The Republic of Vermont


by Anthony Wile
The Daily Bell

Recently
by Anthony Wile: Colonel
Douglas Macgregor on Two Failed Wars and Why He Supports Ron Paul
for President



Introduction:
Thomas H. Naylor, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University,
is a writer and a political activist who has taught at Middlebury
College and the University of Vermont. For 30 years he taught economics,
management science and computer science at Duke. As an international
management consultant specializing in strategic management, Dr.
Naylor has advised major corporations and governments in over 30
countries. During the 1970s he was President of SIMPLAN Systems,
a 50-person computer software firm whose clients were Fortune 500
companies in the US and abroad. Recognizing that the United States
had become more like its former nemesis the Soviet Union than most
Americans care to admit, in 2003 he founded the Second Vermont Republic,
a nonviolent citizens network and think tank opposed to the tyranny
of corporate America and the US government and committed to the
return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic. Ode
Magazine editor Jay Walljasper dubbed him, “Tom Paine for the
21st century.” The
New York Times, International Herald
Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Adbusters, Christian Science Monitor,
The Nation, and Business Week have published his articles.
For additional information, visit www.vermontrepublic.org.

Daily Bell:
Can you give us some background on yourself?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1950s where
my father admonished me to “be cautious” and always be
concerned about “what people will think.” I was never
very cautious nor very concerned about what people thought. I used
to refuse to stand when Dixie was played at Ole Miss football games,
and I understood fully the significance of that decision.

After three
years at Millsaps College I moved to the Great Satan, New York City,
and entered Columbia University where I earned a B.S. in Industrial
Engineering. Two years later I received my M.B.A. from Indiana University.
Summer jobs at International Paper Company, Sun Oil and Dow Chemical
convinced me that Corporate America was not for me. At I.U. I became
interested in computers, which played an important role in my life
for the next 20 years.

In 1961 I began
teaching management science at Tulane University while working on
my Ph.D. in Economics. Upon completing my Ph.D. I joined the faculty
of Duke University where I taught economics, management science
and computer science for 30 years. For 6 years I taught all of the
courses in Corporate Strategy at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.

In 1969 I co-founded
the L.Q.C. Lamar Society, an organization of progressive young Southerners
committed to the premise, ironically, that the South should return
to the Union, get off the race kick and start solving its own problems.
By 1972 literally all of the important progressive political leaders
in the South, black and white, were members of the Lamar Society.
Some of them included Jimmy Carter, Winthrop Rockefeller, Terry
Sanford, Julian Bond, Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young.

During the
1970s I was president of SIMPLAN Systems, a 50-person computer software
firm whose clients included Fortune 500 companies such as General
Motors, United Air Lines, McDonald’s, IBM, Shell Oil, Texaco, Monsanto,
Pacific Gas Electric and Kuwait International Petroleum. I
was a strategic management consultant to major corporations and
governments in over 30 countries. The happiest day of my life was
when I sold the company to a bunch of Germans for a profit in 1979.

As a result
of the fact that the Russians illegally published one of my books
on computer based planning models and free market models, in the
Soviet Union in 1974, I received a steady flow of Soviet and Eastern
European visitors to Duke until 1991. This gave rise to a 1982 visit
to Moscow for a preview of perestroika three years before Gorbachev
came to power. My book was being used to build computer simulation
models to evaluate the effects of introducing free market capitalism
into the Soviet economy. Throughout the 1980s I made frequent visits
to the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In 1985
I married a Polish psychiatrist. My life would never be the same.

Between 1982
and 1991 I became a self-appointed, unpaid, cheerleader for Gorbachev,
whom I considered to be the greatest political leader of the 20th
century. During this period The N.Y. Times published several of
my pieces about the Soviet Union.

On the evening
of January 16, 1991, ten minutes before the bombing began in Baghdad,
William H. Willimon, Dean of the Duke Chapel, and I launched a freshman
seminar on “The Search for Meaning.” Three years later
Willimon, my wife Magdalena and I published a book bearing the same
title. This was the first of five books Willimon and I would co-author,
the last of which was Downsizing
the USA
in 1997.

In 1993, my
wife, son Alexander and I moved to Vermont in search of community.
We found it. Vermont is different – very different. It is all
about the politics of human scale – small towns, small businesses,
small schools and small churches.

Vermont provides
a communitarian alternative to the dehumanized, mass-production,
mass-consumption, overregulated, narcissistic lifestyle which pervades
most of America – an alternative to the politics of money,
power, speed, greed, gridlock and fear of terrorism.

Recognizing
that the United States had become more like its former nemesis the
Soviet Union than most Americans care to admit, in 2003 I founded
the Second Vermont Republic, a nonviolent citizens network and think
tank opposed to the tyranny of Corporate America and the US government
and committed to the return of Vermont to its status as an independent
republic, as it had been between 1777 and 1791.

Daily Bell:
How did you come to be involved in the Vermont secessionist movement?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Nearly three years before I moved to Vermont, on October
9, 1990, The Bennington Banner published my article entitled
“Should the U.S. Be Downsized?” Four years later in Challenge
(Nov.-Dec. 1994) I wrote, “The time has come both for the individual
states and the federal government to begin planning the rational
downsizing of America.” Continuing, I suggested that Vermont
might lead the way by helping “save our nation from the debilitating
effects of big government and big business” and by “providing
an independent role model for the other states to follow.”

In 1997 William
H. Willimon and I published Downsizing the U.S.A., which
not only called for Vermont independence, but the peaceful dissolution
of the American Empire. We argued that the US government had become
too big, too centralized, too powerful, too undemocratic, too militaristic,
too imperialistic, too materialistic and too unresponsive to the
needs of individual citizens and small communities. However, since
we were in the midst of the greatest economic boom in history, few
Americans were interested in downsizing anything. The name of the
game was “up, up and away.” Only bigger and faster were
thought to be better.

For the most
part, before September 11, 2001, my call for Vermont independence
and the dissolution of the Empire fell on deaf ears. It was as though
I were speaking to an audience of one, namely myself. But a year
or so after 9/11 that gradually began to change. On March 5, 2003,
two weeks before the second war with Iraq began, I spoke at an anti-war
rally at Johnson State College and decided to test-market the idea
of an independent Vermont.

Basically,
my pitch to the students was, “If you want to prevent future
wars in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, we have no choice but
to break up the United States into smaller regions and that process
should begin with Vermont declaring its independence from the United
States.” They were stunned, but they got it. Their positive
response literally provided the energy to launch the Second Vermont
Republic.

