Posted on 05/17/2016 7:50:15 AM PDT by Iron Munro
Mail arrives in my inbox all the time, telling me that by going to Mexico I have sold out, fled, abandoned the United States. I’m a coward and a traitor, just like Lord Haw Haw, and Kim Philby, and probably hate America more than Barack Obama does.
It is is irrational. 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.
In the country where I grew up, if you woke up and found a naked intruder headed for daughter’s bedroom with a Bowie knife and a hard-on, you shot him and arranged to have the rugs cleaned. The sheriff wasn’t greatly interested and the county prosecutor didn’t see anything to prosecute. The scum floating on the gene pool wasn’t a protected species. It wasn’t the driving engine of the culture. It was just scum.
Today you would be charged with the use of excessive force. The cadaver’s family would sue. They would end up with your house unless they just ran you broke with legal bills. The outcome would depend on the racial make-up of you, the intruder, and the jury. Your daughter would be married with grandchildren before the courts reached any conclusion.
Think I’m exaggerating? When I used to have the police beat for the Washington Times in the Yankee capital, the cops told me, dead serious, that if I ever shot an intruder, I should shoot him again to make sure: You can’t afford to have two stories, they said, especially if he’s black which, in Washington, was pretty much a foregone conclusion. They’ll hang you, said the cops.
In the country I grew up in, you got on an airplane by walking up these funny little steps with wheels on them. Then you sat down. That’s all you did. I know, I know: You don’t believe this. It’s true. You just walked on. Further, the stewardesses were not merely civil but — so help me — friendly and pretty. Flying was actually enjoyable. The seats were big enough that you didn’t sit with your knees beside your ears and your feet in your pockets.
Today, getting aboard is like going into max security at some ghastly penitentiary. I once flew a bit around the old Soviet Union, as distinct from our new one, on a junket. Security was less oppressive, though the food was marginally worse unless you liked green chicken. The service was just as peremptory.
Maybe that’s what I miss most about the Old Country. People were courteous. They could afford to be because everyone else was too. It’s hard to be pleasant when the odds are even that the next official you deal with will be an ill-mannered lout who knows he can get away with it.
I think people were courteous also because they lived in an agreeable country and were pretty happy with things. The new country seems angry — quietly so, not sure what to do about it, but looking for someone to hit.
Yet further still, in the Old Country they didn’t have these funny little Japanese cars with itsy-bitsy four-bangers. Nope. They had great virile monsters thirty feet long with eight huge cylinders like buckets. A dog could have slept in them. Sure, those rocket-barges were probably ridiculous and left a trail of parts that fell off because quality control wasn’t that great, but they were real cars. They embodied a spirit I liked. Today cars seem to be designed with hair-dressers in mind.
The Old Country music was vibrant, vigorous, much of it springing from the great black bluesmen of Mississippi and then Chicago, some of it from the mountains and from the jazz dens of the big cities. In the music of the new country, the whites whine and the blacks grunt angrily and the lyrics seem to have been written by a retarded computer. From Tampa Red to Eminem is a long way down.
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. Never mind that if it weren’t for white males everybody else would be living on low-hanging fruit and saying “ugga-wugga” because they couldn’t figure out how to make a big-block hemi to crash into things with. Or figure out how to make anything else.
In the Old Country, the government was pretty much benign or actually useful. It built roads and largely left you alone. The public schools were not great but neither were they terrible. People ran their own lives. The federal government tended to be somewhere else, which was a splendid place for it, and you mostly didn’t notice.
In the country that is now where America used to be, the government is the cause of most major problems instead of a solution, however inefficient, to a fair number of them. The government keeps you from educating your children, holds standards down, prevents you from hiring the best people you can find to work in your business. It won’t allow local jurisdictions to control crime, prevents localities from enforcing such moral standards as they see fit, virtually illegalizes the religion of most of the population, and generally won’t permit people to live as they like.
Now, I used to be fond of the United States. Granted, I wasn’t much of a patriot. The word nowadays seems to mean one who doesn’t so much love his country as to dislike other people’s. I figured live and let live. 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.
"I’m still fond of the United States. I just can’t find it."
Great line.
Brings to mind a story. I met some friends at a restaurant. The place wasn’t overly busy but we couldn’t get service. Then I noticed all the dirty tables and realized that the staff were too busy yak-yaking to actually do any work. Before we left I stood near the check-out counter and said in a loud voice, “Say, this would be a great place to put a restaurant!”
This would be a great place to put a nation.
Places like Hillsdale College that have never accepted any government money will keep the flame alive even if the flame is mostly ignored. I think that’s the best we can do for the time being.
If you finally decide that the country isn’t going to keep you free, because it doesn’t have any interest in doing so, the next step is to do it yourself on your own terms.
That’s why people often feel free as expatriates; they aren’t depending on the country to keep them free, they are acting on their own behalf and using what they find as raw material.
Hillary Flammond: My uncle was born in America.
Nick Rivers: Oh, really?
Hillary Flammond: But he was one of the lucky ones. He managed to escape in a balloon during the Jimmy Carter presidency.
-Top Secret
And....Mexico is a better place to live, even when compared to Obama America?
Chances of being robbed, taken hostage, or murdered by the cartels while living in Tennessee....
Hmm...have to look into that.
LOL! That is a bit of a problem isn’t it?
America is the worst nation to live in, except for all the others. ;^)
I have many ex-pat friends in the Philippines and know of an old friend now in Brazil (though I'd guess not for long)
The point being ... now that I'm pushing 70, I see and hear things I never did before (which is pretty weird for an eyes-going-bad ... can't-hear-shit old faht) and If it wasn't for Trump ... I'd'a tooken me n'my Filipina wife and headed on down to a tropical paradise ... cost of living 1/2 or less like a king on SS.
It STILL ain't out'a the equation
Maybe a Constitutional Republic where men are free and the government was subservient to the people instead of the people being subservient to the government.
Nah - it wouldn't last.....
I agree with his sentiments but I’ll be damned if I’m going to move to a third world shiite hole where the chances are quite large that I could be kidnapped, my head chopped off or just robbed and killed. Much much greater than here in my nice little rural location.
That’s why people often feel free as expatriates; they aren’t depending on the country to keep them free, they are acting on their own behalf and using what they find as raw material.
Makes sense and nicely said.
Like when you set out to cross a large ocean in a small boat.
To me the importance of this essay is in Fred's analysis of what happened to America, not how Fred dealt with it.
He is right on target when he says America as we knew it is gone - it left us.
Or more precisely, it was stolen away.
Who is John Galt.
“Perhaps senor Rees is a true Mehicahno and fits right in”
Not so much, although Fred Reed is married to a Mexican woman. He’s a Venable, an old Virginia family.
Can you take your guns with you?
;^)
And it didn't, but I am not giving up hope just yet, either.
Depends on where you live, I suspect.
Living in Mexico City outside a gated enclave might be a bad idea.
But there are some areas away from the urban cesspits that are probably quite friendly and comfortable.
But they ain’t the US and the rules are different. You have to keep that in mind.
Life in Mexico may change for an expat during the next administration.
In other words, gringo, leave your guns in America or we’ll seize them and throw you in prison forever.
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