Eighty years ago, President Calvin Coolidge, in a rare show of emotion, spoke of his beloved Vermont home while touring the state in the wake of the devastation of the 1927 flood. He concluded his remarks as follows:

"If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union and support of our institutions should languish, It could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont."

The Select board of Brattleboro has succumbed to the totalitarian instincts of some of its citizens and placed on the town meeting ballot a petition that would authorize the town to indict and arrest President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Their crimes? Toppling a Fascist mass murderer, liberating 25 million Iraqis, and taking military action against those who use the vilest methods to torture and kill innocent civilians. 

In an earlier day, liberals would have wholeheartedly supported such an endeavor. Now, not only do liberals not support what would in an earlier era be considered a liberal foreign policy, but the liberal governing elite, at least in Brattleboro, support police state tactics to silence their political opponents. The Brattleboro Select board could have rejected the petition, but chose not to. Brattleboro Select board’s action is the understandable outcome of the all too common response by today’s liberals to policies they oppose. Liberals have refused to engage in policy discussions concerning the Bush administration’s foreign policy. 

Instead they have chosen to question the administration’s motives and have claimed that the administration is evil, corrupt and criminal. The Brattleboro Select board has taken the next logical step: the Board has endorsed the notion that political opponents should be arrested and tried as criminals rather than opposed at the ballot box. The petitioners and Board members do not trust our political democracy; they want to use more drastic political cleansing measures. That notion is the hallmark of a police state.

The petitioners will declare that the President and Vice President are special cases; that their "crimes" are so egregious as to warrant extraordinary measures. Police state tactics against political opponents, however, are never confined to just a few. Stephen Steidle, a Brattleboro Select board member, called the petition "illegal". The petitioners will be calling next for the arrest of him and other Bush administration "collaborators".

Preservation of liberty takes eternal vigilance. I hope the good citizens of Brattleboro will banish the specter of tyranny and revive the spirit of liberty in their town by roundly condemning the petitioners’ assault on our democratic institutions.

Deborah T. Bucknam, Esquire

Law Office of Deborah T. Bucknam & Associates, PC
1097 Main Street
PO Box 310
St. Johnsbury, VT  05819