Ten days after
the bombing began in Baghdad on March 19, 2003, we held the first
of four monthly meetings at the Village Cup in Jericho to discuss
how such a movement might evolve. These meetings were attended by
only a handful of people. Early on we decided not to become a political
party but rather a civic club. The name “Second Vermont Republic”
was proposed by Jeffersonville high school student Walker Brook
and registered with the Secretary of State on June 19, 2003.

Over lunch
in the backyard of the Bread Puppet Theater Museum in Glover,
Vermont on July 18, 2003, the puppeteers, under the leadership of
Peter Schumann, agreed to cooperate with the Second Vermont Republic
to promote Vermont independence.

In conjunction
with the release of my book The
Vermont Manifesto
on October 11, 2003, the first statewide
meeting of the Second Vermont Republic was held in the New Building
of Bread Puppet Theater in Glover. The daylong meeting was
attended by around 50 people.

During the
two preceding years I received a dozen or so letters from Ambassador
George F. Kennan and Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith voicing
their support for a Second Vermont Republic. About the idea of Vermont
independence, Kennan said, “I see nothing fanciful, and nothing
towards the realization of which the efforts of enlightened people
might not be usefully directed.” Galbraith added, “I must
assure you of my pleasure in, and approval of, your views of the
Second Vermont Republic.”

Daily Bell:
Tell us more about the movement itself. How has it unfolded and
where it is going?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
The Second Vermont Republic is a nonviolent citizens’
network and think tank committed to: (1) the peaceful breakup of
meganations such as the United States, Russia and China; (2) the
political independence of breakaway states such as Quebec, Scotland
and Vermont; and (3) a strategic alliance with other small, democratic,
nonviolent, affluent, socially responsible, cooperative, egalitarian,
sustainable, ecofriendly nations such as Austria, Finland and Switzerland
which share a high degree of environmental integrity and a strong
sense of community.

Supporters
of the Second Vermont Republic subscribe to the following set of
principles:

  1. Political
    Independence
  2. Human Scale
  3. Sustainability
  4. Economic
    Solidarity
  5. Power Sharing
  6. Equal Opportunity
  7. Tension
    Reduction
  8. Community

Major Events

October 11,
2003 – SVR holds first statewide meeting at Bread Puppet
Theater in Glover, VT.

June 19, 2004
– Parade in downtown Montpelier with Bread Puppet followed
by State House rally attended by 350 people. Vermont declares independence.

November 5-7,
2004 – SVR and the Fourth World sponsor an international conference
on “After the Fall of America, Then What?” The Middlebury
Institute is launched.

January 15,
2005 – SVR celebrates Vermont Independence Day at the Langdon
Street Café in Montpelier.

March 4, 2005
– SVR holds a memorial service to commemorate the day in 1791
when Vermont joined the Union.

April 22, 2005
– Award-winning journal Vermont Commons is launched.

April 2005
– Vermont Legislature adopts resolution naming January as Vermont
History and Independence month.

June 3-5, 2005
– SVR officially represented at the fifteenth national Congress
of the Parti Québécois in Quebec City.

October 28,
2005 – SVR holds first statewide convention on secession in
the US since 1861. The event takes place in the House Chamber of
the State House and is attended by 300 people.

November 3-5,
2006 – Middlebury Institute holds First North American Secessionist
Convention in Burlington, VT. The convention attracts delegates
from 16 secessionist organizations in 18 states.

April 12, 2007
– UVM Center for Rural Studies releases results of its annual
“Vermonter Poll” showing that thirteen percent of eligible
voters in Vermont support secession, up from eight percent a year
earlier.

June 3, 2007
– Associated Press releases a piece entitled “In Vermont,
Nascent Secession Movement Gains Traction.” Article is run
worldwide by hundreds of newspapers, websites, radio stations and
TV stations.

June 4-5, 2007
– SVR founder Thomas H. Naylor is interviewed by Fox News three
separate times including The O’Reilly Factor.

October 3-4,
2007 – Second North American Secessionist Convention takes
place in Chattanooga, TN. Representatives from thirty states attend.
It too receives worldwide media attention.

November 7,
2008 – Second Statewide Convention on Vermont Independence
in the House Chamber of the State House in Montpelier.

November 14-16,
2008 – Third North American Secession Convention in Manchester,
NH.

May 22, 2009
– Dennis Steele launches Radio Free Vermont, a Vermont based
music Internet station.

October 6,
2009 – SVR issues Scott Nearing 50 clover silver token.

January 15,
2010 – Ten secessionists announce their candidacy for the November
2nd election including candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor,
seven Senate seats and one House seat.

January 10,
2011 – SVR named one of the “Top 10 Aspiring Nations”
in the world by Time magazine.

September 14,
2012 – Third Statewide Convention on Vermont Independence in
the House Chamber of the State House in Montpelier. Keynote speakers:
Morris Berman and Lierre Keith.

Daily Bell:
It is not so much in the news these days. Is it less of a force?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Three events put SVR on the political radar screen so
to speak: (1) George W. Bush’s response to 9/11 – the war on
terror; (2) the 2003 war in Iraq; and (3) the 2004 re-election of
Bush. Bush was probably the movement’s greatest asset.

Vermont is
perhaps the most left-wing state in the nation. Two-thirds of the
voters supported Barack Obama in his 2008 election bid. To the political
left in Vermont, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, Obama represented
the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. After three years some Vermonters
on the political left have finally figured out that Obama does not
walk on water and is merely a smirk-free George W. Bush. But because
he is smarter, more articulate and more charismatic than Bush, he
is much more dangerous. Secession is a very tough sell in Vermont
as well as elsewhere. In January of 2009 it became a much tougher
sell.

Abraham Lincoln
really did a number on us 150 years ago. He convinced most Americans
on the political Right as well as the Left that secession is a complete
anathema. Secession is thought by most to be immoral, illegal and
unconstitutional. Never mind the Declaration of Independence, the
fact that the United States was born out of secession from England,
the tenth amendment to the Constitution and the escape clauses which
three of the original thirteen states had built into their respective
constitutions. Secession immediately conjures up images of slavery,
the Civil War, racism and violence. Many otherwise intelligent Americans
neither know how to pronounce or spell the word secession. More
often than not it is pronounced as though the correct spelling were
s-u-c-c-e-s-s-i-o-n.

