The following is the transcript of a Press TV recent interview with emeritus professor of economics at Duke University, author and founder of the Second Vermont Republic movement Thomas Naylor.

Press TV: First of all when does the secessionist movements date back to and why is the United States facing a growing number of secessionists today?

Prof. Naylor: The legacy of secession goes all the way back to our inception in 1776. The United States was created by secession from England.

Press TV: Professor, what is the movement fighting for?

Prof. Naylor: Well I can speak only for the Second Vermont Republic … There are nearly 30 states that have independence movements these days and they have different agendas.

But the agenda of the Second Vermont Republic is that basically the United States has lost its moral authority, it's corrupt to the core. Our government is owned, operated and controlled by a combination of Wall Street, corporate America and Goldman Sachs in particular.

Secondly, our country has become unsustainable economically, politically, militarily, environmentally. It is virtually ungovernable as illustrated by the present debate over healthcare reform, and finally it therefore unfixable.

So the question is, do you go down with the Titanic or do you seek other options while there are other options on the table, and we consider secession to be a viable option.

Press TV: Do all the secession movements have the same agenda or just share the same foe, which is the federal government?

Prof. Naylor: There is some differences among them, for example one of the most active up and coming movements is the Texas Nationalist Movement, and they like the Second Vermont Republic focus primarily on independence.

Some like the Alaska are more interested on the constitutional issues. Some of them are driven by the popularity of Congressman Ron Paul in state laws, on sovereignty, attempts to nullify various specific laws.

This has increased in intensity since April 15th when the governor of Texas actually threatened to secede from the State House steps in Austin, Texas.

But, they have different points of view. The Second Vermont Republic is considered one of the more left wing of the movements, some of which are further to the right than we are.

Press TV: The United States has a history of supporting secession movements worldwide, but now it is facing similar movements on its own soil. Professor, how has the federal government treated these movements?

Prof. Naylor: well, so far they have mostly ignored them, and you're right, the US government promotes secession in far away places like Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, but when it gets close to home like the Quebec secession movement up in Canada, they won't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

So far they have mostly pretended that we don't exist. Maybe we are fortunate in that regard.

Press TV: How widespread are these movements? How long do you think that it will take for these movements to really get on board?

Prof. Naylor: Well it is estimated that in average around the country, as many as 20 percent of people actually support succession of one sort or another. In Vermont it's probably about 12 percent, which means that about 60 thousands of our 625 thousands total population.

Honestly, it is not going to happen tomorrow. The problems will have to get worse. But all one has to do is look at the price of gold worldwide to see this is kind of a tremendous voice of lack of confidence in the United States dollar that suggests that there is a lot of uncertainty out there.

Things could change rapidly. Who would have predicted in 1985 that by 1989 that the six so called satellite countries of the Soviet Union would have rid themselves of their communist regimes and five of the six would have done so non-violently, and three years later Soviet Union would cease to exist. So it can happen fast.

MJ/DT