Flutterby™! : Vermont secession

There are always calls for secession from various states flying around. Many of them are based on economic stats, the fact that the "blue" states are largely the ones who fund the Federal government and the "red" states are heavily subsidized, that sort of thing.

But I thought Frank Bryan: The Case for Vermont's Secession went interestingly deeper:

The problem we face is much deeper than George Bush and the war in Iraq; if our passion and commitment is fired only by that furnace, we are doomed. America’s problem is as much a fault of the liberals as it is the conservatives. It is as much a fault of the Democrats as it is the Republicans. The problem is that we have systematically undermined the natural homelands where citizens are born, raised, and trained in the art of governance, and with them has gone our democracy. The current buzzword for this lost capacity is social capital, but whatever you call it the result is the same: a continental monolith uncontrolled by its own citizens.

I went searching for this because of an entry about the Vermont secessionist movement over at John Robb's weblog.