Because of
the perceived absurdity of tiny Vermont confronting the most powerful
empire of all-time, the Second Vermont Republic has arguably attracted
more attention outside of Vermont than within. It’s classic David
and Goliath.

Since its inception
SVR has employed two quite different parallel strategies in its
efforts to promote secession – a hard sell approach and a soft
sell approach. Neither has proven to be particularly effective.

The hard sell
paradigm confronts the issue head-on. Because of its size, the United
States government has become unmanageable and unfixable. Our nation
has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable. A state such
as Vermont either goes down with the Titanic or seeks other options.
Secession is one such option. But because of its association with
the Civil War, secession is toxic as hell. The mere mention of the
word brings forth the charges of racism from the political left.
It is virtually impossible to have an intelligent conversation about
the subject with a liberal ideologue.

The alternative
paradigm speaks of political independence as though it were some
desired state of being achievable in the future only after a state
such as Vermont achieves economic, energy and agricultural independence.
Middlebury College environmentalist Bill McKibben has wrongheadedly
convinced many Vermonters that political independence is an impossible
dream without food and energy independence. McKibben is apparently
unaware of the fact that Japan, the third largest economy in the
world, imports every drop of oil that it consumes as well as most
of its food. Secession is not a synonym for economic isolationism.

The problem
with the soft sell paradigm is that its supporters are so busy planting
organic gardens, building root cellars, cutting their own wood,
acquiring solar panels and driving their Priuses that they don’t
even notice the nine hundred pound gorilla in the room, namely,
the American Empire. So benign is the soft sell approach that is
adherents never get around to talking about political independence.

Nine years
of experience with the Second Vermont Republic have convinced me
that the real issue is neither Vermont, states’ rights, secession,
political independence, energy independence, agricultural independence,
nor economic independence but rather the American Empire itself.
In the words of economist Paul Craig Roberts, “The United States
is an immoral country, with an immoral people and an immoral government.
Americans no longer have a moral conscience. They have gone over
to the Dark Side.”

There is no
longer any moral justification whatsoever for the existence of the
United States. The only morally defensible alternative to empire
is peaceful dissolution.

So long as
the Empire remains intact, there will be no end to all of the nasty
little wars, corporate personhood, Wall Street dominance and our
unconditional support for the Israeli military machine. These are
all gifts from the Empire.

Peaceful dissolution
could be initiated at the state, regional or national level through
some combination of demonstrations, strikes, protests, tax revolts,
civil disobedience and eventually secession. The US Congress could
even initiate dissolution but don’t hold your breath over that option.

Since dissolution
would be nationwide in scope, it would arguably be less self-centered
and less ethnocentric than if a single state such as Alaska, Texas,
or Vermont tries to go it alone. Everyone has skin in the game so
to speak. The primary focus would not be on “What’s in it for
my state?” but rather on ending global dominance and military
madness, stopping the exploitation of the poor and the middle class
by the superrich, curbing the use of fossil fuels and other natural
resources, curtailing the dependence on economic growth at any cost,
reining in corruption and deceit and ending the suppression of civil
liberties.

Maine, New
Hampshire and Vermont, for example, might join the four Atlantic
provinces of Canada to create a little country the size of Denmark
and call it New Acadia. Upstate New York and New York City might
split into two separate countries. Chicago and Los Angeles could
become independent city-states. Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Florida
and Texas might go it alone with South Texas and South Florida splitting
off separately. It’s not hard to imagine California being divided
into three countries and Washington, Oregon and British Columbia
evolving into Cascadia. A New South and a Rocky Mountain Republic
also seem like likely possibilities.

We have no
illusion that a large number of Americans will embrace dissolution
any time soon. Our problems will have to become a lot worse before
that happens. But the time to start the conversation is now! How
many people predicted the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union? Planned,
orderly dissolution is surely preferable to unexpected collapse
and utter chaos.

If the Tea
Party and Occupy Wall Street eventually figure out that the US government
is unfixable, then they may both turn to peaceful dissolution as
the only game in town.

Daily Bell:
Tell us about the books you have written on secession and how you
came to focus so forcefully on this issue.

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I have published three books on secession: Downsizing
the USA
(with William Willimon, 1997), The
Vermont Manifesto
(2003), and Secession
(2008). Given the level of ignorance about secession in the United
States, the degree to which it has been demonizedand the fact that
there were virtually no books on the subject, I decided to take
a shot at it.

Daily Bell:
What are you doing now? How do you make a living? Are you switching
careers in a sense?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I spend most of my time writing about Vermont independence
and the peaceful dissolution of the American Empire. I write for
the SVR website as well as Counter Punch.

My personal
income comes from my Duke retirement, book royalties, speaking fees
and investments in gold. My wife has a real job.

As my friend,
Yale economist Martin Shubik, used to say, the Second Vermont Republic
keeps me out of the pool halls.

Daily Bell:
It is interesting that you have degrees in science and industrial
engineering. You also received a Masters in Business from Indiana
University in 1961 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from
Tulane University in 1964. How did you become so motivated to learn
so much?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Mathematics, computers and economic theory provide the
underlying linkages connecting my academic disciplines. These tools
are also useful for conceptualizing complex socio-economic, political
problems. As for motivation, if one grew up in Jackson, Mississippi
in the 1950s, one couldn’t avoid being imbued with a heavy dose
of the Protestant ethic and an intense desire to get out of Dodge.

Daily Bell:
Did you intend to become a kind of Renaissance man?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
One of the advantages of teaching at Duke University
was that it afforded me the opportunity and the freedom to reinvent
myself every few years. By that I mean the freedom to go into some
totally unrelated field about which I knew nothing. Although I began
my career as an econometric model builder in 1964, I became actively
involved in Southern politics in 1969 and also launched a ten-year
career in corporate simulation model building that year. SIMPLAN
Systems was started in 1971. During the 1980s I did a lot of consulting
for major companies in strategic planning. Beginning in 1982 and
continuing until the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe were my passions. Then in 1991 I turned to the
search for meaning and French writer Albert Camus. Today I am at
work on a philosophy of peaceful rebellion against the human condition
– separation, meaninglessness, powerlessness and death.

