Liberals have been leaving the country for years-especially when the looming threat of Donald Trump lurks in their shadows.
Celebrities vowed to make the mass exodus in 2016. Lena Dunham is still here but (thankfully) keeping a low profile. Amy Schumer? Still living in Brooklyn. Whoopi Goldberg? Unless she takes a supersonic jet to work every day, we still see her mug on the worst TV show, like ever. Snoop Dogg curing his munchies with Doritos and Funyuns in his multi-million-dollar abode in Diamond Bar, California. Miley Cyrus may have another public crying fit next month…in her home, here in The United States. Cher won’t be moving to Jupiter (although her mind may already be there). Chelsea Handler? Well, she DID buy a house in another country “just in case”.
One common thread? They’re all still here!
Which is why this “advice column” in The New York Times is laughable, to say the least but not because of the author this time. And so, here we are: “Is It Okay to Leave The Country if the Wrong Candidate Becomes President?” by Ethicist columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Appiah is an immigrant from Ghana himself. He lived in London before coming to the U.S. He and his husband, Henry Finder, an editorial director of The New Yorker, live in an apartment in Manhattan, and share home in Pennington, New Jersey with a small sheep farm-a bucolic escape from the concrete jungle. He recognizes the oppression his family fled in Ghana. While he leans liberal, he claims to be a patriot who became a naturalized citizen in 1997.
One would think Appiah would advocate for going full-on-wheels-up out of The United States if Donald Trump is elected once again. He waxes philosophic on this “leaving the country” business in his latest column. He cites one of the readers from the NYT mailbag who states some of his friends would “no doubt that the U.S. would fall to some form of authoritarianism if the wrong candidate were elected.”
How do you say Donald Trump in liberal circles without uttering the name, Donald Trump? Ask any faithful reader and believer of any of the tripe The New York Times dishes out on the daily. This from that NYT reader about the ethical dilemma of leaving the country:
They, and I, are white, well educated, nonimmigrants and upper middle class, with a wide range of well-connected and financially stable friends. Our demographic backgrounds are relevant to my question, which is on the ethics of leaving a country because its democratic institutions are failing.
As members of some of the groups who most likely will retain many tangible privileges and are least likely to be negatively affected, do we have an ethical obligation to stay and help those who will be impacted more harshly than us, or is it ethically acceptable to leave the country?”-NYT Reader
Appiah responds in kind:
By my lights, though, when genuine patriots say ‘my country, right or wrong,’ they mean that it’s their country whether or not they agree with what is done in its name. That’s the opposite of giving the country a free pass. It expresses a commitment to trying to help your country do what it should — which is how we should normally feel about our families too.
Leaving your country because you think it has gone off the rails isn’t really consistent with this sense of shared responsibility or with a commitment to trying to make things better.”-Kwame Anthony Appiah
Appiah argued that loving one’s country “doesn’t mean patriotic self-sacrifice is a duty.” He said, “if you’re convinced that life here will be unbearable for you, you are morally free to go.”
Kathy Griffin? You there? You can go and behead some terrorists overseas on our behalf. If Donald Trump in 2024 is absolutely unbearable, the door is wide open. Hell, the southern border has been open for almost four years!
Not sure what these white, upper-middle-class, educated Americans with a “wide range of well-connected and financially stable friends” and the appropriate “In This House…” lawn sign in their affluent, crime-free neighborhoods are having “ethical dilemmas” about. They are so isolated in their political bubbles to see the decline of our nation. They are removed from it. They don’t see the struggles of Middle-America fentanyl addiction and overrun midwestern cities. They don’t comprehend how the very liberal policies they support are killing or cities, our infrastructure and our educational systems. Instead, they want more of this insanity and threaten to leave if we don’t get it.
I will say this. If your morals and “ethics” are dictated by celebrities who hate America, I leave you with this thought:
Freak-off parties and the people who attend them.
Considering leaving this country if Trump strolls back into The White House? May I suggest some beautiful beach-front property in North Korea? Or perhaps, could we interest you in a quaint, little Palestinian village house to hang your pride/progress flag and sip your disgusting Chardonnay?
Go on, do what is morally and ethically right for you, oh, white, affluent, educated liberals. And, please, do us a huge solid and take the celebrities with you. Now, get to packing your bags. Time is a-ticking.
Photo Credit: Auckland Museum, CC BY 4.0
Cameron says: You notice how they never talk about moving to Mexico or anywhere in Central America? It’s because they don’t want to live near The Help.
But in all honesty, I’m fine with these people leaving. I just hope they take the time to do their research on their intended destination before they make that commitment.
pkudude99 says: If giving them the benefit of the doubt, it’s that they don’t want to have to learn a new language and they’re just too geographically illiterate to know that half the Caribbean, plus Belize and Guyana are English-speaking countries too. Not to mention there’s a bevy of African nations that have English as an official language, along with Singapore and most of the Pacific Island nations to boot. The Phiippines also has a very high rate of English fluency. But anyway….
If not giving them the benefit of the benefit of the doubt, then yeah… they’re afraid to become a minority in a different country. Though that’s again geographically illiterate since most of Central and South America has a significant population of white folks, and South America is actually as white as if not whiter than Europe once you get south of São Paulo. This includes several Brazilian states, as well as the entire countries of Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina.
rbj1 says: Stephen Decatur toast, after achieving a naval victory: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”
He hoped that we’d be in the right, but would stick with us even if wrong, so the columnist is more correct than many of the natural born citizens. The authoritarianism, as always, comes from the left. Going further right and you wind up with Lysander Spooner’s utopia.
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