“If You Don’t Like It, Move” A Blast from the Past.


People tend to get upset when you suggest that if they like a particular government or form of government so much that they should go where they already have it.  I can understand that.  It’s a lot of trouble to pull up stakes and relocate to someplace that would supposedly be more congenial.  Of course it’s also a lot of trouble to force the changes that one might want on the unwilling here.

OTOH, America was built on that very concept of “if you don’t like it, move.” The Pilgrims wanted a place where they could raise their families without other religious influences (not for religious freedom–they had that in Amsterdam) so they moved.  Daniel Boone thought that first South Carolina, then Kentucky was getting too crowded, so he moved.  Other folk wanted a piece of land to call their own where they could build a life of their own so they moved.  Folk wanted economic opportunities they weren’t finding at home so them moved.

“If you don’t like it, move” is one of the foundations of American history.  Yet there is a problem today.  Today the folk more likely to actually follow that philosophy, the folk who want social and economic liberty, the folk who want to live and build their own lives with the minimal interference of government, don’t have anyplace to go.  There are no more frontiers into which they can expand.

Other folk, however, folk who want the government to “look after” them, can find endless examples of just what they say they want.  There are all sorts of options which have “government health care” and extensive “safety nets” and so forth.  But these same people, the ones who could find a “better life” in terms of what they say they want are the very ones who are the least willing to actually pick up stakes and move to where what they say they want is already available.

People have said to me “If you like guns so much, go start a country where they’re allowed.”  To which my answer of course is, “We did.  You’re the one set on changing that.”

Personally, I’d move in a heartbeat if . . . if . . . there were any place to go.

There. is. no. place. I. can. go.

Is it really too much to ask to leave one place on the planet where individual liberty, individual responsibility, and conservative/libertarian (small “l”) values are given more than lip service?  Just one?  Why are you so adamant to take away the last place on Earth where what I value is given any more than the barest lip service (and even that not much these days)?

Oh, some wags will give me a snarky “if you hate the government so much, move to Somalia.” However, what I want is a Constitutional Republic of sharply limited powers where maximum individual liberty is the goal and only such government as serves that goal.  “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” At no point in there did I say that I wanted to live in a failed state controlled by competing warlords whose power is near absolute within their particular territories and where I can be quite sure the “international community (read “France and Germany, mostly Germany”) would be sure to intervene to prevent me from actually doing what would be necessary to build the kind of state I want to live in.

Please, just leave me one place where I can live my life in peace.  Just one.

4 thoughts on ““If You Don’t Like It, Move” A Blast from the Past.”


    Because they know their ideology is a belief system that fails miserably when faced with any real competition, being bankrupt in just about every possible way (morally, ethically, legally, etc). Whether or not they admit it, they know deep down that the only way for their system to spread is for there to be no other options in the proverbial marketplace of ideas.


    1. Concur.

      “I’ve got ideas.”
      “I’ve seen your ideas. They’re stupid ideas. You can find them implemented (for now) elsewhere, so stop trying to force them on me!”


  2. Also the great argument for federalism (which ironically means freedom of the states to do what they want without federal interference). The left doesn’t like federalism, not because it would let them do what they want in their states, but because it would allow the rubes and bitter clingers to do what they wanted in their own states. I have thought about moving as my state creeps more leftward, but they will just keep me from doing what I want in my new state through the increased application of federal law.

    The recent but short kerfuffle in Alberta and Saskatchewan about independence is an example of the extreme end of that. It appears to have come to nothing but I suspect that both Canada and the US will be facing increased internal pressure to dissolve their unions as the divisions continue to grow. I don’t know what that would look like and suspect that no one really does but I do think it will happen sooner or later.


  3. Funny enough, the US has plenty of examples where Leftist will crap their nest, muddy their wells, choke the fields, and ruin an area with their desired policies, pack up, and move to a more pristine location. Where they will immediately start voting for the same crap that forced them to leave in the first place.
    I’d modify the statement to read “If you don’t like it, go back to where you came.”


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