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by Gerald Malloy
I would like to share some thoughts and observations as I have been campaigning for US Senate across Vermont. First I want to say thank you for the incredible support and interest I have been receiving. BLUF, statewide that indomitable spirit of liberty is alive and well.
One of the reasons I am writing is that we are about to celebrate our Nation’s 248th birthday on Independence Day. I am looking forward to parades in Montpelier and Colchester and Brownsville, the Coolidge Cup (happy birthday President Coolidge), fireworks, barbecues, and happy faces. I remember going to the Esplanade Hatch Shell with my entire family, all 10 of us, for the Bicentennial 4th of July with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops in 1976, a fond memory, a different time.
Back to the present, about a week ago I heard the song “Crossroads”, the 1968 Cream live version, and that has led me to many thoughts, past present and future, about Vermont and our Country. I first spoke about Vermont and the United States being at a crossroads, not being on a good path, over two years ago in a speech in Castleton, and now just within the past few months I have had several speaking engagements that led to discussions about Vermont over the past 50+ years. When I heard “Crossroads”, and in thinking about Independence Day, I decided to dig a little deeper.
I re-read the April 1972 article “Taking Over Vermont“ by Richard Pollak and I read the 1970 paper “Jamestown Seventy” by James Blumstein and James Phalen. I would urge every Vermonter to read them both.
Messrs. Blumstein and Phelan propose political migration to a single state for the purpose of gaining political control and then establishing a living laboratory for experimentation. Mr. Pollak takes that idea and applies it to Vermont.
I think a Vermont reader today will be surprised, maybe even shocked, at the prophetic nature of both articles. I certainly was, particularly with “Jamestown Seventy”. To get right to the point, I read “Jamestown Seventy” very closely and frankly I fully agree with the ideas of state rights, decentralization, and state innovation; and the article lays out many of the pitfalls and problems associated with implementation.
And that is where Vermont is today, with a supermajority in the state legislature and in its congressional delegation. We’ve seen 12 common-sense vetoes from our very popular Governor overridden in the last 13 months. Vermont has become unaffordable and unsafe and a place to leave. The experiment is failing badly for many reasons, including fentanyl now pouring in on the “open borders”, but primarily because the movement shifted from ‘ideas’ to an centralized no-deviation Agenda, and Vermont lost ‘balance’.
I have sought to engage Mr. Pollak and Messrs. Blumstein and Phelan. I did want to share that I was successful in engaging Mr. Blumstein. He is now a Distinguished Law Professor at Vanderbilt University and has taught at Dartmouth and Penn. I had emailed him and to my surprise shortly thereafter I got a call from the 615 area code.
More to my surprise, Professor Blumstein immediately told me that he had already supported my campaign. I had no idea of this. We spoke for a long time and he relayed some regret with his paper, talked about the paper’s ‘rhetoric’, input from a law student named Hillary Rodham, and growing up in Brooklyn where his father taught math at James Madison High School. He has an amazing body of work and was a pleasure to speak with. I discussed the status quo in Vermont, crime/drugs/a 14% tax hike and other cost burdens/exodus, and how the ‘experiment’ had gone off the rails with the supermajority and a lack of balance.
I also did some research on “Crossroads” as the song has a long history and different interpretations. I found some comments by Eric Clapton himself: “…a world where there is little hope…the crossroads is about choosing which path to go down. It’s about the moral decisions you make every day.”
Many in Vermont have heard me say ‘May the fourteenth star shine bright’. Right now we are not shining bright, we are on a bad path, we do not have balance or “Unity”, we are at a crossroads. Vermonters will decide the path for Vermont this November. I meet Vermonters every day that are ready to change Vermont itself for the better – and that really is what the article and paper are all about in the first place.
Happy 4th of July!
The author is a Perkinsville resident running for U.S. Senate as a Republican.
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Categories: Commentary, politics
Thank you for this…
Also the second link (“Jamestown Seventy” by James Blumstein and James Phalen)
is not working.
https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/17840/09_1YaleRevL_SocAction55_1970_1971_.pdf?sequence=2
Thank you!