Daily Bell:
You taught at Duke, which is known as a communally oriented academy.
Did you absorb this ethos?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Clearly, I benefited from the sense of community at
Duke University. However, my interest in community took a quantum
leap forward in 1992 while my wife and I were working on “The
Search for Meaning.” We decided to take a family vacation in
Switzerland, Austria and Northern Italy to see if life in Alpine
villages was all that it was cracked up to be. We wrote about this
in our book and moved to Vermont in search of community.

Daily Bell:
Do you consider yourself a socialist? A progressive? How would you
peg yourself?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I am a left-leaning libertarian with strong anarchist
tendencies. This means that I believe there are two enemies, the
US government and Corporate America, the latter of which owns the
former.

Although I
voted for Nixon in 1960, Kennedy had won me over by 1962. I remained
a liberal Democrat until the early 1990s when slick Willie Clinton
pushed me over the brink. In addition to being a pathological liar,
Clinton was a conservative Republican disguised as a liberal Democrat.
He gave the Republicans their every wish. He made me realize that
there is absolutely no difference between the Democratic and Republican
parties. They are both corrupt to the core.

Daily Bell:
You taught economics. Are you a Keynesian? An Austrian?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I am mostly a pragmatic eclectic. Every time I was being
considered for promotion (twice) at Duke there was only one issue.
“Is Naylor a real economist or not?” It was probably the
right question.

Basically,
I am favorably disposed towards markets. I am also a gold bug. Does
that make me an Austrian? On the other hand I am not averse to the
use of government spending to stimulate the economy. Does that make
me a Keynesian?

Two of my favorite
economists were Joan Robinson, a Marxist, and Leopold Kohr, an Austrian.

Daily Bell:
Can you give us a critique of why Austrian economics has expanded
so fast? Coincidence? Internet?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I believe Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did about
as much for Chicago and Austrian economics as anything else.

Daily Bell:
What kind of impact has the Internet had on the world and your movement?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
The Vermont independence network has no doubt benefited
from the Internet. We have four websites and most of our supporters
communicate via e-mail. However, I am not nearly so sanguine about
the Internet as most. It may be one of the most anti-intellectual,
anti-educational, anti-creative, anti-social devices ever invented
– capable of destroying community, undermining democracy, creating
a spiritual vacuum, inducing emotional instability and downloading
the human mind.

My view of
the Internet is similar to Henry David Thoreau’s view of the magnetic
telegraph. “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph
from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas may have nothing important
to communicate. We are eager to tunnel the Atlantic and bring the
Old World nearer the New, but perchance the first news that will
leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that
Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”

Microsoft’s
Bill Gates and others claim that the Internet leads to empowerment
and enhanced democracy. But who is being empowered by whom? As e-mania
has exploded, voter turnout has declined, as well as every other
form of civic participation including involvement in religious groups,
town meetings, local school activities, civic clubs, union meetings
and political organizations. People transfixed by PCs and cell phones
have little time to participate in anything and are a threat to
no one.

If one surfs
the Internet one can find hundreds, if not thousands, of Web sites
espousing every conceivable political philosophy. There are endless
blogs and chat rooms devoted to the discussion of politics. But
is anyone really listening to all of this electronic chatter? Above
all, what the Net does extremely well is keep us busy – distracted
from noticing what the cipherpriests are doing to us in the name
of freedom and democracy. Social networks like Facebook are more
of the same.

While individual
Internet junkies pretend to be doing their own thing, in reality
they are insignificant pawns in a vast global experiment in commercially
controlled anarchy. They are, in fact, doing precisely what the
high priests would have them do.

Daily Bell:
Is the Internet a kind of modern Gutenberg Press?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I believe I have already answered this question. I have
no e-mail address, no cell phone and no telephone answering machine
but I do have a copy machine.

Daily Bell:
You were president in the 1970s of a 50-person computer software
firm with Fortune 500 clients worldwide. You were also an international
management consultant advising major corporations and governments
in over thirty countries. What do you think of corporate America?
Is it a problem?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I have the same problem with Corporate America that
I do with the US government – size! Many American corporations,
banks and other financial institutions, just like the federal government,
are simply too big. In the words of Leopold Kohr:

There seems
only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. It appears
to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Wherever
something is wrong, something is too big.

Daily Bell:
Are modern corporations a problem? Do you they need to be further
regulated?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Big corporations are a problem. Small ones are not.

If Vermont
had been an independent republic ten years or so ago, it could have
kept Wal-Mart out. However, the US Constitution makes it virtually
impossible to do so. Wal-Mart is the Great Satan of Corporate America.

I am against
all forms of bigness – big government, big business, big cities,
big farms, big schools, big universities, big buildings, big churches,
big military and big social welfare.

Daily Bell:
Your articles have appeared in so many publications. What is your
main message?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
The American Empire is a metaphor for the human condition
– separation, meaninglessness, powerlessness and death. Peacefully
rebel against the money, power, speed, greed and size of the icons
of the Empire – the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon,
Wall Street, the Internet, Fox News, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, as well
as the churches, schools and universities which try to appease them.
Live life to the fullest and try to die happy.

Daily Bell:
Why did you move to Vermont? Was your activism mostly as a result
of the increased activity of the US military industrial complex?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
During my last four years at Duke we actually lived
in Richmond, Virginia where I commuted back to Duke weekly. Unfortunately,
Richmond was going to hell in a hand basket. There were 160 homicides
for 200,000 people during our last year. In a big year Vermont experiences
a dozen murders for a population of 625,000 people. My wife had
three personal friends independently murdered in Richmond.

The move to
Vermont was motivated by a longing for community and the search
for a proxy for an Alpine village. Vermont is neat, clean, rural,
green, democratic, nonviolent, safe, noncommercial, egalitarian
and humane. It is a mirror image of the way America once was, but
no longer knows how to be.

Supporters
of the Second Vermont Republic would like to free themselves from
a government which condones illegal wars with Afghanistan, Iraq,
Libya and Pakistan, unconditional support for the Israeli military
machine, a foreign policy based on full-spectrum dominance and imperial
overstretch, multitrillion dollar budget deficits, endless Wall
Street bailouts, corporate greed and fraud, environmental degradation,
dependence on imported oil and a culture of deceit.

Daily Bell:
Should the US cut back on welfare as well as the military-industrial
complex, or should the US aggressively provide more military aid
to countries that have been apparently identified as potentially
in danger of “terrorist” destabilization?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
There is no such thing as a just war. Wars are about
money, power, wealth, size and greed. Wars are fought not to achieve
social justice, but to serve the interests of political elites pretending
to be patriots, who demonize their alleged enemies so as to manipulate
their minions into sacrificing their lives for false ideals.

