“Oh, man, if Bush gets re-elected, I’m going to Canada.”
“If McCain gets elected over Obama, man, the fix is in. I’m outta here, I’ll go to the Netherlands.”
I’ve heard more of that kind of crap from left-wing kool-aid drinkers over the years than I care to remember. I guess it hearkens back to the glory days of Vietnam War protesters dodging the draft by fleeing to Canada or Switzerland or somewhere like that. As if that were somehow glamorous or righteous.
But now, that worm has turned around completely. Barack Hussein Obama has been elected President. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House of Representatives with a commanding majority. The Democrats have tossed out Ted Stevens from the Senate, for Chrissake, and are a hairs’ breath away from a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. There is nothing — nothing — to stop the party that harbors and encourages the sort of policies that many on the right once dared call “treason” from having their way with us.
Of course, our children will all now be taught to be gay in second grade, ownership of a firearm will be an imprisonable offense, and we will all need to learn Spanish in order to vote. George Washington’s birthday will no longer be a holiday and Cesar Chavez will replace him on the $1.00 bill. Or, rather, the $1.00 coin because the Democrats are going to take our money away.
So it’s natural to think that right-wing kool-aid drinkers are going to feel an impulse to leave. For instance, check out comment #5 on this post about a blogbuddy returning to the United States after a sojourn abroad:
Italy will be better off without you.You’re just like all the folks who come here and expect US to accommodate all their needs,speak their language, adjust to their culture. Welcome home…enjoy your success and your new leader and maybe you’ll not get taxed out of existence. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. Not my America any more. — cas
Oh, really, cas? So where, exactly, do you intend on going? Where is this right-wing fantasyland where men can be men and own huge arsenals of big, deadly guns and the government will tolerate it? Maybe you’re thinking Iraq? No problem owning lots of guns there. But somehow I doubt that an Arabic-speaking country dominated by Muslims and still susceptible to urban terrorism is going to be terribly appealing to cas and others like him who prefer the red kool-aid to the blue, even with the decidedly permissive de facto rules about owning weapons there.
Maybe to that mecca of free-market capitalism, Japan. If he can somehow persuade the government of that famously xenophobic nation into giving a gaijin like him a residency visa. He may have to promise to shower four times a day. And forget about owning any land, even if he could afford it. So, I guess that’s out.
Now, you can have some weapons in Russia — hey, сказать привет моему другу мало! And, for the time being, the Russians are overtly capitalists. But you’ve pretty much got to have tons of dough if you want to live anywhere decent, like Moscow or Petersburg. And Putin is pretty much turning into the Enemy again, so cas probably isn’t thinking real seriously about Russia.
Now, I’m going to hazard a guess here and suggest that cas and his fellow right-wingers are probably not super-fluent in non-English languages and can’t be bothered to learn them. It’s very likely that cas is an English-is-the-official-language sort of guy. That might be a stretch. But I don’t feel like it’s a big one. So that limits the choices to only a few options, countries where English is the primary language. Maybe he can go to India or Pakistan and teach English to successive generations of tech support specialists and learn to love ghat and curry.
Canada, of course, is not an option; they’re a bunch of peacenik socialists and gun-grabbers, and they have the most open immigration policy of any nation on Earth so the whole place is a gigantic security risk. Of the remaining English-speaking countries, you need to be ultra-loaded to emigrate to the UK, and you can’t have a gun there. Or in Ireland. Or in the urban parts of Australia or anywhere in New Zealand. Or (now) Hong Kong — the PRC is in charge there now, not Her Majesty’s Government, and they don’t like people they don’t know having weapons.
South Africa? English is a secondary language there — so maybe cas could use his English to get started while he brushes up on his Afrikaans and Swahili. Of course, you’ve got racial tensions, a seriously declining economy, and restrictions on firearms again, but that’s not so different from here, really. And the climate is a lot like Southern California, just upside-down.
Maybe cas is Jewish and can exercise Aliyah. Then, he could go to Israel. There is gun control, but he could have a military-grade weapon in his kibbutz as long as he was part of the IDF Reserves, which I bet cas would think was cool. English isn’t the primary language there, but it would be enough to get him started, and if cas is Jewish he may know some Hebrew. Yeah, they’re pretty much socialists there but there is private enterprise. So, if you’re in the Tribe, cas, massel tov. But if you’re not Jewish, I think you’re pretty much looking at Jo-burg.
I saw this question come up on another blog (though they were more playful with it). I think I’d prefer something like New Zealand or Singapore. Singapore would be tops except I’m told by residents that there is quite a bit of anti-Indian sentiment there. Taiwan might also be a place I’d like, though it would be a little scary to have a nuclear-armed nation of more than a billion people believe it owns you.