This posted quote: “by Eric Clapton himself: “…a world where there is little hope…the crossroads is about choosing which path to go down. It’s about the moral decisions you make every day.”
Hit me like a ton of bricks. So close of a favorite of mine about in the same vein. I have it on my personal ID card. Poem by Robert Frost who spoke at JFK’s inauguration in 1961, Frost died two years later, buried in Bennington VT: To me it has similar meanings.
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Good luck in making a difference in VT.
Not to be confused with the author of the song, Robert Johnson. The crossroad was where one met the Devil and made a deal.
Jamestown 70 link does not work
https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/17840/09_1YaleRevL_SocAction55_1970_1971_.pdf?sequence=2
Thank you
Very interesting article.
I suppose the only question I would have is whether the takeover would have been possible as an isolated case – that is without the help of the Federal Government.
The subversion, because that is what it is, can only work if some larger, outside agency can provide material support for the long period of time that the process needs. Had Vermont’s government not had the benefit of huge injections of Federal money, the relatively small number of social activists would indeed have been beaten by Vermont winter.
And that is the problem. Subversion here was not a standalone thing. It was nourished from the outside. Federal money is available for every adverse event, for every fashionable initiative and every social ill. It floods into the state to support education initiatives, health coverage (Medicaid), homeless “services”, infrastructure, green energy initiatives to name just a few.
So if we are to get back to anything like a healthy place, we are going to have to take some extremely unpopular positions. Most notably, we will have to refuse the Federal dollars offered to fix every fallen tree limb.
That is a policy that will NOT find votes. Especially when more than 50% of Vermont’s non farm workforce is employed by the very sectors that depend on these federal funds (State and municipal government, education, health and non profit entities).
We have to keep talking. We have to say our piece. But we also have to understand that it is likely only through collapse that the veracity of Mr Malloy’s ideas will be proven popular.
I have enormous respect for Mr Malloy’s patience and perseverance. I will support you, sir but I hold out little hope that you can persuade those whose livelihoods depend on the very things that are destroying us.
Trustafarians.
“ Very interesting article.
I suppose the only question I would have is whether the takeover would have been possible as an isolated case – that is without the help of the Federal Government.”
Oh it’s worse now.
We have a Representative, Balint, who got a huge $1,000,000 injection for campaign publicity, passed through Ukraine. No consequences!!!!
She is running again. Is this going to be stopped? She has no business being in government.
https://vtdigger.org/2023/02/28/becca-balints-1-million-crypto-benefactor-pleads-guilty-to-campaign-finance-fraud/
Cloward-Piven Strategy is alive and hard at work in Vermont in concert with the functional application of Marxist theory by those seeking to control or lives for our own good! Working on solidly gaining control of the 51% of the electorate dependent on the government largess at all levels is the plan and the death of our republic as it exists is within their grasp unless major political changes occur in this state and nation.
The Jamestown 70 experiment has a thriving model. The Free State Project selected New Hampshire as its first home. They are a welcoming community for us, in a less restrictive state. I’d like to see some Free State enclaves here, so nobody feels compelled to move. But that option is just across the RIver. Mark Stewart Greenstein — U.S. Senate candidate vs. B.S.
Don’t waste your time with stuff like this. Your “campaign” is way off track. You’re never going to get to 30% by courting the far right. All your campaign rhetoric is aimed towards that 20% at best. You need to figure out how to reach the middle and forget the far right. If you continue to align yourself with them and Trump your campaign will do much worst than last election.
Get a new staff.
Get a new website.
Get new messaging.
Everything in your campaign needs to be revamped. Can’t you find a better Digital Marketer to help you.
This is a semantical argument. In practice, phrases such as “far right” lose their meaning.
Re: “You need to figure out how to reach the middle and forget the far right.”
As I said to another TDS sufferer.
