor. Racially divide. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to Tax the Wealthy with full support of the voting Poor. DONE!

    For the most part the bases are all covered!. We are ripe! Appears the dumbing of schools for last 20 – 30 years is sure helping the likes of socialist Bernie.

    • Well it goes even deeper. Whom did Saul dedicate his book to?

      Who did Yuri Bezmanov, a soviet KGB agent trained in these exact subversion tactics say could solve our problems? Who is the answer? Whom do we turn to.

      Let me ask is this what we are experiencing today in America? In Vermont?

      Hate?
      Despair?
      Anxiety?
      Impatience?
      Rudeness?
      Evil?
      Unreliable?
      Abrasive/Harsh?
      Undisciplined?

      Does this at all remind you of the news? Facebook? Twitter?

      If this does the answer is simple. The answer is whom Vermont has turned away from.

      They say pride goeth before the fall. I used to think, somebodies pride would say truce before they went over the cliff. I was so wrong. Their pride is what leads them over the cliff. Vermont is FILLED with PRIDE……Vermont Strong? On every license plate. Sexual Pride flags flying everywhere, but excluding one sexuality…wouldn’t that be sexual discrimination. 🙂

      Pride is nothing more than thinking we know everything. We know what is going to happen tomorrow. We don’t need to take anyone else’s advice. We are right.

      Pride is the root of all arguments and disagreements. See pride is our problem.

      We could turn to truth, love, science….get us out of our prideful mess. We did in the mid 1700’s we had a wonderful awakening in our nation, George Whitefield was one so blessed to be used in this repentance. It is needed today. Lord help us, please.

  3. social justice = marxist program for subversion, to gain power and money, not peace and justice

    Their cure is to make son’s and daughters pay for the crime of their parents.

    This thinking is to create division and hatred, to gain power and money. This is stated unabashedly in their written out game plans for all to see.

    They can only reach their objectives by force and lies. They can not stand ground against an argument that is presented softly and respectfully. That is why they must censor the internet, burn books and ostracize anyone who speaks the truth.

    This is the same reason the Holy Bible is not allowed in Theocratic Countries, to which the ruler is deemed God, much like those in Montpelier. Their arguments can not stand up to the word of God nor science. These rulers have so much pride thinking they have answers for everything, when some one with an education can cleary see them for the fools they truly are

  4. H.273 is supposed to be about social justice and equity……..It isn’t.

    In Vermont, poor white people out number poor BIPOCs by about 8 to 1. The numbers indicate that there are many, many more poor white people in Vermont than the sum total of all BIPOCs. There are about 61,000 poor whites in comparison to about 7,500 poor BIPOCs…….These numbers show how misguided H.273 actually is.

    Given the much higher numbers of poor white people, the sponsors of H.273 and activists instead chose to speak of proportionality, meaning there are higher percentages of BIPOC poor than whites in Vermont…….They never, however address why that may be so, instead they instinctively leap to “systemic racism” caused by white supremacy……They ignore what the State’s Director of Racial Equity writers in her official reports saying that significant numbers of BIPOCs are unable to speak English as they are relatively new to Vermont.

    Being new to America, new to Vermont and being unable to speak English represents a tremendous obstacle to achieving economic success…..The problems these newly arrived BIPOCs face has nothing to do with white supremacy…….It has to do with an absence of being able to communicate in a State that functions on the English language and an absence of marketable skills that bring premium wages in the work place.

    H.273 is not about social justice and equity…..It’s about an absence of sound analysis and objectively that leads to missing the mark in dealing the real issues.

    • I’m beginning to suspect that this is more about revenge, retribution and reparations. Poor whites, white as they are, have never experienced the misgivings of the ethnic and racial discrimination non-whites have experienced, real or imagined. Certainly, most affluent white Vermonters have never personally experienced anything resembling the past ethnic and racial discrimination non-whites have experienced. Whites may have seen it. They may have studied it. They may even continue to try to improve their standing in that regard with the myriad confessionals we see today, including but not limited to H.273. But, clearly, this is not enough. For whites to be silent is racist. For whites to speak up is racist. Where is this discussion leading us? Will the final analysis be that for whites to exist is racist? What then?

      • Jay……..You ask “Where is this discussion leading us?”

        Based on what we hear from the social activists and their actions…….The discussion is intended to lead to free stuff for the BIPOC community. This conclusion is supported by the number of bills presently in the legislature calling for benefits to be made available to Vermonters based on the color of their skin and further based on undefined wrongs in Vermont that are manifested by “systemic racism”.

        The problem is that the social activists are unable to identify what the specific problems are that constitute “systemic racism” in Vermont. The activists are able spout plenty of hyperbole about “systemic racism”, but when asked to cite specifics, they can’t, they are silent.

