This commentary is by Michael Caldwell of North Wolcott, a member of the international ecumenical Iona Community. His syndicated monthly column, The Radical Center is a syndicated monthly column transcending current fractures in culture and religion.
I used to read John McClaughry’s commentaries. I was always edified by his grasp of the technicalities of the issues, usually annoyed by his snarky contempt for anything not entirely right-wing, never sorry I took the time.
No more. He’s no longer worth reading.
McClaughry, vice president of the conservative Ethan Allen Institute, has for decades kept left-leaning Vermont honest. Referencing Ethan Allen focuses the institute’s advocacy on behalf of its traditionalist base. The Constitution of the Republic of Vermont for which Allen and the Green Mountain Boys fought was the first in history to prohibit slavery.
The state’s legacy is Republican, as Lincoln was Republican. Its people are practical and wary of intrusive government. Just as early settlers wouldn’t hold slaves, they wouldn’t abide the tax-hungry incursions of an old enemy — the state of New York — like traditionalists now don’t abide Montpelier’s purported excesses.
McClaughry’s “Freedoms” columns milked the tradition, espoused the traditional values of traditionalist Vermonters. Unfortunately, McClaughry gives no significant voice to the original traditional people of Vermont — the Abenaki. Their earth-based culture’s values intrinsically address the climate change crisis which McClaughry denies with glee: “For the past decade, the most popular idea for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to fight the Menace of Climate Change has been subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles so that even low-income and disadvantaged people can get one.”
Oh, what sin Montpelier commits in giving bootstraps to working people with which they might pull themselves up to drive affordable EVs.
What sin to give wealthy Vermonters an avenue for contributing to Vermont’s core values — diversity, inclusion, equity — in climate change remediation at all points, including the gas pump.
What sin to craft policies that address the blindness of neighbors like McClaughry who irresponsibly deny climate change and denigrate its advocates with acerbic arrogance bordering on hilarity.
What gets lost when people stop reading him is his legitimate resistance to a proposed prohibition of buying and selling internal combustion vehicles by 2035.
When horses gave way to cars, hangers-on hung on, still rode horses, drove horses. It might have made more sense to make the switch, but horse travel only gradually diminished due to the power of cultural norms. Big change always takes time. Hangers-on need to be accommodated.
Anybody give any thought to an old-timer driving the first model of a hybrid EV-gas-powered car in a Memorial Day parade in 2036?
Expect resistance. Deal with it sensitively, not with unnecessary strong-arm tactics that will ultimately delay the transition we need. Bring traditionalists along instead of ignoring their understandable resistance. Healing addiction to any substance, including fossil fuel, does not happen readily through cold turkey remedies.
Arbiters of future commonwealths of integrity will have saved the planet from its idiots. They will also accommodate the full spectrum of the population, culturally and politically, so that movement toward an elusive radical center is respected.
Healthy communication is needed between the right and the left, leading to community, locally, that will inform the best ethics and politics of the future.
Who will be the new McClaughry worth listening to? Who will be the new voice of an institute also in need of new nomenclature? Why Ethan Allen, a character of questionable ethics? Why not the Aiken Institute, honoring George Aiken, classic Vermont Republican who famously crossed party lines in the Vietnam War debate, presciently telling the nation to “declare victory and go home.”
The Republic needs new Republicans, true to their true historic identity.
