By Nathan Barton

It seems to happen every four years, and we heard it a lot in 2016.  “If SO-AND-SO gets elected, I’m going to migrate to Outer Upper Snowland.”  Those are almost always some kind of Tranzi celebrity.  Usually the kind that has to borrow a brain-cell from a slavish follower to have two of them to rub together.  But they are NOT the only kind of people who talk about escaping.

Can we?  Should we?  Some pretty hardcore libertarian types – not the political kind – are urging American lovers of liberty to escape: perhaps to somewhere in Central or South America.  Or maybe to one of the East Asian places (Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia) which are rated as being high on personal and economic liberties.  Some even go back to old Europe and places now rated high (Switzerland, Norway, Estonia).

And many are opting, once more, for a Free State – either Wyoming or New Hampshire.  Or just one of the states rated on the opposite end of the spectrum from California, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

But does it make sense? Can we really escape? Or are we just finding a different wing of the prison to call home?

Or worse, are we contaminating the place to which we escape?  Over the years I’ve seen a lot of people who “escaped” from places like California or Vermont or New Jersey, here in the States.  And a few people who have left Russia or Belarus or the Ost Zone (the old DDR) to various places.  All too often, their new neighbors find that while the escapees are more lovers of freedom than the average resident in their old country, most of them are far LESS lovers of liberty than the average in their new homes in West River, South Dakota, the Four Corners region or western Germany. (Mama Liberty, our esteemed publisher, is the exception that proves the rule – or a delightful proof that not ALL immigrants bring their old culture with them.)

Mama’s Note: Remember that I never fit into the “old culture” of California, which is one reason I escaped as soon as I could. 🙂 I’ve always been a self-owner.

People have voted with their feet for centuries, but inevitably it seems that whatever they fled soon came to where they were.  It happened with Abraham, it happened with the Children of Israel in Exodus, it happened in New England, it happened in California.  But, I admit, sometimes it took decades or even centuries.  The places where escape worked, for some period of time, were those where the immigrants could establish a new, freedom-loving, and liberty-based society.

I don’t think this is happening in Belize or Costa Rico or Singapore or Hong Kong.  Maybe I’m wrong but I think the cause of liberty is more likely to survive and thrive in the American West and Canadian Prairie Provinces – bad as they are at present – than in any society and nation built on either Spanish culture and history or Chinese culture and history.

Put another way: Escape is a matter of mind – what we do to promote and live in liberty can be done in our own homelands: in Wyoming, in South Dakota, in Colorado, Utah, and Montana.

Mama’s Note: Indeed, and in addition, one of the prime differences between Hong Kong and rural Wyoming is the freedom to own and carry a gun. The history of tyranny and murder of innocents by the millions is only possible when the victims are incapable of resisting. Americans own between 300 and 700 MILLION guns, and a great many of those gun owners know how to use them. Whether or not they will have the will to resist, when necessary, remains unclear. Americans are the first people in the world to have that clear and powerful choice. Those who leave the country lose that choice almost completely.