        See Rob Roper’s 3/11/21 TNR commentary entitled “Activists can’t identify systemic problems in systemic racist system”

        http://www.truenorthreports.com/roper-activists-cant-identify-systemic-problems-in-systemically-racist-system

        This cite includes a video of a Vermont House Committee meeting where Rep. Charlie Kimball (D-Woodstock) asked Marc Hughes (Director of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance) to identify specific problems resulting in “systemic racism. Mr. Hughes, a leading Vermont racial activist and expert, who should have all the facts relating to “systemic racism” at his finger tips could cite none…….Neither could any of the other social activists attending the meeting.

        With no concrete facts defining the source of the problem, the discussion can lead to no rational end point….,…Other than what you speculate as being “revenge, retribution and reparations”.

  5. We should be worrying about the integrity of science– such as the science underpinning lockdown and other Covid measures– and about government overreach as it suspends rights and negates individual decision-making for a disease with a high survival rate. We should be worrying about the widespread censorship of scientists who dissent from the government’s Covid policies. We should be worrying abut the trend to silence voices that come from the right. These are real, pertinent, serious problems facing us.

    Instead, we’re worrying about vague ideas of social justice and equality based a tenuous and lop-sided reading of history?? That’s the most important thing to consider right now?

  6. Socialist Vermont, now that’s pretty pathetic,

    I don’t know of any ” Real Vermonter ” that buys any of the social Justice BS, and as you see
    we have a gaggle of fools in Montpelier supposedly working under the ” Golden Doom ” because
    that’s all they produce for the state ” Doom “.

    These inept fools buy this malarkey and are pushing this nonsense, maybe they should go back home wherever that may be, as they may live here, but your not Vermonter’s !!

    guilty conscious or stupidity ??

  7. Hey, you out of staters uninformed idiots in the legislation who think you know everything. ( I know the left read true north) You all don’t know your butt from a hole in the ground.
    I am half Irish and Indian. My grandmother was Indian. I want to tell you fools that you have no idea about the truth if it hit you in the face. My ancestors never ask for anything from anyone. They worked hard and earned what they had. They were proud people.I know my grandparents are turning over in their graves over what is going on in this world especially here in Vermont.
    These people moved to Vermont and in no time took over, changing our way of life in Vermont, and not for the good either. Vermonters are proud people. Working hard to make Vermont a good decent state. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t poor either. They welcome people into their little state and way of life and many came here to make this state their new home.
    Fast forward Vermont has become a state that Vermonters are a shame of. Vermont was known as a state that loved helping people. not by giving them welfare, government handouts but helping in ways to still make others feel proud of themselves. Today people shame you if you aren’t conforming to their way of thinking.
    There are black people who moved here and then tell us we are racist. Vermont was the first state that made it law that no one can have slaves, Vermont started up an underground railway escape to help slaves get to Canada. Vermonters did the work themselves on farms, if someone was looking for work the farmers would hire them.. No one was treated like a slave. not even the Indians.
    Our schools aren’t teaching our children about US history, they don’t teach civics anymore., they don’t teach !! My nephew graduated from HS and he couldn’t spell nor write just print. He didn’t even know how to fill out a check. When he got married his wife would have to write words on paper so he would know how to spell it.. He is a good worker, always had a job. The school just passed him through and didn’t care that he didn’t know how to spell and other things.. just pass him through.
    The thing is these teachers weren’t from Vermont.. What good teacher tells students to hate the President of the United States, to spy on their parents. !!! When I was in school my teacher taught us everything about American history, about the history of Vermont. We said the pledge of allegiance to the flag and said the lord’s prayers every morning. If you didn’t want to say either one you could sit there in silence or step outside.. No one shamed you
    ..
    These liberals in the government today need to read Vermont’s history and Vermont’s CONSTITUTION. They need to read our rights and they need to STOP changing our rights and our way of life. You don’t like it then please by all means go back to the state you came from and change that state. and leave our once great state alone.!!!
    TAKE BACK VERMONT.

    • Thanks very much DonnaB. Refer to my post about Saul Alinsky, it applies also to VT and perhaps puts light on programmed explaining the happenings. Have to get beyond the surface news and problems and into the roots of why.

  8. Sen. Pearson is at the forefront of the Cancel US History, and Cancel US Culture, and Remake America movements.
    He wants to replace it with what?

    Sen Pearson, et al., are cleverly engaging is wishful fantasizing regarding the ELECTORAL COLLEGE.
    He is trying to surreptitiously, second-guess the FOUNDING FATHERS

    The US Constitution specifically states, each state legislature has the CONSTITUTIONAL power to select and appoint the state ELECTORS; Vermont is entitled to 3 ELECTORS.

    State Legislatures are not allowed to delegate their Constitutional powers to any entities, including:

    1) The Secretary of State
    2) The Governor
    3) Any non Legislative Branch entity

    Such transfers would be unconstitutional, abrogations of responsibility, illegal.