The threat
of Islamic terrorism is a problem of our government’s own making.
It is grounded in American arrogance, ignorance, racism, imperialism
and support for the terrorist state of Israel. President Bush’s
so-called war on terror was an insidious campaign to create fear
and hatred among Americans and Europeans towards Muslims so as to
rationalize a foreign policy aimed at doing whatever is necessary
to control their oil in the Middle East. Under President Obama it’s
more of the same. Plus the threat of terrorism helps justify trillion-dollar
plus defense budgets, 1.6 million American troops stationed in 1,000
bases in over 153 countries, special operations strike forces in
120 countries and pilotless drone aircraft operating worldwide.

Daily Bell:
You were involved in the 2004 “radical consultation” among
various grass roots secessionist groups in Middlebury, Vermont,
which resulted in the creation of the Middlebury Institute. Tell
us about that.

Thomas H.
Naylor:
November 5-7, 2004, forty people from eleven states
and England attended a conference at the Middlebury Inn co-sponsored
by SVR and the Fourth World of Wessex, England entitled “After
the Fall of America, Then What?” The Fourth World, which published
The Fourth World Review, a periodical inspired by Leopold
Kohr and Fritz Schumacher, was committed to small nations, small
communities, small farms, small shops, the human scale and the inalienable
sovereignty of the human spirit. Speakers included Kirkpatrick Sale,
Robert Allio, Frank Bryan and Thomas H. Naylor.

The underlying
premise of the conference was that the United States had become
unsustainable, ungovernable and unfixable. If that were indeed the
case, then do we go down with the Titanic or seek other alternatives?
Among the options discussed at Middlebury were denial, compliance
and political reform, proven to be dead-ends; revolution, rebellion
and implosion, equally problematic; and decentralization, devolution
and peaceful dissolution. The conference also included a mock town
meeting.

At the close
of the meeting over half of the delegates signed The Middlebury
Declaration, which called for the creation of a movement that would
“place secession on the national agenda, encourage secessionist
organizations, develop communication among existing and future secessionist
groups and create a body of scholarship to examine and promote the
ideas and principles of secessionism.” The Middlebury Institute
headed by Kirkpatrick Sale is now engaged in the pursuit of these
goals. The Middlebury Institute sponsored three North American Secession
Conventions in Burlington, VT (2006), Chattanooga, TN (2007) and
Manchester, NH (2008).

Daily Bell:
You were criticized when it was alleged that some advisory board
members had affiliations with Neo-Confederate groups, such as the
League of the South (LOS). Can you tell us how that happened and
what was your rebuttal?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
From the outset we expected to be attacked by right-wing,
flag-waving, superpatriots, since we were calling for the peaceful
dissolution of the American Empire. What we had not expected was
that beginning in February 2007, we would become the target of a
vicious five-year smear campaign spearheaded by the cash cow of
the civil rights movement, the hate-mongering, witch-hunting, left-leaning
Southern Poverty Law Center accusing SVR and its founders of racism.
In 2008 they issued a so-called “Intelligence Report”
on SVR which read like a government document written by either the
CIA, the FBI, or the Israeli Mossad. In reality these charges had
absolutely nothing to do with racism. They were, in fact, payback
for the articles which I had written criticizing the US government
for its unconditional support of the apartheid state of Israel which
routinely engages in genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.

Daily Bell:
We have identified a lot of Green influences on the Vermont secession
movement. Are you behind a carbon tax agenda?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I think it is safe to say that there is a strong green
influence in the Vermont independence movement. Although Vermont
Commons, the multi-media voice of Vermont independence has most
likely published some pieces about the carbon tax, it is not one
of our passions. Remember, we are more interested in dissolving
the Empire rather than fixing it.

Daily Bell:
Is the world running out of oil?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Although a geologist I am not, I tend to agree with
James Howard Kunstler that the world is most likely running out
of oil. Kunstler was the keynote speaker for both our 2005 and 2008
statewide conventions.

If one looks
closely at all of the wars the US is engaged in, hegemony of the
supply of crude oil appears to be the common subtext, not freedom
and democracy. I think they are all about oil.

Daily Bell:
Does the world need a UN style carbon solution – carbon tax,
etc?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I’m not a big fan of the UN, just one of many international
organizations which is too big to manage. Others include the World
Bank, IMF, NATO and the EU. The UN is merely a front organization
for the US State Department.

Daily Bell:
Are you pro Smart Meter in order to track and tax people’s carbon
usage?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I am unconditionally opposed to the so-called smart
meters. Big Brother lives on.

Daily Bell:
Is the Vermont secessionist movement formally Green, as the Huffington
Post suggested?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
The SVR mission statement says:

Sustainability:
We celebrate and support Vermont’s small, clean, green, sustainable,
socially responsible towns, farms, businesses, schools, and churches.
We encourage family-owned farms and businesses to produce innovative,
premium-quality, healthy products. We also believe that energy independence
is an essential goal towards which to strive.

Daily Bell:
The New Hampshire secessionist movement is not Green. Is this why
you have not made common cause with them?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I am assuming you are referring to the New Hampshire
Free State Project. It is not a secession movement. Its primary
aim seems to be to abolish the government of New Hampshire and create
a state that has no government and no taxes. SVR is not in that
business.

Also, a couple
of years ago I spoke at the Free State’s annual convention. Half
of the people there were actually carrying loaded weapons, as if
to say “Mine is bigger than yours.” Vermont has no gun
control laws, but you will not find people at the SVR statewide
convention walking around with loaded weapons. Frankly, I thought
it looked pretty stupid!

Daily Bell:
Where do you stand on Ron Paul? Will you vote for him? Will your
movement endorse him? Why or why not? Is he a friend of secessionism?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
I like Ron Paul a lot. After all he is a graduate of
the Duke University Medical School, just like my wife. Ironically,
I met him in 1995 at a secession conference sponsored by the Von
Mises Institute in Charleston, SC. It may have been the most interesting
conference I ever attended.

I find myself
in complete agreement with his positions on foreign policy, reduced
military spending, Israel and the Federal Reserve. But in his heart
of hearts, Ron Paul seems to believe that the US government is still
fixable. All we need do is return to the Constitution and everything
will be just fine. But it will never happen. Our Congress is owned,
operated and controlled by Wall Street and Corporate America. They
like the way the Constitution is being interpreted and will see
to it that nothing changes.

