Since I don’t have time to write much of my own stuff, I can at least point to something good when I see it, such as Shikha Dalmia’s piece at The Daily about how both the left and right hate it when people cross the border:
If there was ever any doubt that the totalitarian temptation identified by economist and Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek in his brilliant tract, “The Road to Serfdom,” is alive and well (even in the sweet land of liberty), two current crusades of the left and the right ought to put it to rest.
The restrictionist right is deploying ever more draconian methods to chase prospective Americans out of the country, including imposing what some call a “business death penalty.” And the tax-and-spend left is devising ever more punitive ways to prevent existing Americans from leaving the country, including imposing a rather ominous exit tax.
I didn’t connect those issues in my head, but it makes a certain kind of sense: What kind of crazy country will we have if we try to keep out the people who want to be here and keep in the people who want to leave?
Probably not one we’ll enjoy living in.
Having grown up in a communist country, I am maybe a little more sensitive to police state measures than others. And while all the usual suspect (police militarization, lack of government accountability, etc.) have been in place for some time, the final and most important nail for me was the growing set of restrictions on leaving the country. It’s not only about an exit tax: by now, there are classes of people (most notably people delinquent on child support payments) that have their passports taken from them if they try to leave the country. I see this as just the beginning, and so after 16 years in the US I packed my bags last fall and left. Living in one police state was enough for me.