    The US constitution does not make any mention of “popular votes”.

    The US Constitution does not mention any restrictions on state Legislatures regarding the exercise of their power to select and appoint ELECTORS, regardless of the outcome of a popular vote. That vote is merely advisory, i.e., to be heeded by the legislature, or not.

    Heeding the outcome of a popular vote is at the discretion of the Legislature, whose Members were elected by the “popular vote”.

    What parts of the US Constitution and Vermont State Constitution does Sen. Pearson not understand?

    Does Pearson not know the US is a REPUBLIC consisting of 50 SOVEREIGN STATES THAT FORMED A UNION?

    At one point in the 1700s, Vermont called itself “Republic of Vermont”.

    Undermining the US and State Constitutions, WHILE IN OFFICE, would be breaking HIS sacred oath to UPHOLD these Constitutions, which is punishable by law.

    First, he must resign, then he can be a freedom-loving agitator for anything he wishes, including agitating for CHANGING the Constitutions.

    Pearson must remain a Senator, while actively undermining the Constitutions he has sworn to uphold.

    Why is no one else calling him on this?
    Are folks brain dead, or just brain washed?

    • Pearson received $63,000 in campaign donation from none other than fellow Marxist Bolshevik Bernie – very likely transferred form bag-man Soros. Not that he needs persuading lol.

      • It likely cam from Bernie’s TAX FREE FOUNDATION, which he likely uses for nefarious purposes to undermine the US Culture.

      • How true you are Stardust.. comrade Bernie was paid off twice to leave the presidential race. Everyone knows that. he and his wife Janey are liars and crooks..

    • Correction:

      The correct statement is:

      Pearson must NOT be a Senator, while actively undermining the Constitutions, he has sworn to uphold.

    • According to the US Constitution, the People vote for STATE Senators, and STATE Senators select and appoint two US Senators.

      The name of candidates for the US Senate are the ballot, and the people may vote for that person, but that vote is strictly advisory to let STATE Senators know YOUR preference. State Senators have the option to heed your preference, or not.

      Remember, the STATE Senators were previously chosen by the People to act as their proxies.

  9. The most persecuted VTers have been poor white ppl, French Canadians, Catholics, Native Americans and blacks at the hands of progressive intellectuals – and it continues.

    In the early 20th century a hateful progressive academic from UVM Henry Farnham Perkins, began the teaching Nazi-esque eugenics to get rid of ppl he personally despised and considered inferior – Canadian French as in Catholics, Native Indian and of course – Black ppl. Fair to say it was a nationwide undertaking.

    A survey was instituted to ‘weed out’ those targeted by his insane and flawed teachings merged with own biases and beliefs. By stealth poor VT families were interviewed then targeted for ‘removal’ – institutionalization and sterilization.

    “In reality, they targeted French Canadians, Indians, African-Americans and immigrants.”

    “Vermont passed its compulsory sterilization law in 1931, the 25th state to do so. The law targeted ‘idiots,’ ‘imbeciles,’ ‘feeble-minded’ or ‘insane’ persons living in state institutions.

    Sterilization continueed in VT into the early ’60s.

    “Many state laws targeted the mentally ill, the intellectually disabled, the epileptic, the deaf, the blind and the physically deformed. But at the time, many women deemed ‘feeble-minded’ went to state institutions. In reality, they had had sex or gotten pregnant outside of marriage.”
    https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/vermont-eugenics-survey-purifies-the-populations-polluted-protoplasm/

    Vast majority of those who were affected were women – modern Democrat Party including the progs is the party of oppression, sexism and racism – just for starters.

    Generational Vermonters, heirs and assigns impacted by the Nazi progressives who once populated our state and were involved should receive repration.

    Those who live by the sword much:
    “Though Henry Farnham Perkins identified alcoholism as a degenerate trait, he died of liver failure, a bedridden alcoholic, in 1956.” Soo… he was an intellectiual degenerate as are his ilk – all.

  10. A very good examination of identity politics. Mr Klar is right on point describing the left’s desire to show their idea of forgiveness. As we go forward the politics of divisiveness sound more and more like the Politburo of the Soviet Union.
    It constantly amazes me that the state that brought forth Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, now no longer knows who he was or cares.

  11. March 23, 2021
    The Democrat Party Has Declared War on America
    By Steve McCann
    The American Left and its wholly owned subsidiary, the Democrat party, has declared war on America by openly and ruthlessly attacking American society, its norms and foundational principles. While they previously had been somewhat restrained in their efforts to transform the nation, any pretense of subtlety has now been abandoned.
    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/the_democrat_party_has_declared_war_on_america.html

  12. Dear John: These people are crazy. I agree with you 100 percent. It’s sad to say, but there are not enough folks still residing in Vermont that feel the same as us!

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