POLITICAL EXODUS

My comments are actually offered in rebuttal or at least in response to, the following article written Rick Lyman of the New York Times. With that pedigree we can assume the article is written in a totally objective fashion and with no hidden agenda of the author. So before proceeding you may want to read the article at

http://iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/02/06/news/refuge.html

But leave it he intends to do, and as soon as he can. His house is on the market, and he is busily seeking work across the border in Canada. For him, the re-election of George W. Bush was the last straw.

This is alleged to be an American who understands how America operates and a man who purports to be a solid citizen but the fact that he would leave the country over the election of a President with whom he disagrees indicates not only his shallowness as a person but his almost total lack of understanding about how the country operates. The ONLY President ever elected in this country who was universally popular was George Washington. EVERY other President has been opposed and vilified with Abraham Lincoln being one of the most vilified. Here we have a man old enough to know better who is pouting and stamping his little foot because he didn’t get his way. What we are seeing here is the result of years of pandering by the press and intelligentsia (?) to every minority, politically correct position, and spoiled child who cannot lose.

But America is turning into a country very different from the one I grew up believing in.

Notice that is lacking is any explanation as to what he believes in or what he thinks America was. I can tell you that the America I grew up in was an America where you either passed a class or you flunked it. You either learned enough to go to the next grade or you were held back. I went to movies where there were no curse words, no overt sex, no graphic violence, and there was a moral fabric to the films rather than the amoral one we see today. I grew up in a world where criminals were punished because they broke the law. I remember a world where if you jumped off of your bicycle and broke your leg you got punished at home for being a dumbbell rather than seeing it as an opportunity to sue the bicycle manufacturer. I grew up in an America where people were responsible for their actions and that if you lost you learned to play a better game. What America did he grow up in?

Yet immigration lawyers say that Americans are --- fed up with a country they see drifting persistently to the right and abandoning the principles of tolerance, compassion and peaceful idealism they felt once defined the nation

Let me see – America has always been forced into wars because the “peaceful” Europeans have never been able to take care of themselves. It has been America who has been the bastion of compassion and idealism not Europe or even Canada. Canada is hardly a nation devoted to helping anyone but instead are insular and isolationist. So the real issue is that the country is moving to the right – right of what I ask -- right of the immoral community who have abandoned God in favor of the reign of the individual? America is a country who has abandoned their compassion? Excuse me but did we just send more help in terms of money, equipment, and people to Asia than all of the other countries combined? Isn’t it the Americans who have driven out Hussein and freed a nation of 17 million people. Sorry but this entire statement has no validity at all.

Still, that is more than double the population of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. "For every one who reacts to the Bush victory by moving to a new country, how many others are there still in America, feeling similarly disaffected but not quite willing to take such a drastic step?" Cohen asked.Melanie Redman, 30, assistant director of the Epilepsy Foundation in Seattle, said she had put her Volvo up for sale and hopes to be living in Toronto by the summer. She and her Canadian boyfriend, a Web site designer for Canadian nonprofit companies, had been planning to move to New York, but after Nov.2, they decided on Canada instead."I'm doing it," she said. "I don't want to participate in what this administration is doing here and around the world. Under Bush, the U.S. seems to be leading the pack as the world spirals down."
First, I would guess there are quite a few “disaffected” people in the US but I think I would use the term spoiled instead. These are the people who have grown up expecting to be rewarded by just showing up. This is a group of people who have never learned how to lose. They expect to get their way and win every time and if they don’t it is some one else’s fault. Here we have a group of people who expect the government to take care of them regardless of their poor judgement. Well the country is truly better off without them so Bon Voyage.

The US is leading the pack as the world spirals downward – hmmmm --- have I missed something here. It seems to me that it is the Muslims who have pioneered the murder of innocent children as a political statement. It seems to me that it was the Muslims who have stated that they consider anyone who disagrees with them as legitimate targets. Wasn’t it the Americans who put a stop to the genocide in Bosnia? Isn’t it America who is pouring huge amounts of money into Africa to fight AIDS? So exactly what is America doing that is so wrong – well for starters they elected a President who puts America first. President Bush is a quintessential American who is unashamed of being an American. He is a man who says what he means and means what he says. He is doing what the Europeans can’t do and once again cleaning up the mess they made. So if this person wants to leave America to go to a better place – good – the country is better off. I’ll be willing to bet that after a good dose of socialism they will slink back across the border.