Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Don Keelan, a certified public accountant and resident of Arlington. The piece first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
The Vermont state motto is “Freedom & Unity”; the “unity” portion is in jeopardy of coming apart. This is due to the constant indoctrination that we are in a struggle between the haves and the have-nots, expressed another way, the 99% vs. the 1%.
Over the past 15 years Vermont has been able to overcome several disunifying issues, namely Act 60 and civil unions. The former pitted wealthy towns, euphemistically described as “gold towns,” against the rest of the state. The rancor from this issue has subsided to a large degree.
The civil union issue, while contentious at first with Vermont being the first state to legally recognize such relationships, evolved into being accepted.
There has also been the perennial dividing issues within our state that seems to never go away — flatlanders vs. native Vermonters; pro-growth vs. non-growth, pro-nuclear energy vs. anti-nuclear; and more recently, wind energy advocates vs. the anti-wind sector. These and several other conflicting issues pale when matched with the potential destruction that can be wrought by setting the rich against the poor.
The advocates of maintaining the issue of the class struggle have some powerful and influential cheerleaders — President Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, along with movie producer Michael Moore and columnist Paul Krugman. These are intelligent individuals and they are well aware of what they are doing — casting one group against the other.
To this list we can add Burlington’s Rep. Chris Pearson, one of a handful of Progressives in the Vermont Legislature. Mr. Pearson recently introduced legislation to have Vermont’s wealthiest be responsible to “button up” homes of the least wealthy. Pearson was quoted in Peter Hirschfeld’s recent Rutland Herald article: “The proposal takes money from people who can spare it to assist families that could use it.”
The only bright spot here is that Gov. Shumlin doesn’t support Pearson’s tax idea.
In many states, America continues to be mired down in an economic recession. The lack of jobs, the quality of jobs, the compensation and benefits have been seriously compromised. Many believe that this came about because of the greed and recklessness of the Wall Street crowd — and they are not entirely wrong in harboring such opinions. What is absent from much of the discourse is the fact that we are engaged in a global economy — nations that were a generation ago “dirt poor” are today our economic rivals.
The cheerleaders advocating the class struggle would just as soon ignore this and continue to tear away at those who have wealth.
One hundred and fifty years ago, another American president was witnessing a similar issue but reacted differently. It was President Abraham Lincoln and the time was 1864, the place, in New York City, before a gathering of labor union members. John T. Richards, in his book, “Abraham Lincoln — The Lawyer Statesman” (1916), notes what President Lincoln had told the gathering:
“The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds, nor should this lead to a war upon property or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich; and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”
There should be no room in Vermont for those who advocate class warfare. We should guard against those who would lead us on to this dark and ugly journey. Vermont has always welcomed those with wealth and those with little wealth. A century ago the Lincolns, the Vanderbilts, the Everetts and the Rockefellers called Vermont their home. Manchester’s Hildene, Shelburne Farm and Museum, and Southern Vermont College are the 21st century benefactors of their legacy to Vermont.
Vermonters will never have universal consensus on every issue — nor should we. We don’t need to have a band of cheerleaders who knowingly want nothing else but to balkanize our state. “Unity and Freedom” and now “Vermont Strong” are the currencies we wish to embrace — not divisiveness.
