If you are an American, there is a lot to be pessimistic about with the state of the country. Some will say it’s time to get out of America while you can. America has seen its peak, and it’s time to move on to greener pastures.
How is America doing?
Perhaps it is like the old joke, “How’s your wife?” Answer: “Compared to what?”
America has a lot of problems. The national debt is beyond ridiculous. The government at all levels spends almost half of our income. The U.S. government spies on American citizens and has weaponized the “justice” system against dissidents. They are trying their best to censor speech that goes against the official narrative. The wars and interventions overseas continue. And all this while the culture degrades with more crime, more homelessness, and a sizable portion of the young population thinking they need to choose their gender.
How is America doing? Compared to what?
There are many reasons to get out, and they go beyond the reasons listed above. Still, the grass is always greener on the other side. There isn’t a place on earth that doesn’t have major problems. And some of them are quite similar to what we see in America.
Getting Your Priorities Straight
All people are different. Therefore, different people will have different priorities. This even goes for libertarians. You could have two libertarians who want a free society but want very different things. Maybe the first guy just really wants to be able to legally do drugs. The second guy hates drugs but doesn’t want to pay any taxes. They should make their choice of where to live based on their priorities.
If you want to do drugs, you aren’t going to move to Singapore. But if you want to open up a business and pay less in taxes, maybe Singapore is a good option.
If you want low crime, maybe you want a place like Switzerland. But then you have to consider its high cost of living and also that it may be hard to get residency there.
If you want to homeschool your children, then you probably don’t want to go to a place like Germany or some other place where it is illegal or very difficult to do. If you care about owning a handgun, then you probably want to stay away from Canada.
Of course, there is just the lifestyle too, which doesn’t always have to do directly with liberty. Some people want city life, even if it is more expensive, while others want a rural setting. Some people want to ski, while some people prefer a tropical paradise.
The point is that it is hard to tell anyone that they should move out of the U.S. if they seek greater liberty. It depends on the subjective preferences of each individual. Some people would have trouble surviving on the food served in certain countries.
The Good Old U.S.A.
It is easy to criticize the U.S., or more accurately, the U.S. government. Of course, just about every government is highly corrupt. The problem in the U.S. is that Americans are very wealthy (comparatively speaking), so the U.S. government has a lot of resources at its disposal to cause chaos and destruction. The good news is that Americans are still able to retain some of those resources to fight back.
In spite of the U.S. government, there are many positive things Americans have that most foreign countries don’t. You still mostly have the right to bear arms in the U.S. We like to credit the 2nd Amendment, but it is really that we have a culture of being armed.
In the U.S., it is mostly legal to homeschool with very little oversight. The bureaucrats might not like it this way, but there are so many homeschooling families now that it would be hard to make it illegal at this point.
The U.S. still has a certain rugged individualism left in the culture that doesn’t exist elsewhere. There is also an entrepreneurial spirit that doesn’t exist in many places. Even though there is a massive welfare state, a rags-to-riches story is still looked upon positively. Those with great wealth are not generally demonized. Perhaps the elitists who have great wealth who try to rule over us should be demonized, but that’s another subject.
Even though the U.S. government tries to tell Facebook, Google, and establishment media sources what to say, they cannot control everything. They are trying to ban TikTok, which will likely just backfire on the establishment as it enrages tens of millions of people. The more they try to censor, the more we hear from people like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson who do not want to repeat the establishment narratives.
There is no doubt a great fight of good against evil. The good news is that more people have awoken to the evil that is out there. Many conservatives no longer trust the FBI and the CIA. Many are questioning foreign policy and the military-industrial complex. This is positive news.
There seems to be more fighting than ever, but that is because Americans are not obeying as much as they did a generation ago. If the hostage doesn’t put up a fight with his kidnapper, then everything looks peaceful from a distance. When the hostage puts up a fight and is about to escape, then things can look very unpleasant from a distance. They are quite unpleasant, and in some ways, it would be easier for the hostage to go along. But when people are pushed enough, sometimes they “enough” and no longer obey. We may be entering that stage. It won’t be a pleasant time, but the risk may be worth it to gain liberty in the future.