“So, pander to Vermont’s progressives and pretend that ‘Trump-centric’ is unworthy of the elitist RINO administrative state. Pay no attention to eliminating cronyism, lowering taxes, establishing School Choice, controlling the border, holding criminals accountable, or re-establishing Trump’s foreign policy? ”
Question: How’s that working out for you so far?
Why do people chastise somebody they know will lose? The VTGOP has lost for 30 years straight…..and will lose again on epic proportions.
This article speaks to some truth about our Vermont issues. Truth is like sunlight it’s needed. The remnant will bring about change because of this. Even if he does not win, he brought more thought and vision with this one article than anything the VTGOP has produced or done for decades.
The process was taken on steroids. No doubt the trolls of marxist thought have moved into this little state from NY and Chicago, we are the home capital of Astro Turf organizations, from Rights and Democracy to these stupid college campus completely orchestrated protests about the middle east all equipped with the same exact tent.
The truth is both ideas will not work, until people are humbled enough nothing will change. We are so full of pride that we all know we are right, push forward and get the same exact results.
Our state from that period has produced not a citizenship with an understanding of our countries founding, but one of envy, division, self-love as even demonstrated on our license plates with “Vermont Strong” whereby we think our government as a god.
It is an asymmetrical war, that cannot be won on conventional terms, on a full-frontal assault, when the press are owned, almost entirely, when government runs cancel culture, when government is the largest employer and giver of money.
It could be easily won if we only used the inflexibility of marxist thought against itself, exposing them for power and money-orientated people that they are.
They are not for lifting up the poor, they are for making money off them and keeping them poor for their own job security.
They are not for affordability, they are for running everything through the government to get their take on the issues.
They are not for then environment by any means, they are for controlling everything you own by regulation and taxation. This one particular unicorn the put out could be easily slaughtered……and burned on the trash heap of lies they produce. How?
No tax on all vehicles that have a combined fuel economy above 25mpg, helps the poor and environment, they will never do it, because it goes against the real goal, money and power.
Reduced tax on all homes less than 1200 sq ft…..environmentally sound, great for poor, they won’t do this either.
Promotion of home ownership, small homes for the residents of Vermont, they won’t do this either, but they will give free money to out of state owners to come into our state if they are BIPOC or Muslim religion.
When you understand your enemy, you live to fight another day. We could go into the most leftist areas of the state and get signatures on the most republican ideals with the proper wording, because ultimately, most people want the same things. We needn’t give up any ideals, we only need to have a heart of love toward our neighbors and those who are guided by an unhelpful spirit.
You don’t have to be marxist to get the vote of Vermonters, but you do have to be wiser than the snakes you’re dealing with and more innocent than doves.
Tom, Give him a hand!
The term “far right” means nothing as the definition is continually changing. Today, the so called far right used to be concerned right of center. This political rhetoric and slander is intentional as the political left continually moves the metric of what is considered far-right support their progressive politics, ideology and internationist goals. Soon those identifying as Democrats will be deemed as right wingers.
Ask your candidates how its working out;
Anya Tynio,
Seth Manley,
JT Dodge,
Mark Coester,
Gerald Malloy,
Greg Thayer,
your Chittenden County right wingers
Re:
Ask your candidates how its working out;
Anya Tynio,
Seth Manley,
JT Dodge,
Mark Coester,
Gerald Malloy,
Greg Thayer,
your Chittenden County right wingers
Nice try, again, Mr. Arnold. Your response is yet another classic false dichotomy.
First, the so-called right-wing candidates on your list are currently campaigning for the 2024 election and it remains to be seen ‘how they are doing’. But we do know how your recommended candidates are doing, …don’t we? Who are they again?
Never mind that your criticism of Gerald Malloy remains unsubstantiated.
And your list of Statewide republican candidates is curiously incomplete (e.g., Phil Scott, John Rogers, Joshua Bechhoefer).
Locally you ignore my district’s two state senate Republican candidates, Dale L. Gassett and Richard Morton. Check them out.
But hey, keep it coming, Mr. Arnold. But let me suggest that you first re-adjust your ‘sheep’s clothing’. My, my, what big progressive teeth you have.
