Free Republic

Having met a number of global traveler-types, I was surprised some years ago when I heard American citizenship described in very unromantic, mercantile terms. The most common expression was, “It’s a good passport to have.” For blood and soil Americans, citizenship is something entirely different. After all, two-thirds of Americans do not even have a passport. Rather, this nation is who we are. It is mom, apple pie, Main Street, the English language, our ancestors, our only political loyalty, and our destiny. Unlike globe-trotting “citizens of the world,” we are not just passing through. A similarly crass view of citizenship...

On November 9, the day after Donald Trump won the presidential election, Jamie Lypka said a quiet good-bye to the United States. Lypka, 27, lives in South Korea, where she moved four years ago to work as an editor for educational materials. Though she’s since married a man born and raised in her adopted country, she says, the couple had planned, on a fuzzy, unspecific timeline, to someday move to the United States. “I want to have kids,” she says, “and I don’t want them to go through the school system” in Korea, where the typical education is high-pressure and...

I’ve written many times about how investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners and other successful people migrate from high-tax states to low-tax states. Well, the same thing happens internationally, as France’s greedy politicians are now learning. It’s a lot harder for Americans to escape our tax system, though, in part because of reprehensible exit taxes that are disturbingly reminiscent of some of the awful policies of past totalitarian regimes. But it still happens, and that’s a very damning indictment of Obamanomics and a worrying referendum on the future of the United States. Here are some blurbs from a recent Fortune article....

Nearly 3 million overseas and military voters from at least 33 states will be permitted to cast ballots over the Internet in November using e-mail or fax, in part because of new regulations proposed last month by the federal agency that oversees voting. The move comes as state and federal election officials are trying to find faster ways to handle the ballots of these voters, which often go uncounted in elections because of distance and unreliable mail service.

I began by asking myself the question linked inevitably to the survival of the United States as a trusted nation in the 21st century: Why can't America admit defeat? What is it in the American psyche that seems to dictate the necessity to be proven not only right, but superior in dealings with the outside world? I have lived the better part of 40 years in Japan, a country whose nationalistic ardor and patriotic zeal once easily matched that of the U.S. If the Japanese government has not sufficiently apologized for the utter brutality their nation inflicted in Asia and...

Chinese-born engineer awaits trial By GILLIAN FLACCUS, ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER,Seatle-Post Intelligencer, March 22, 2007Stolen secrets would put U.S. in 'arms race' SANTA ANA, Calif. -- As a top engineer at a major U.S. defense contractor, Chi Mak helped develop some of the most advanced and closely guarded naval technology in the world, including silent-running propulsion systems that can make submarines virtually undetectable. Now, in a case that experts say could have serious implications for U.S. security, he is accused of stealing those secrets for the Chinese. Prosecutors say the Chinese-born Mak was working for China from 1983 until his arrest...

MEXICO CITY - President Bush's nephew, campaigning for votes from Americans living in Mexico, called the federal policy of arming U.S. Border Patrol agents with plastic pellet guns "reprehensible." Speaking in a mix of English and sometimes-halting Spanish, George P. Bush said Saturday that his uncle is not to blame for the policy, which has angered Mexicans. He instead blamed it on "some local [immigration official] who's trying to be tough, act macho." "If there has been American approval for this policy, that is reprehensible," Bush said of the guns, which fire paintball projectiles filled with chile powder. "It's kind...