Reasons To Stay

I often make throwaway comments about how I could live in France, or the Britishland, or Vienna — usually when looking at some café street scene, or a magnificent pub, or a lovely country cottage.  I love Montreal, and Paris, and London, and Vienna, and, and, and…

The plain fact of the matter is that I couldn’t live in any of those places — spend a vacation there, a week or two, maybe even a month — but not forever.

People often say in Comments to one of these posts that they couldn’t go there because of the gun laws — which is a perfectly good reason — or because they can’t speak the language — also a good reason, because if you can’t read the newspapers or watch the television, you fell terribly isolated after a while.

It goes deeper than that.  Even if we take language out of the discussion, that would leave us with only a few spots available, i.e. the English-language (Anglosphere) countries.  (I’m going to ignore countries that speak English as a matter of course — India, South Africa and so on — because ugh.)

And since the Covid bullshit has happened, the Anglosphere hasn’t been looking that hot, either.  Whether it’s masked mandates, lockdowns or the thuggish actions of the police when suppressing demonstrations in Australia, New Zealand and lately, Canada;  or whether it’s the intrusive British cops arresting people for posting “hate speech” on the Internet, they’re all awful.  This website, for example, wouldn’t last longer than about a week in most of the Anglosphere, because to the authorities I would be completely disqualified from the “right” to express myself because of the hate, misogyny, racism, and [insert current favorite here]  that litters the landscape of this corner of the Internet.

Let’s not even go into my feelings towards government:

Now layer horrible gun laws over all of that, and it becomes really clear that when it comes to personal freedom, none of the people living in those countries have any.  Oh sure, you’re “allowed” to own a shotgun in Britain, as long as it isn’t semi-automatic, and also in Australia, as long as you keep it locked in a safe all day, and oh by the way, your shotgun can be taken away from you at any time or for any reason by the State, because they know that you own one.  Let’s not even speak about handguns, or semi-auto centerfire — I’m sorry, I mean “assault” — rifles.

Derek Hunter talks about all this, and here’s a good excerpt:

It’s easy to look at Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc., and think they’re just like us because we have so much in common. We speak the same language, enjoy many of the same movies and much of the same music .

But there’s significantly more we do not share than we do. First and foremost, among them is our commitment to individual liberty.
…
One thing to notice about the coverage of the Canadian Freedom Convoy is how the American media, particularly from conservative outlets, didn’t reflect the will of Canadians. You’d think Justin Trudeau going full totalitarian, turning into a little Fidel Castro would bring about a collapse in his popularity, but it hasn’t. Most Canadians were upset he didn’t act sooner.

If Trudeau were really unpopular, Parliament would hold a vote of no confidence and force a new election. There isn’t even talk of that. They don’t have to wait 4 years to rid themselves of a leader, they could do it in a few weeks. That they haven’t even tried tells you something.

Canada is not like the United States. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants Canadians various rights that, if you don’t think about it, are similar in a lot of ways to the rights we enjoy here. But there’s a major difference.

Our Constitution grants exactly zero rights to anyone, it acknowledges the rights with which we were born and denies the federal government the ability to infringe upon them. The Canadian Charter gives citizens certain rights, explicitly. If a government can grant rights, there is no justification for them not being able to take them away, temporarily or permanently.

When Trudeau invoked emergency powers, US conservatives recoiled in horror. Canadians did not.

And:

It’s easy to look at Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc., and think they’re just like us because we have so much in common. We speak the same language, enjoy many of the same movies and much of the same music.

But there’s significantly more we do not share than we do. First and foremost, among them is our commitment to individual liberty.

Yeah, discussion of freedom and freedoms in places outside the U.S. always involves a significant number of asterisks, much as it will when the same topics come up with our own Left — the European wannabes.  You can own this gun but not that gun, can publish this idea but not that idea, can donate money to this cause but not that cause — the list is endless.

Even here, we have allowed our freedoms to be compromised — but at the back, there’s always the bedrock of the Constitution to fall back on — which is why the Left wants to denigrate it and make it malleable.

Oh, and one last thing:  to all those people who think that if our government were to become as totalitarian as, say, Canada’s, let us be under no misapprehensions about the role of the police (and armed forces) when it does eventually turn to enforcement of the oppression.  The Canadian and Australian police have shown us exactly how they’d behave — and I don’t want to hear any guff about how our cops are different from theirs, because I’m not prepared to test that, nor give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

More likely, law enforcement will do exactly what they did in Portland (stand back when Leftist paramilitaries burn, loot and attack government buildings) and in Ottawa — bring violence to a peaceful protest because those were their orders.

I’d like to believe differently, but I’m afraid I can’t — not when there’s so much evidence at hand.

I feel that at some point, I and many people like me are going to be backed into a corner.  I have no idea what will happen when that becomes intolerable.  But there’s always history (and note the emphases I’ve added):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

There it is, right there, and the rest of the Anglosphere has no such rationale.

So here we stay.