In the end,
Ron Paul, not unlike the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, is just
another distraction preventing the American people from seeing that
America is in a death spiral. We will not be able to reform our
way out. This is the endgame! The vast majority of Americans are
in a complete state of denial. Congressman Paul, the Tea Party and
Occupy Wall Street are there to make sure we don’t wake up.

Daily Bell:
Where do you stand generally on the US as empire? Ron Paul disagrees
with this sort of Leviathan.

Thomas H.
Naylor:
A nation that has nearly 1,000 military bases in 153
countries, by definition, cannot be anything other than an empire.

President Obama’s
2012 “Proud to be an American” State of the Union address
was little more than a collection of narcissistic American clichés
aggrandizing our military prowess and hyping war with Iran. Among
the Republican candidates for president, only Ron Paul has not engaged
in this form of demagogic drivel. As today’s most war-like nation,
America’s penchant for trying to solve complex geopolitical problems
with simplistically violent and destructive military solutions goes
virtually unchallenged.

Unfortunately,
there is absolutely nothing new about the notion of American exceptionalism.
Its historical origins can be traced back to the concept of “Manifest
Destiny” or “God’s will” to justify our annihilation
of Native Americans starting in the 16th century. Although our nation
was founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, the story of how Native Americans were relentlessly forced
to abandon their homes and lands and move into Indian territories
to make room for American states is one of arrogance, greed and
raw military power.

The barbaric
conquest of Native Americans continued for several hundred years
and involved many of our most cherished national heroes, including
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson,
to mention only a few. Adding insult to injury, the US government
has violated over 300 treaties, which were signed to protect the
rights of the American Indians.

In over 200
years, the North American continent has never been attacked –
nor even seriously threatened with invasion by Japan, Germany, the
Soviet Union, or anyone else. Despite this fact, over a million
Americans have been killed in wars and trillions of dollars have
been spent by the military – $13 trillion on the Cold War alone.

Far from defending
its homeland, Washington has drafted citizens to die in the battlefields
of Europe (twice), on tropical Pacific islands and in the jungles
of Southeast Asia. On dozens of occasions political leaders have
used minor incidents as provocation to justify sending troops to
such far-flung places as China, Russia, Egypt, Greenland, Uruguay,
the Samoa Islands, Cuba, Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada,
Lebanon and Iraq. Today the United States has a military presence
in 153 countries.

Back in the
1980s, even as it was accusing the Soviet Union of excessive military
aggression, the Reagan administration was participating in nine
known wars – Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Chad, El Salvador,
Ethiopia, Lebanon, Morocco and Nicaragua. The US bombed Tripoli
after the CIA alleged that Libyan secret forces blew up a nightclub
in West Berlin, invaded Grenada and repeatedly attempted to remove
Panamanian dictator Manual Noriega.

President Bush
I deployed over a half million American troops, 50 warships and
over 1,000 warplanes to the Persian Gulf in 1991 at the “invitation
of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to teach Saddam Hussein a lesson.”
Most Americans proudly supported this little war. President Clinton’s
repeated bombing of Iraq invoked a similar response, even though
the Iraqi people had never inflicted any harm on the United States.
It matters not whether we send troops to Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia,
or Kosovo or bomb Afghanistan, Pakistan or Libya. America is “exceptional.”
“We’re number one,” and might makes right.

And since 9/11
the Bush-Obama war on terror has just been more of the same. Full
spectrum dominance and imperial overstretch are the premises on
which American foreign policy is based. All of which leads to so-called
“smart diplomacy” that means sending in drones, Navy Seals
and Delta Force death squads to show who’s boss. That’s what American
exceptionalism is all about – Empire!

Daily Bell:
You don’t think the US is governable anymore. Do you believe in
smaller government?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Just as it was impossible to manage 280 million people
from one central bureau in Moscow, so too is it impossible to manage
310 million people from Washington. The Soviet Union was too big
and contained too many heterogeneous republics, ethnic minorities,
religions and nationalities to be run by Kremlin bureaucrats. Why
should we be surprised that gridlock is the rule on Capital Hill?
What else could we expect from one legislative body trying to represent
so many heterogeneous states, ethnic minorities, political ideologies
and religious sects? The United States is ungovernable and, therefore,
unfixable. It is but one of eleven countries in the world which
has a population of over 100 million people, all of which are ungovernable.

I believe the
time has come for the smaller nation of the world to confront the
meganations and say, “Enough is enough. We refuse to continue
condoning your plundering the planet in pursuit of resources and
markets to quench your insatiable appetite for consumer goods and
services.” These small nations should call for the nonviolent
breakup of the United States, China, Russia, India, Japan and the
other meganations of the world.

A small group
of peaceful, sustainable, cooperative, democratic, egalitarian,
ecofriendly nations might lead the way. Such a group might include
Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

What these
five European nations have in common is that they are tiny, very
affluent, nonviolent, democratic and socially responsible. They
also have a high degree of environmental integrity and a strong
sense of community. Although Denmark and Norway are members of NATO,
Finland, Sweden and Switzerland are neutral. Once considered classical
European democratic socialist states, the four Nordic states in
the group have become much more market-oriented in recent years.
Not only is Switzerland the wealthiest of the lot but it is also
the most market-oriented country in the world, with the weakest
central government, the most decentralized social welfare system
and a long tradition of direct democracy. What’s more, all of these
countries work, and they work very well. Compared to the United
States they have fewer big cities, less traffic congestion, less
pollution, less poverty, less crime, less drug abuse and fewer social
welfare problems.

Three other
small countries that might also join the party are environmentally
friendly Costa Rica, which has no army, ecovillages pioneer Senegal
and the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Since 1982 the king of Bhutan
has been trying to make Gross National Happiness the national priority
rather than Gross National Product. Although still a work-in-progress,
policies instituted by the king are aimed at ensuring that prosperity
is shared across society and that it is balanced against preserving
cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining
a responsive government.

This group
of small, nonviolent, sustainable countries could evolve into the
Small Nations’ Alliance. Such an alliance might encourage the nonviolent
breakup of meganations, the peaceful coexistence of a community
of like-minded, small nations and the independence of small breakaway
states such as Quebec, Tibet and Vermont from larger nations. The
Small Nations’ Alliance could become a sort of international cheerleader
supporting breakaway nations.

