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Will a silver token become the currency of a free and independent Vermont? Will it have value as a collectible or be an icon of a never-realized dream? About the size of a silver dollar, the token has been recently minted. It’s called the “The Second Vermont Republic’s Scott Nearing 50 Clover Silver Token” and it is valued at $50 (one clover equals one buck). |
The design is simple, stark but elegant. Scott Nearing’s portrait appears on the front—you know who he is, don’t you?—and his head is circled by the words “Second Vermont Republic.” On the reverse, the words “Independence, Freedom and Unity” surround a bas-relief of the Green Mountain Boys’ flag, which was flown by the Republic of Vermont between 1777 and 1791, when it was an independent nation. Centered over the flag is a red clover, the Vermont state flower.
Scott Nearing? Isn’t he long dead? Yes, but his ideas are still alive. Nearing was an economics professor, socialist, communist, vegetarian and pacifist— and always a radical—who equated American capitalism with unfettered wealth that was choking initiatives and economic advancement. He was fired from two universities for speaking his mind. After traveling through Russia and Asia and writing hundreds of political pamphlets, he and his wife Helen retreated in 1932 to Jamaica, Vermont,where they lived for 18 years, farming, writing and teaching those who joined him. Some called the Nearings the first green revolutionaries of the 20th century. Along the way, Scott realized that being a dissident doesn’t work too well within the American political system. He came to these conclusions: |
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Thomas Naylor with a replica of the Green Mountain Boys’ flag, flown
by the Republic of Vermont between 1777 and 1791.
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 In 2003, Naylor helped to found the Second Vermont Republic, a movement
committed to the “peaceful return of Vermont” to an independent republic.
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If the dissident wins, a personal dictatorship or oligarchy is formed. If the dissident becomes part of the structure, balkanization of ideas is the result, with possible civil war. If the group in control wins, the dissident is eliminated.
From his farm near the present day Stratton ski resort, Scott Nearing wrote a letter to President Harry Truman after the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He declared flatly, “…your government is no longer mine.” On the day he wrote the letter he probably weeded his garden.
Living the Good Life, the book he and Helen wrote in 1954, two years after they left Vermont for Maine,discussed the practical and philosophic tenets of the back-to-the-land movement they initiated. More than 250,000 copies have been printed and the book changed forever the politics of Vermont. Scott died after his 100th birthday, in 1989, committed to death by fasting. Helen’s remaining years were spent preserving the Nearing legacy.
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