Someone wanted to know how it was working out.
Well, we know this doesn’t work. It’s equally important to know what is known not to work.
Ask your candidates how its working out;
Anya Tynio,
Seth Manley,
JT Dodge,
Mark Coester,
Gerald Malloy,
Greg Thayer,
your Chittenden County right wingers
I give Malloy credit for dumping and distancing himself from the right wingers who hijacked his last campaign. He knows what didn’t work. If Malloy inconceivable manages a victory, we’re still going to have a millionaire Senator. Both, who made fortunes off of the government.
Trump’s new RNC platform, a little foreshadowing here, will minimize alienating topics such as abortion, LB???? yada yada, climate, and healthcare.
Let’s hope VT Republicans can learn and follow suit and yet, distance themselves from Trump.
I still see your progressive pearly whites, Mr. Arnold. Still not a word regarding republicans Phil Scott, John Rogers, Joshua Bechhoefer, Dale L. Gassett and Richard Morton. I guess they just don’t fit your narrative.
At least you’re beginning to concede a little on Malloy’s candidacy.
We’ll see what happens in the August primary, and then in November.
Hi Tom –Bernie is getting another challenger. This is from the “liberty left”. The candidate is I, a Jeffersonian. Even progressives should be appalled at the Biden administration’s big-government, big-corporate, pro-war policies. Bernie no longer stands up for Traditional Democratic positions; Bernie has become a toady for Biden.
“I remember going to the Esplanade Hatch Shell with my entire family, all 10 of us, for the Bicentennial 4th of July with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops in 1976, a fond memory, a different time.” I was there too, with my best friend from grammar school. “Class of ’76.” A great time and a great era!
You mentioned “a living laboratory for experimentation.” By definition, a living laboratory would need to have living subjects; in the case of social experimentation, human subjects. Isn’t this a violation of human rights and the Geneva Convention? For example, say that a law was passed in Inuit territory prohibiting the seal hunt, for the purpose of seeing how these original inhabitants of the land would survive without a mainstay of their culture. “Experimentation” assumes careful observation of the results. I suppose the authors of such an experiment would be curious to see how innovative, resourceful, and mutually helpful the Inuit could be in such a dire situation. As for me, given their tendency to be innovative, resourceful, and helpful, I have confidence that the people of Vermont will somehow weather this onslaught of financial bleeding. I can only hope that the return of Donald Trump in January will quell much of the nonsense, including what has gone on at the state level.
Unfortunately, we have willing experimental subjects here in Vermont; we have blue-dog or yellow-dog Democrats who will crawl to the mailbox and vote D for Dunce even if they have radiation poisoning. I plan to vote a straight Republican ticket, if possible, under those or even worse conditions.
To be fair to the people turning us into their lab monkeys, Vermont does seem to be ideal for their “experiments.”
You have my whole family’s support sir.. Thank you for giving Vermonters another option! Good luck!
Seems like about 20 years ago a group promoted the idea of a mass migration of conservatives to a purple state and they took a vote. It was New Hampshire that got the vote, but has anyone heard of it’s still a thing? They may have gotten overwhelmed by too many liberals moving north to get out of Taxachusetts, who of course maintained their old voting habits.
Remember, the hippies came to Vermont because it was cheap to live and no one told you what to do. Now they and their children run the legislature and many state agencies and drive up the cost of living and take great delight in telling others what to do.
never fear, as long as the federal funds, grants and bonding more debt, vermont will live on forever///// i pity the poor suckers, whom will have to pay the taxes//// stagflation and inflation will rule/// stay tuned for coming events, thanks to the federal reserve bankers////
A rat infestation usually gets so bad for the rats that they have to find a new cleaner place to abide. We see it in California where Colorado and Texas have become the rat destination points. Vermont aka (eastern California and Northern Massachusetts) is fast approaching that condition. My only hope is that enough good people stay around to clean up the mess. I hope my Deploy Malloy sign can be dusted off and reused.