We do not envision
the SNA as an international governing body with the power to impose
its collective will on others. Rather we see it as a role model
encouraging others to decentralize, downsize, localize, demilitarize,
simplify and humanize their lives. Membership in the SNA will be
open to those nations who subscribe to the principles of the SNA
and are approved for membership by a consensus of SNA members. The
only mechanism available for enforcing policies endorsed by the
SNA would be expulsion from the organization for noncompliance.

According to
Leopold Kohr: “A small-state world would not only solve the
problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems
of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from
power.”

Daily Bell:
What should government do?

Thomas H.
Naylor:

Power
Sharing.
Vermont’s strong democratic tradition is grounded
in its town meetings. We favor devolution of political power from
the state back to local communities, making the governing structure
for towns, schools, hospitals and social services much like that
of Switzerland. Shared power also underlies our approach to international
relations.

Equal
Opportunity.
We support equal access for all Vermont citizens
to quality education, housing, employment and health care.

Tension
Reduction.
Consistent with Vermont’s long tradition of “live
and let live” and nonviolence, we do no condone any form of
state-sponsored violence. An independent Vermont will have no standing
army. In its place will be a voluntary citizens’ brigade to reduce
tension and restore order in the event of civil unrest and to provide
assistance when natural disasters occur. Tension reduction is the
bedrock principle on which all international conflicts are to be
resolved.

Community.
We support a strong sense of community among our citizens and their
neighbors including their international neighbors.

Daily Bell:
Is government always force? Is force necessary within the context
of the human condition? Should rulers always use force?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
A common underlying problem throughout the United States
is over institutionalization. An institution is a self-perpetuating
social organization created to achieve a specific purpose that enables
its founders and their allies to maintain power and control over
other members through a set of formal rules and regulations. Over
institutionalization has overwhelmed America and resulted in a loss
of community; economic, political and social chaos; as well as violence
and war, so says Butler D. Shaffer in his prescient book Calculated
Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival

(2004).

Our lives have
become hopelessly entangled with and therefore controlled by, a
plethora of institutions. We have become increasingly registered,
licensed, taxed and digitized. According to Professor Shaffer, “We
are born in hospitals, educated in schools, married in churches,
employed in business establishments or government agencies, supervised
by political authorities, retired with institutional pension plans
and government security benefits, and we return to hospitals to
die.” (p. 20)

Continuing,
Shaffer adds, “The political State has not established order;
religions have not made us more moral; education has not blessed
us with wisdom; the mass-marketed affluence or our industrial system
has not provided us with security; our ideologies have not advanced
our understanding.” (p.269) “Institutions are the principal
means by which conflict is produced and managed in society. The
success of institutions depends upon the creation of those conditions
in which personal and social conflict flourish.” (p.6) “In
unity there is vulnerability, not strength.” (p. 292)

No institution
better illustrates the problem of overinstitutionalization than
the government of the United States of America. The US is currently
engaged in a never-ending war against Islam disguised as a war on
terrorism.

According to
Leopold Kohr: “For whenever a nation becomes large enough to
accumulate the critical mass of power, it will in the end accumulate
it. And when it has acquired it, it will become an aggressor, its
previous record and intentions to the contrary notwithstanding.”

Daily Bell:
What is the future of your movement and the US secessionist movement
in general?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Secession is a radical form of rebellion grounded in
anger and fear with a positive vision of the future. For reasons
stated previously, secession is a very tough sell in Vermont and
elsewhere.

The decision
to secede necessarily involves a very personal, painful four-step
process:

1. Denunciation.
The United States has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable,
ungovernable and unfixable.

2. Disengagement.
I don’t want to go down with the Titanic.

3. Demystification.
Secession is a viable option constitutionally, politically and
economically.

4. Defiance.
I personally want to help take my state back from big business,
big market and big government, and I want to do so peacefully.

By far the
most difficult step in the process of deciding to embrace secession
is the emotional one of letting go of one’s images of America as
“the home of the free and the brave” and “the greatest
nation in the world.” These images have been ingrained in most
of us since early childhood. Reinforced by World War II, the Cold
War, an uncritical education system and our pro-American media,
they are very difficult and painful to shake.

The decision
to secede involves reaching the point where you are unwilling to
risk going down with the Titanic and must seek out other
options while there are still other options on the table. Secession
is one such option. But it may very well be the only viable option
available to us.

The Second
Vermont Republic has neither the resources not the persuasive powers
to convince people to consider secession. Unfortunately, our problems
will have to become much worse before a significant number of people
will become more interested in secession in Vermont or elsewhere.
However, some combination of the collapse of the euro, war with
Iran, or the election of Mitt Romney could give rise to a dramatic
increase in interest in secession.

Our next major
event will take place in the House Chamber of the Vermont State
House in Montpelier on September 14, 201. It will be our Third Statewide
Convention on Vermont Independence. Keynote speakers will be Morris
Berman, author of Why
America Failed
, and Lierre Keith, co-author of Deep
Green Resistance
.

Daily Bell:
Are you worried about growing authoritarianism in the US?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Yes. Virtually everything we ever accused the Soviets
of back in the 1980s we are guilty of in spades. Ronald Reagan was
right when he accused the Soviet Union of being an evil empire.
What he overlooked was the fact that it was not the only evil empire
in the world.

Daily Bell:
Any more books planned?

Thomas H.
Naylor:
Since shortly after 9/11 I have been working on a theory
and philosophy of rebellion called Rebél. Its preface follows:

REBÉL

What are
the people of Germany doing? Sleeping. Their sleep is filled with
nightmares and anxiety, but they are sleeping. We have awaited
their awakening for so long, yet they continue to remain stolid,
stubborn, and silent as to the crimes committed in their names,
as if the entire world and its own destiny had become alien to
them. All agree: the German people slumber on amid the twilight
of their gods. They do not love liberty, because they hate criticism.
That is why they are sleeping today.

~ Albert
Camus, September 17, 1944

Albert Camus’s
insightful description of life in Nazi Germany, which appeared
in the clandestine Resistance newspaper Combat a few weeks after
the Liberation of Paris, could just as well have been written
about life in the United States today. Not unlike the people of
Nazi Germany, the American people are also asleep.

