I felt bad about my last post. It had politics. My blog may not be a ray of sunshine but I try to refrain from taking a dump on my readers. If this election cycle isn’t the shit hitting the fan then what is? I did it anyway. I’m only human.
In search of redemption I’d like to discuss something positive. All that brooding sense of silence and calculation in my last post is nothing new and it has yielded far more than malaise. After all, silence and calculation indicates you’re seeking wise choices during difficult times. So here is:
“I have noticed a small but increasing number of Americans who are choosing to vote with their feet and they’re putting freedom front and center in their plans.”
You’ve noticed it too? Surely you’ve seen a few folks choose to move from less free places to more free places. Do you think people move to Texas because they like the weather? Do you think people emote over Montana because they like opera? It’s not a stampede… it’s a trickle, but it’s a steady one and for every person that seeks and attains freedom an eagle shits on a Prius.
Obviously it’s not a choice lightly made. Moving, for any purpose, is a massive pain in the ass. To uproot yourself and your family and then manage the endless logistics is a commitment. It’s a lot bigger commitment than buying another AR-15 to throw in the stack you’ve already got.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Why would you? Instead just check out my blog roll.
On Barking Moonbat Early Warning System you’ll notice a post that describes leaving California and moving to Ohio. He’s clear that he’s doing this in the interest of personal freedom. This is what he had to say (read it all).
“I will be moving halfway across the country. I don’t make it a secret that while I am a man of the right, I have also been a Californian born and raised. And what’s more, someone that has lived on the dread, died-in-the-wool-left Coast itself. My parents came from the Middle of the country decades ago to live here, and I have lived here in this house my entire life.
… the costs of uprooting from the home of 20~ years and moving halfway across the country to a place I scarcely know are less than the costs of staying. Taxes are high, a criminally insane water policy has all but insured drought will strike again, the ‘law’ tried to abolish concealed carry, and I still remember the times when Bernie’s Brownshirts attacked a Trump Rally down the street while two married Jihadists slaughtered a Christmas Party.”
He’s slipped the noose and bugged out. Way to go!
If you click over to Knuckledragging My Life Away you’ll be reading posts from another person who left California’s sinking ship. Earlier this spring he moved to Tennessee. He’s got plenty of posts about the joy of leaving California. Here’s one of his first posts after leaving (escaping!) (read it all):
“I swore I was going to uncase my guns, load my pistol and strap it to my hip the first chance I got after crossing into Arizona for no other reason than I could. But I didn’t. Why? Because I didn’t feel a need to – once I got out of California everybody was genuinely friendly. Seriously – I couldn’t get out of the truck without somebody smiling at me and asking how I was doing – and these were total strangers.”
One part of freedom is “friendly” and indeed California can wear on a man at times. I rejoice at a person who made the choice to find a different, freer home.
I should have put him first because The Ultimate Answer To Kings is a paragon. He leaves most of us in the dust! I’m impressed when someone packs their shit and moves to a different place but Joel went off grid. That takes balls of steel (not to mention patience with batteries and the willingness to shovel shit).
I salute him for going the Full Monty! He makes it clear that living in the desert is not Utopia for all but it suits him and his desire for freedom. Well done sir! May your chickens always evade the coyotes and the sun ever shine on your solar panels.
Claire Wolfe, who is working on her new website, never goes a week without discussing freedom. It’s sorta’ her thing. Obviously her choice of location is based on freedom but so too are most of her other interests.
Fred On Everything is an American who lives in Mexico. He’s written several articles referring to the greater freedom he found in Mexico. Here’s a quote to whet your appetite (read it all):
“They think that just because I went to Mexico, I left the US. They don’t understand. I didn’t leave the United States. It left me. It was a bait-and-switch operation. I signed on to one country, and they slipped another in under me. I want my money back.”
He elaborates…
“In the country I signed on to, things worked on the principle of individual responsibility. If you robbed a bank, which people generally didn’t, everyone figured you did it because you decided to, and you went to jail and everyone was satisfied, except you, which was the idea. Most people knew how to behave, and did. It saved a lot on police departments and you could walk around at night.
In the new country of course everything is somebody else’s fault, unless you are a white male, in which case everything is your fault.”
