By Steve Deal
There is a two hundred- and fifty-year-old political virtue lesson in the John Adams story about building a Navy in 1775. Economic independence drives political independence. Nothing could matter more to Vermonters today.
Any organization or state, including Vermont, is less independent, less stable, and less in command of its own destiny when it is constantly obliged to another power, even the federal government.
There is a moral and fiscal bankruptcy involved in asking the federal government to pay you to protest it, while at the same time escaping accountability for your own failures to the people you claim to serve. But that is public broadcasting today, and education, and utilities, and a whole lot more.
Yet the existing political majority structure of the state has literally banked upon scores of nonprofits and state programs, most of which depend upon federal grants, that serve the needs of the Vermont people.
Federal and nonprofit partnerships have their place. There is nothing wrong with help. What’s wrong is when help becomes habit — when aid replaces accountability and comfort replaces competence.
Check out the 990s of these nonprofits online and look at how much executives are making compared to the average. Many pieces of enabling legislation, like the Older Americans Act of 1965, started out earnestly, filling genuine societal needs many generations ago.
Now they are essentially jobs programs, with benefits expanded far beyond their original intent and with zero accountability. Yes, there are still many people in real need, but the programs that accomplish this are often out of control, insolently questioning anyone who threatens their cash cows while leaning on a moral mountaintop.
Like it or hate it, what President Trump has done is the equivalent of draining the pool to see who’s been swimming naked, to paraphrase Warren Buffett. Take away federal funding for any program and what happens? Is it actually delivering something of value? Who screams the loudest? Who steps up to “give voice” for those who supposedly can’t speak for themselves? What happened to the notion that our state GDP should fund, through its own tax receipts, the services we need? Why are we so blind to the economic bow wave clearly threatening healthcare, insurance, energy, housing, and nearly every pillar of modern existence?
Will “someone” save us from these worries as they did from the 1980s to today, by kicking the can, going deeper into debt, creating even more conduits for federal money, and thus mortgaging our capacity to lead ourselves?
And the shame of it all is that the vast majority of Vermonters are resilient. They may call themselves Democrats and vote Democrat or Progressive, but most have little idea what the Democratic Party stands for anymore.
The people who are most vocal about federal assistance are the ones who want to profit the most from it: those in liberal progressive cliques who are similarly educated and have the same bona fides. More and more are arriving from out of state to make their living from this moral bankruptcy, while taking advantage of everyday people who just want good jobs and a better life for their children.
They don’t care that their usurpation of the power centers on the coasts and cities of this nation has turned the rest of blue-collar America toward President Trump. They don’t care about the true economic and political independence of this state or its ability to drive its own destiny. They don’t care that it is business and opportunity for the majority that they are squelching by means of their self-serving activism.
All they really care about is the here and now, their own consumerist needs, and their ascendancy along the national liberal money and power track.
What Governor Scott is fighting for, whether you know it or not, is essentially our freedom. Our independence.
Do you want another state’s National Guard in Burlington clearing out the city-funded drug cartels from Church Street so our citizens can once again go Christmas shopping with their families in peace?
Or deploying to our northern border towns to stop the flow of migrants, and I don’t mean humble people looking for opportunity and honest work, but those with foreign and ideological motivations who see Vermont as a soft target?
Our nation’s creed is the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When those promises – our natural rights – are threatened, the federal government will eventually find a way to restore them, because they constitute the reason why the nation exists in the first place.
Republicans need to offer a different perspective, one with much larger breadth, one that has the capacity for a nonpartisan majority. To help lift our economic capacity, and therefore our political freedom and beloved, dogged independence. To end the causes of our moral bankruptcy which sustains the resulting fiscal bankruptcy plaguing our most vulnerable. To stand with those Vermont families who fell in the yawning gaps created by the irreconcilable differences between progressive promises and their personal ambitions.
What will this take?
Humility, for one. Honesty and integrity. Staying out of the national social media wars, and all the ugliness those wars bring. Remaining focused on regaining our own economic independence, and thus our political future. Having renewed faith in freedom and unity. Continually educating ourselves, our families, and our communities in virtue.
Let’s face it. Governor Scott is the only thing standing between Vermont and a continued moral and fiscal bankruptcy that would end any remaining semblance of independence. He is also the only proven unifier known for decades. What every citizen should do, anyone who sees the picture painted above for what it is – in reality, and not ideology – is write the Governor and ask him to run again.
Steve Deal is a retired naval officer and decorated combat veteran living in St. Albans, VT.