Editor’s note: This commentary is by Deborah Bucknam, of Walden, who was the Republican candidate for attorney general in 2016. She is a graduate of Vermont Law School in private practice in St. Johnsbury and past vice chair of the Vermont Republican Party.
[I]n 1928, President Calvin Coolidge, a Vermont native, said: “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.” Alarmingly, Vermont is no longer a brave little state with a generous store of liberty; it has become a state where people of dissident views are shamed and bullied into silence. Even worse, our leaders are mute in the face of these attacks. Some recent events illustrate my point.
In February of this year, the Vermont General Assembly passed a Black Lives Matter resolution by an overwhelming margin, with just a handful of dissident votes. The remarks by the only representative on the floor of the House who dared to speak against the resolution were a polite dissent from some of the terms of the resolution. The representative urged its author to “… come back with a resolution more likely to bring us together and less likely to imply Vermont is populated by bigots.” That was not good enough for Democratic Rep. Kiah Morris, who, on statewide radio, called her dissenting colleague’s speech “racist” and said he had engaged in “race talk.”
In March, VTDigger published my commentary lamenting the scandalous state of education for African-American children, the stereotyping of African-Americans, and the increased physical danger to African-Americans by less aggressive policing in their crime-ridden neighborhoods. Instead of discussing the merits of the issues I raised, the chair of the Washington County Democratic Committee, Maggie Lenz, called my essay a “monolithic, ethnocentric diatribe of white supremacy.”
More recently, Democratic Sen. John Rodgers was forced to apologize for his remarks on the Senate floor during the gun control debate for stating that some people from out of state wanted to change Vermont’s culture. Laura Wilson, chair of the Orleans County Democratic Committee, called Rodgers’ remarks “ugly” and “divisive,” and she threatened to withdraw the Democratic Party’s support for Rodgers in this year’s election. In none of those instances did any Democratic leader publicly chide Morris or Lenz and Wilson for their insulting comments or threats.
In none of those instances did any member of the media ask Democrats to comment on the appropriateness of the epithets these Democratic leaders hurled at dissenting views.
In contrast to the above, when the Vermont Republican Party simply posted a variation of the political slogan of their party’s national leader, VTDigger immediately sought comment from Republicans on whether the “Make Vermont Great Again” language was appropriate. Digger published a 1,000 word article, quoting various Republicans who criticized the message. Republican Heidi Scheuermann, called the Republican promotion “abusive and angry.”
Vermont’s leaders and media are following a national trend that normalizes vile name calling like “racist,” “white supremacist” and “ugly” levelled against non-conformist views. Such shaming inevitably results in a suppression of dissenting voices.
Greatness comes to a culture where liberty flourishes because its citizens are brave. We can make Vermont free speech great again by cherishing dissent, not vilifying it. We can do this by assuming those with opposing views want the same outcomes for Vermonters as we do, but have different ideas as to how to achieve those outcomes. We can attain this by making Vermont a sanctuary state for the First Amendment.