And it ends with something I’ve felt all too often myself:
“A lot of other countries struck me as fine places. But America was my favorite. It just suited me. I liked the people in their wild variety and the countryside and the music and the brash independence. It wasn’t perfect. Still, given the sorry baseline for comportment in human agglomerations, it was about as good as you could get.
I’m still fond of the United States. I just can’t find it.”
Incidentally when I’ve been in Mexico (which hasn’t been nearly often enough) it has indeed fell freer than most of America. It seemed like a fine place where you could drink a beer without being hassled, tinker with a car without the EPA shitting on you, and go fishing without needing a 200 page rulebook…. and really isn’t that what life’s all about?
If you click over to Captain Capitalism you’ll find thoughts about freedom that revolve around economics and personal choices (which is more important than seeking a magic geographic location). The Captain also spends a fair amount of energy trying to nudge youth away from self destructive decisions that’ll (you guessed it) chew up their future freedoms. I recommend “Worthless” to any person of the age where they’re still in the thrall (through no fault of their own) of school teachers. (I also enjoyed “The Curse Of The High IQ” and have been meaning to write up a review.)
If you click over to Sippican Cottage you’ll hear articles about moving to and living in rural Maine. In his case the source of freedom was outlandishly cheap housing (read it all):
“…Truth be told, it was much worse than a hovel. We aspired to live in a hovel. We thought we might be able to fashion a hovel out of what we’d purchased. We dreamt of wretchedness, and are still doggedly trying to clear away all the debris just to get to the dirty part, so we can live in it and be happy. …
…Why would we move to such a place, you ask? We had become instantly broke, and the house was free. That’s a great combination. OK, not free; but we bought a fairly big, 1901 vintage, Queen Anne house for $24,400. I consider any house for sale for less than a Kia ‘free.’
It wasn’t the “Detroit” version of free, either. I know you can buy a crackhouse in the Motor City for a double sawbuck, or trade it for a couple syphilitic chickens or something, but then you’ve got to try to defend its walls against all comers –the walls where the copper pipes used to live before the crackheads gave your new home its crackhouse soubriquet — but we moved to what’s considered a nice neighborhood in a quiet little town in western Maine. And in addition to a lack of Mogadishu-level crime, the taxes here are comparatively low because there’s a huge, stinking paper mill right in the center of town paying half the town’s freight, so our free house didn’t come with a bent number followed by a vapor trail of zeroes after it for back taxes, or front taxes or sideways taxes.”
Considering how hard it is for me to keep my shithole of a house standing, I salute him for keeping his house standing with far more grace and dignity than I. (Also his kids rock “The Girl From Ipanema“!)
Click over to MArooned to find another prime example. Early on, the whole point of his blog was being trapped in Massachusetts. Ugh! I can’t imagine surviving that! Massachusetts is East Germany administered by Dolores Umbridge but with higher taxes! (At least California has a great climate!) His subtitle was “trapped in Volkspublic of Massachusetts“.
So where does the author of the MArooned blog live now? Northern Virginia and happily so. That’s not an accident. It’s a deliberate planned move on his part.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another fellow who made the move. That would be yours truly. I did time in a snobbish, uptight, urban area and it sucked donkey balls. People were crawling up my ass every day; each dawn was followed by a new regulation, another fee, a different tax, a near miss on the highway, and the general misery of being swarmed by a hyperactive herd of retarded lemmings and their insipid, unceasing, inexplicable desire to drag me down to their level. I tunneled under the wall and set myself free. Where I live now the night sky is dark and I’m mostly left alone. It’s not perfect but it’s a step toward heaven!
It’s never really “game over” until you’re dead. So take heart and protect your soul carefully against the indignities that will be shoved your way. Take a deep breath, keep your eye on the prize and think “just hold on ’cause it’s not over.
Seeking freedom isn’t inherently grim. Lock and load and stacking ammo and watering the tree of liberty and all that shit sounds impressive but the little decisions matter more. Sometimes it’s a job interview, sometimes it’s a long drive, sometimes it’s a paid off debt… whatever. Freedom will flow through the mundane decisions you make throughout your life. With luck, forethought, and hard work those who seek freedom find it.
A.C.
P.S. If you’re on my blogroll and made the break but I missed it; sorry. Enjoy your freedom even if it doesn’t come with a high five from an unimportant blogger who talks to trees.