wrote his

Factions and Minorities  

 

BY LYLE GLAZIER

With all her eloquent best
intentions, Rep. Nancy
Sheltra, when praising the
“godly purposes” of the US
microcosm of Vermont “one

hundred years ago” showed

a nearly absolute ignorance
of Vermont and U.S. history.
If she had looked back
two hundred years to 1787,
she would have discovered a
Vermont so suspicious of
political and religious
authority that under the
influence of Ethan and Ira
Allen and their Green
Mountain Boys, Vermonters
hesitated to join the new
Confederation. They con-
trolled a rogue State, flirting
with Canada and delaying
till March 4, 1791, becom-
ing the fourteenth state to
ratify the Constitution.

St. John de Crevecoeur
came to the colonies from
France before the
Revolution, and in 1782
famous third
Letter from an American
Farmer “What is an
American?” describing a

 

G6

budding nation ...with no
aristocratical families,
courts, no kings, no bishops,
no ecclesiastical dominion.
...Here religion demands
but little of him.

religious

Lyle Glazier

pride, the love of contradic-
tion, are the food of what the
world "commonly calls reli-
gion. These motives have
ceased here.”

James Madison, in The
Federalist Papers N0. 10
(1787), described what he
called a pernicious influence
of factions: “By a faction I ’

understand a number of citi-
zens, whether amounting to
a majority or a minority of
the whole, who are united
and activated by some com-
mon impulse of passion, or
of interest, adverse to the
rights of other citizens, or to
the permanent and aggregate
interests of the community.”

Madison, like Franklin
and Jefferson, was a Deist,
above all skeptical of the
divinity of Jesus, but prais-
ing Jesus’s social proletarian
reformist views.

Jefferson, in his 1803 let-
ter to Dr. Benjamin Rush,
defined his Deism: “To the
corruptions of Christianity I
am, indeed, opposed; but not
to the genuine precepts of
Jesus himself. I am a
Christian in the only sense
he wished any one to be: sin-
cerely attached to his doc-
trines, in preference to all
others; ascribing to him
every human excellence;
and believing he never
claimed any other.”

His Declaration of
Independence, which mod-
ern factional zealots quote

Public Forum continued from page 10

night.

In some ways itwas very Quaker. Instead of drawing names

from a hat, you raised your hand, stood up, introduced yourself,

and spoke.

The Reform Party Candidate for Governor, Brian Pearl,
spoke, appalled that the original revision of the bill would have
allowed — with parental permission — 14-year-old boys to
marry 50 year old men, just as 14-year-old girls are allowed to
marry 50-year-old men now. People didn’t seem to understand
the fuss, but even he got everyone’s applause.

It was just absolutely amazing at how civil and respectful
everyone was. I spoke a bit about how rude the St. Albans
forum had been. Afterwards people asked me what it was like
and what made this one different. Some of it was that it hap-
pened in a church; some of it was that it was the Islands. But I
think that the church aspect, combined with a moderator who
was used to respect and clearly deserved it was the major rea-

SOIL

I hope there are no more forums; especially ones that I feel
obligated to go to. Although it was interesting to hear our oppo-
nents’ take on the situation, every one of their arguments has

been addressed.

There was one I heard for the first time recently on a call-in
radio show. An opponent of civil unions said that we should get
some rights, but not all of them. He faltered when he was asked
which ones, specifically, we should not get.

He didn’t answer, because there is no answer. We should get

them all. Y

  
   
 

or email: GOLDENTRED@aol.eom

May 2000 Out in the Mountains 110

 

from in order to prove his
Christianity, begins with the
phrase “the laws of nature
and of nature’s God,” which
he further defines with the
word “Creator” meaning
what the 18th-century
Enlightenment in England
and France and Thomas
Paine in America defined as
the “First Cause,” meaning
whatever unknown, .non-
human force created the uni-
verse. C

Franklin’s 1790 letter to
Ezra Stiles, who had asked
him to record his religious

 
  

GOLDEN THREADS’ 14th Annual

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views for the enlightenment

of future generations,
replied, “As to Jesus of
Nazareth, my opinion of
whom you- particularly
desire, I think the system of
morals, and his religion, as
he left them to us, the best
the world ever saw or is like-
ly to see; but I apprehend it
has received various cor-
rupting changes, and I have
with most of the dissenters
in England, some doubts as
to his divinity.” V