“If you don’t like it, why don’t you go to…”: A Blast from the Past.

I was travelling and didn’t have posts set up in advance so I missed a few days.  Sorry about that.  Home now, and to get things started here’s a blast from the past:

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I keep hearing from people telling me “if you don’t like it, why don’t you just move?”

There’s just one problem with that.  For those of us who prefer limited government on Constitutional principles (as written according to the understanding of those who wrote it, and as properly amended not just redefined away), where could we go?  Short of building new colonies on Earthlike planets around other stars there is no place to go.

As Ronald Reagan put it in a 1964 speech:

The enemy he was referring to then, of course, was the Soviet Union.  That enemy collapsed 27 years after Reagan gave that speech.  Now it’s a new enemy or enemies, the rise of militant Islam is one threat.  The apologists who object to treating it like an enemy, much like those who did the same regarding the old Soviet Union, serve to heighten and extend that threat.

But in many ways we face a more insidious threat.  Many of the ideas the Soviet Union tried to spread to the US in its effort to achieve suzerainty still live on in the US.  They are propagated in the entertainment media, spread in schools and universities, often by people who are not even aware that they are Marxist ideas.  Ideas like class warfare, the idea that someone who is financially successful is the enemy.  Ideas like zero sum economics so that the only way someone can have more is by depriving someone else.  The idea that those who seek wealth are “greedy” and unworthy, but those who seek power (so long as they are opposed to those who seek wealth) are somehow virtuous and good.

Got news for you, to paraphrase an ancient proverb:  Wealth might not always get you power, but power can always get you wealth.

And the folk fomenting that, those who want to turn the US into a carbon copy of Europe, say “if you don’t like it, go somewhere else.”

We did go somewhere else.  We came here.  Unless somebody develops true space travel there’s no place left to go.  In Reagan’s words, this is the last stand on Earth.

This, of course, is the point where someone suggests “If you hate government so much, then move to Somalia.”

Look.  A failed state broken into warring factions led by local warlords who are essentially absolute (until violently deposed) in their local authority is a far cry from a Constitutional government of limited powers with the rights of the people (actual rights not “whatever I want I have a right to and someone else has to pay for it” type “rights”) held sacrosanct.  Indeed, it’s at least as far from that as the US is today.

Now, perhaps Somalia could be used as a starting point to make such a society, but the local warlords will not give up their petty fiefdoms willingly.  So such a transformation would not be bloodless.  And, not being bloodless, the international community would with near certainty take it upon itself to intervene and prevent the transformation.

So no, “going to Somalia” is not an option for those who actually desire a free society.

The same is not true for those who want European style socialism/social welfare.  Europe, after all, is right there.  It’sexactly what they say they want.  No transformation necessary.  If you’d be more happy in that system it’s there.  You can go there.  I would not deny you.

But you would rather stay here and deny me the kind of government that would make me happy.  Not just me, but a lot of other people like me.

It’s not that you want to live under the social, political, and economic system that pleases you that bothers me.  It’s that you want to force me to live under that system.  I can wave my arm indicating all the choices you have for your desired system.  You, and others like you, have worked hard through long years and decades to make sure there is no other choice for folk like me.

And that is why I will never stop fighting to leave at least one place in the world where Constitutional principles and individual liberty are given more than lip service.

And if you wish to deny that to me, if you oppose me in that and work to undermine the freedoms that are enshrined and protected by the Constitution then I will oppose you with every breath in my body.

Because if you will do that, then you. are. the. enemy.