Editor’s note: This commentary is by KT Cappellini, who is chair of the Windsor County GOP, owner EAAE LLC, a firearms and outdoor-life events promotion company, a real estate investor and a television producer.
[O]n a recent trip to Montana, a place I’ve visited often over the past 12 years, I was taken aback by how much it reminded me of Vermont – and how much it did not.
Like Vermont, it’s a largely rural state with a small population … albeit the fourth largest state at 147,040 square miles, to tiny Vermont’s 9,217 square miles.
And like Montana, Vermont’s a very proud state with a proud people steeped in a storied history, forged in the fires of revolt, open warfare, and blood.
That’s about where the similarities end and the stark differences begin.
Today in Montana, the locus of the “new American West,” the economy is booming. Everywhere one looks, trucks, trains and earth-moving equipment are on the move. Machines are breaking ground. Crews are building homes and schools and businesses. Popular glossy magazines consistently rate Bozeman and Billings as two of the best places to live and work in the U.S.
Montana is achieving this growth in large part due to a willingness to capitalize on the strengths of its core industries – agriculture, natural resources, mining – as well as strategically nurturing new ones – high tech, medical and tourism – and all the while not sacrificing the values that have guided Montanans since before the state’s founding.
At its core, this boom is driven by a fierce pride and belief in doing things in the best interest of Montana and Montanans, not for the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., or the approval of the national press.
This pride has been under siege of late, with a major influx of affluent Californians and their avocado-toast sensibilities decamping for the modern-day boomtowns of Whitefish and Bozeman. The “clash of civilizations” has become pronounced enough to warrant acknowledgement in a prime-time Kevin Costner vehicle, the new hit cable TV show, “Yellowstone.”
Still, for the most part, Montanans have stood fast in the face of open attacks on their core values. In Montana, nature is splendid, but people still come first. They’ll drive lifted diesel pickups without being “carbon-shamed,” and even open-carry their sidearms as they please, thank you very much.
Not so in the once “brave little state” of Vermont.
Like in Montana, a fierce streak of pride runs down the spine of this state, right from the time it became an independent sovereign republic, and Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys burned and sabotaged land-grabbing New Yorkers out of the countryside.
As the “frontier of the East Coast,” most of the folks who settled Vermont’s hills and valleys were a hardy lot who were willing to endure all the hardship and inconvenience of life in a tiny, landlocked, mountainous territory, in exchange for the element of true freedom such a life afforded them.
To hear old-time Vermonters tell it, this all started to change in the 1960s, when Interstate 91 was built and a new wave of “flatlanders” began to descend upon the state en masse.
First came the hippies, with their communes and their free love.
Then came the money from Boston and Connecticut and New Jersey.
These well-heeled migrants wanted more than BO and Birkenstocks. They wanted to enshrine their vision of a bucolic utopia by making it harder and harder for Vermonters to develop the state as they saw fit.
For example, they pushed their guilt-trip model of “sustainability” on a state where folks had gotten along just fine with Mother Nature for quite a long time. Championing things like solar power, in a place with some of the thickest winter cloud cover and heaviest snowfall on the continent defies common sense, and as such, just seemed crazy to your average Vermonter. Yet, with the recent Coolidge Solar Project, Vermont’s new leaders have razed 150 forested acres and replaced them with fields of plastic solar panels.
For the most part, Vermont’s new flatlander class also sought to do away with firearms, local control of schools, and business-friendly zoning laws, three other areas in which they’ve by now found great success.
The equivalent would be like moving to the Florida Keys and trying to ban margaritas … and succeeding.
Economically speaking, Vermont was once known for making important things that folks needed – and in times of war, really needed – like world-class machine tools and rifles.
To be known today for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, maple syrup, gourmet cheese, and more recently, craft beer (and if some get their way, craft cannabis) – while useful in their own right – signifies that the state has become dispensable. Along with ski tourism, and catering to Canadian electric car drivers, Vermont’s economy now depends largely on investments in “luxury” consumables.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of this has been the despair, morphed into a stubborn apathy, preventing Vermonters from calling out what’s been going on for what it truly is: blatant contempt, by those in charge of the state, for the spirit that once made Vermont unique among
the 50 states.
This Nov. 6, voters can halt this attack.
Stop returning politicians to office who will not work toward building a real, viable economy.
Ultimately, voters will decide if Vermont will become just a Disneyland for flatlanders, or a state where average Vermonters can afford to live, work, and raise families.