I don’t know a lot about you Mr Malloy, but I applaud you for getting involved and trying to make a difference. So many people think it is enough to provide endless commentaries on social media, including this site. and somehow that is going to make a difference. They write the same old crap day after day. It is so predictable, I could right their comments for them. It accomplishes nothing. If only they would take the time they spend writing all those comments and took real action, we might really be able to change this state.
Again, thanks for taking action.
I can remember interim zoning in small towns over fears that the idiots on college campuses would migrate to a small town and take over it didn’t happen then it was only after they amassed enough money to come here and create a super majority they came alright.
_________
from “Taking over Vermont” —
“When the Black Panthers tried to start a colony in Wilkins County a gang of night riders drove them away in the now-infamous torching at Little Hosmer Pond.”
“Up against the Canadian border near Island Pond, Earth Peoples Park, Inc., has purchased 594 acres.”
___
The set-up: A pair of park residents purportedly sold $500 worth of marijuana to an undercover narcotics agent. This “gave” the federal government probable cause to seize the land, ultimately evicting everyone living there and destroying all structures on the property.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Peoples_Park#Legal_issues_leading_to_seizure_of_land_by_federal_government
(This is the equivalent of stealing an entire condominium tower because one resident was caught with cannabis. So much for the “land of the free.”)
_____________________
from “JamesTown Seventy” —
“Since ratification of the Constitution, there has been an erosion of the power of the states.”
True!
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/
“The Ninth Amendment made it clear that the people retained rights even if not specifically enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”
— Which makes the seizure of cannabis and land in the Earth People’s case ultimately unlawful.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
— Convicted watergate burglar John Erlichman
Well done Mr. Malloy, especially taking me back to the 1970s when I wondered where all the ‘hippies” and “revolutionaries” had gone from various New England (and other areas) had gone. I learned the answer in 1981 when we relocated to Vermont for a job. A large number of those “hippies” and “revolutionaries” had moved to and settled in Vermont! Part of this movement I believe came during the 1960s as well. Not to be forgotten during this movement is when Bernie Sanders came to Vermont. As I understand, his initial foray into Vermont politics was to attempt to make his activist mark in whatever the “socialist/marxist” parties or organizations were at the time(?). Apparently those efforts didn’t succeed. Instead, I believe his efforts as a “socialist/marxist” progressive activist started to take hold in Vermont politics due to 2 reasons; 1.) by Bernie calling himself an “independent,” and 2.) by the “democrat” party enabling/allowing itself to be co-opted by Bernie.
This resulted in Bernie becoming mayor of Burlington in 1981 by something like 5 votes! The rest is history, with Bernie and his progressive, socialist, and extremely liberal followers having completely taken over the Vermont democrat party, and leading Vermont toward socialism over the years.
Hopefully Vermonters will wake up to what has taken place in our state.
I think I read this article in PLAYBOY in the seventies. I thought it a great idea, too bad the wrong party did it. I moved from NJ in ’75. Fell in love with the land, trees water, people. Also, NJ, the garden state became overpopulated by liberals. It was no longer the great place to live. But VT, so inviting and…republican. But now, it is too much like NJ. And if real republicans do not take it over soon, I am out of here!
Vermont is no longer the place I grew up in many years ago. Very sad’
I am just now reading this while catching up on things. Yes-“Take Over Vermont” was definitely on the agenda of such folks, but it is my understanding that those classes started back in the 60s at Goddard College. As an example Bernie was hanging out around there then, while he was “couch surfing” in northern Vt. I live too close to Goddard. S0-I’m quite familiar with the “free thinking” place.
I am behind you 200% Gerald. I have your sign in my field, and I’m surrounded by “Bernie Lovers”. UGH!!
I’m delighted to see a candidate run for any office who understands this backstory. The story of how we got to where we are. Such a beautiful place with such a messed up set of leaders. Apologies to the few good shiny apples among them because as a whole they are a mess. Let’s hope Malloy can knock Mr BS out of the picture with a home run. Malloy has my support as well.