We have
slept through the annihilation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and
Palestine, a war with Islam, the rendition of terrorist suspects,
prisoner abuse and torture, the suppression of civil liberties,
citizen surveillance, corporate greed, pandering to the rich and
powerful, global warming, full spectrum dominance, imperial overstretch,
and a culture of deceit. Massive military spending, multi-trillion
dollar budget deficits and Wall Street bailouts, mounting trade
deficits, and a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar
have gone virtually unnoticed.

During our
long period of slumber the United States government has lost its
moral authority. It is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall
Street, Corporate America, and the Israeli Lobby with the full
complicity of the national media. The United States has become
ungovernable, unfixable, and, therefore, unsustainable economically,
politically, militarily, and environmentally. It has evolved into
the wealthiest, most powerful, most materialistic, most racist,
most militaristic, most violent empire of all times.

Paraphrasing
H.L. Mencken, “The leaders we admire most are those who tell
us the biggest lies. Those whom we trust the least are those who
tell us the truth.”

While claiming
to be individualists, we behave as world-class conformists. We
think the same, share many of the same religious beliefs, vote
the same, watch the same TV programs, visit the same websites,
and buy the same low-priced Chinese plastic yuck from Wal-Mart.
“All the women are strong, the men are all good looking,
and all the children are above average,” just as they are
in Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Wobegon. And we all pretend
to be happy. But is it really true?

Even though
we spend over $10 trillion annually on consumer goods and services,
$2.5 trillion of which is for health care, and billions more on
spiritual gurus and religious shamans, are we as happy as we pretend
to be? I think not, because what we are up against is the human
condition, God’s gift to us in the Garden of Eden from which there
is no escape – separation, meaninglessness, powerlessness,
and death. Not a pretty sight. Our feel-good religious leaders
to whom we turn for spiritual solace try unsuccessfully to sugarcoat
it. French existentialist Albert Camus called it absurd.

Unfortunately,
the American Empire itself is a metaphor for the human condition.
Tens of millions are drawn to the Empire in search of a refuge
from the human condition only to discover that the Empire is an
integral part of the problem, not the solution.

What are
our options in terms of possible responses to the existential
angst produced by the human condition? Escape, denial, engagement,
and confrontation.

First, we
may escape the human condition altogether through suicide. We
may choose death and nothingness now over the pain and suffering
associated with separation, meaninglessness, powerlessness, and
fear of eventual death.

Second,
we may deny the human condition through a life based on having
– owning, possessing, manipulating, and controlling people,
power, money, machines, and material wealth. Through having we
try to find security and certainty in an otherwise uncertain world.
Our compulsive desire to have leads to affluenza, technomania,
cybermania, megalomania, robotism, globalization, and imperialism.
Some call it technofascism. It often leads us into the arms of
the Empire in search of a safe haven, which turns out to be illusory.

Third, we
may choose to engage the human condition through being –
by our creations, our personal relationships, our spirituality,
our sense of community, and our stand towards pain, suffering
and death. So-called simple living is a popular form of being.
But if the world is going to hell in a hand basket, for how long
can a life based only on being allay our angst?

Fourth,
we may confront the human condition and peacefully rebél
against the money, power, speed, greed, and size of the icons
of the Empire – the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon,
Wall Street, the Internet, Google, Facebook, Fox News, Wal-Mart,
Apple, and McDonald’s, as well as the churches, schools, and universities
which suck up to them.

Rebél
is a philosophy of rebellion. It provides us with the faith to
claw meaning out of meaninglessness, the energy to connect with
those from whom we are separate, the power to surmount powerlessness,
and the strength to face death rather than deny it. Since the
word rebel has more than one meaning, we use Rebél to connote
resistance to authority and control.

Two rebels
are our role models – Jesus Christ and Albert Camus. One
was thought to have been the Son of God, the Messiah, the other
a French agnostic. One offered a message of hope; the other admonished
us to “live only with what we know.” Both had an uncanny
grasp of the human condition and an unwavering predisposition
towards nonviolent rebellion against it. Somewhat surprisingly,
the Holy Bible turns out to be one of the best handbooks a rebel
can read whether one be an atheist, an agnostic, or a believer.

If life
is absurd, is there any reason to believe that tomorrow or the
day after will be any different from yesterday or the day before,
as in the movie Groundhog
Day
starring Bill Murray? Even though no cosmic source
of meaning has been revealed to us, we find ourselves drawn to
Camus’s idea that the purpose of life is to die happy and that
the path to a happy death leads straight to rebellion.

Therefore,
rebél against the human condition and the Empire, live
life to the fullest, and try to die happy by mindfully defining
your personal legacy, which some call your soul.

However,
Camus warns us that rebellion is no bed of roses. “Conformity
is one of the nihilistic temptations of rebellion. It demonstrates
how the rebel who takes action is tempted to succumb, if he forgets
his origins, to the most absolute conformity.”

Rebél
is not for everyone, particularly not the faint of heart, for
it offers no spiritual elixir or magic potion to relieve our existential
pain. It is neither a fire insurance policy against hell, nor
a ticket to heaven. It is not a touchy-feely, self-help, feel-good,
be-happy philosophy promising pie-in-the-sky to its adherents.
Religious fundamentalists, pacifists, and those in search of a
spiritual nirvana are not likely to be drawn to Rebél.
Although it may not be what we learned in Sunday school, it surely
beats nothingness.

Rebél
is about the peaceful denunciation, demystification, and defiance
of the tyranny of ciphers, which psychiatrist M. Scott Peck called
people of the lie. Its radical imperative involves disengagement,
decryption, decentralization, downsizing, and dissolution.

In the meantime,

Rebél

Thomas H.
Naylor

Daily Bell:
Sites, articles and information you’d like to recommend?

Thomas H.
Naylor:

Websites:

Books:

Daily Bell:
Thanks for sitting down with us.

Thomas H.
Naylor:
It was my pleasure. Imagine…Free Vermont!

Reprinted
with permission from
The
Daily Bell
.

May
14, 2012

Anthony
Wile is an author, columnist, media commentator and entrepreneur
focused on developing projects that promote the general advancement
of free-market thinking concepts. He is the chief editor of the
popular free-market oriented news site, TheDailyBell.com.
Mr. Wile is the Executive Director of The Foundation for the Advancement
of Free-Market Thinking – a non-profit Liechtenstein-based foundation.
His most popular book,
High
Alert
, is now in its third edition and available in several
languages. Other notable books written by Mr. Wile include
The
Liberation of Flockhead (2002) and The Value of Gold (2002).

Copyright
© 2012 The
Daily Bell

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