I left the country in 2008, and I'm wondering if I'll ever go back. It's only gotten worse since I've been gone. It's almost to the point where I'm not even sure I want to visit any time soon.
Same story here. Left in 2007, and no longer have any desire to return. My last visit, in 2010, left quite a bad taste in my mouth, with the creeping totalitarianism on display at the airports in particular. Welcome to America: don't forget that WE ARE ALWAYS WATCHING YOU.
What's especially depressing is that the commitment to paranoia and the dismantling of due process, civil rights, etc., is 100% bipartisan; there are no serious political voices taking a stand against it. Bush was of course bad; Obama -- my last great hope -- has extended and amplified everything that Bush did. And Obama's opponents are essentially unified in their position that Obama's chief failure has been to not dismantle due process and civil rights quickly enough. At this point, I think that Obama is probably still the lesser evil, but that's too damned evil for me to vote for.
I don't see any prospects for this reversing itself. Carry this trend out another decade or two, and it means the end of the American republic. There's nothing extraordinary about this thought: over long enough timeframes, great nations collapse all the time, and this is more or less the blueprint they follow when they do it: increasing paranoia about being beset by enemies both external and domestic; dismantling of internal political apparatus and centralisation of political power with a single individual; increasing inability to balance a budget, tolerate dissent, maintain infrastructure, etc. I fear that the present era will be remembered alongside Rome in the late 4th century, Spain in the early 1930s, etc.
I hope I'm wrong, and that those who stay can somehow turn it around. But at this point I'm glad I left.
Eh, I'm not sure I'd call him "serious". He's definitely pretty good on some civil liberty issues. Rather less so if you happen to be female, non-white, or gay. Even if that wasn't the case, his understanding of economics is sufficiently loony as to exclude him from serious consideration, at least in my view.
In any case, a belief in civil liberties shouldn't even be a discrete political position; it should be the bedrock on which all political positions are founded. When one candidate defines themselves as "pro-liberty" -- as opposed to all those other guys -- the game is already lost. Should they win power, they'll need to claim extraordinary powers in order to reinstate "liberty" -- undermining democratic institutions in the process, and thus the actual mechanisms that guarantee liberty.
In fact this is more or less exactly what happened with both Bush and Obama, and I'm pretty sure that the same thing would happen with Paul. His message is: "I will give you liberty" -- not "I will ensure that the institutional checks and balances which act as guarantors of liberty are maintained and reinforced". In fact he rarely shows anything other than contempt for those institutions. Therefore I do not believe he would be a friend of liberty.
I'm not sure how familiar you are with Paul's record but he's been a Congressman for 20+ years and has ALWAYS voted consistently. He was one of the three House Republicans who opposed the original PATRIOT Act. He consistently indicates that he will not use executive orders. He understands and has repeated that the president cannot take a country into war without a Congressional declaration of war first. He is constantly citing Constitutional provisions.
There is no reason to assume that Paul will turn evil as soon as he gets the Presidency. This is a different question from whether he will be able to be effective or not, and my belief is that he would not be able to do almost anything he wants to do, and that a Paul presidency would accelerate our plunge into chaos and anarchy, but I don't believe Paul himself would be corrupted and start ignoring the Constitutional stipulations on executive power.
"Rather less so if you happen to be female, non-white, or gay."
[citation needed]
You are way off base on this one and have nothing to back this up. Ron Paul has consistently been for every American. He is for repealing Roe v. Wade and allowing states to decide on abortion rights, he has been outspoken on the bias of prison sentences and the death penalty on minorities, and is against a federal mandate on marriage. Those positions are exactly contrarian to the ones you are attempting to assign to him.
I'm not sure why you think his understanding of economics is "loony" as he is the ONLY member of congress that predicted the housing collapse YEARS before it happened (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnuoHx9BINc)
Neither Bush nor Obama ever championed liberty. Ron Paul is a completely different animal. He isn't promising to GIVE you anything — he's promising to reduce government to get OUT of your life. Big difference.
I'm not even American, and I think I can safely speak for 99% of gay Americans when I say that the grandparent comment was right in saying Ron Paul is anti-gay.
Abortion rights... well from this side of the pond we think it's nutty that anyone in your country can want abortion to be illegal, literally crazy. But whatever your view, pro-choice can argue that they're fighting for woman's rights, pro-life cannot - you can argue you're fighting for the rights of babies, meaning it's an issue not relevant to whether Ron Paul is good for women.
In the past he has somehow tried to blame those sexually harrassed in the workplace for being sexually harrassed - something that is far more a women's issue than not.
Overall he's a far-right (shockingly not the furthest right thanks to batshit teapartyers) Republican. I get that there are Americans who agree with his views, but don't try and argue that his views on these topics are universally considered correct - even in America.
Without knowing much about Ron Paul, I was shocked to see you call Paul for females by repealing Roe vs Wade! Abortion should always be a womans own choice, not something the government should meddle with.
"""He's definitely pretty good on some civil liberty issues. Rather less so if you happen to be female, non-white, or gay."""
No candidate (actually, no party) really gives a f* if you "happen to be female, non-white, or gay". It's just a market niche they are milking, with the Democrats appealing to the "progressive" masses and the Republicans to the "conservative" ones.
In actuality they could not care less. Blacks, hispanics, women, gay, is not where the money (contributions, under the table, campaign funding, post-congress job waiting, etc) come from.
People voting with those issues in mind (either pro or against) are sucked into this false dichotomy.
I'd rather people voted for the ACTUAL issues, which mostly amount to FREEDOM, the ECONOMY, and FOREIGN POLITICS.
His attempts to use jurisdiction stripping to remove the First Amendment/Fourteenth Amendment restrictions on establishment of religion from applying to state and local government says otherwise.
I know you have your reasons to leave, but it makes me sad when the good people, the ones who could do something because they can see what's wrong, leave.
The US may be far from perfect, but it's important as a country founded upon the right ideas. If it crumbles, we all lose, regardless of where we live.
I disagree. I think that the good people should all make an effort to leave, because the sooner it crumbles, the sooner it can be rebuilt.
There's no un-ratcheting the loss of freedoms there. It no longer has basic liberties or the rule of law, and it's actively dangerous to anyone trying to bring about changes to that status.
I still believe smart people can make a difference. The real danger is a country ruled by bad ideas with a strong military. Believe me: it's easier to bring change from the inside.
I left in 2006 for two years. As a foreigner in East Asia, it felt freer in some ways. But I think that was a combination of one, perception and two, getting breaks as a foreigner. Foreigners are given slack because they aren't expected to know the small details of whats accepted and not. They expect we know the big goods and bads but not the small ones.
And then there was perception --just not being aware of what was allowed and not. I do recall people telling me that mocking the president was not allowed. Anyhow, I'm back and I feel ok. It could be better, idealistically, I suppose, but it's not as bad as it would seem, vis a vis other places.
It's not that it has become worse, it's just that all those crazy things that happened after 9/11 have become institutionalized and bureaucratically entrenched.
Good luck getting rid of stupid when stupid has a budget.
