1 I feel the same way. I used to idolize Japan until I actually lived there. It's taken me a long time to appreciate America. Now I'll never leave. The gulch is here ... somewhere.

Green thinks people come here because of freedom. I would say they are mostly coming here because of the byproducts of freedom, not freedom itself. The biggest magnet is money - and the material comfort it can buy. Capitalism makes this wealth possible, but this fact eludes the immigrants who come here to get rich and elect Leftists. Very, very few immigrants come here because they loved reading the Constitution in their countries of origin. Even the politically minded may be more interested in using America as a temporary base of operations for dissident activities to liberate their people back home. Ayn Rand was highly atypical; once she came to the US, she never looked back (with the exception of her novel We the Living).

Immigrants in the past were no different. My ancestors had no idea what 'freedom' was. But they did understand money, and they came to Hawaii to earn it.

The difference lies in America's elite which has turned faux self-criticism into a sport. Nowadays Immigrants and the American-born alike are told what an eeeevil empire America is. (And they should take some responsibility for actually believing this nonsense.) Why should immigrants assimilate to such a horrible place when they can just take the goodies and vote for more supposed 'freebies'? They're not new Americans anymore; they're just new victim classes taught to demand their special rights.

Failure permeates American society, but the stench starts at the top.

2 I forgot to link to Kim du Toit's classic post on this subject:

We have nowhere else to go.

Lefties have lots of options. They can move to Canada, or to France, or to other socialist paradises. Sadly, though, they don’t—preferring to try to replicate those horrible experiments here, until one day, if Toren’s prognosis is correct, we will be no different from Europe, or any of the other statist countries.

Okay, let me make this more personal.

I have nowhere else to go.

Like Toren, I once changed countries to start a better life for myself; unlike Toren, I don’t have somewhere else to go to now, and I have no investments to fund a move (anymore).

This is where I am, and this is where I’ll have to stay.

Why do Leftists stay? As hard as this may be to swallow, patriotism may be part of the answer. They love America - in their own way - and want to remold it into their ideal image. But the more cynical may suggest a simpler answer: inertia. Why move to Cuba when you have a big house, a big TV, a big SUV, and everything in your language right here? How much do they really value free health care? Not enough to learn Spanish and live under Fidel. They may not like the eeeevil American empire, but they do like America the luxury mansion, though they'd love it if only it had a few more amenities ... at our expense.

Inertia is powerful. If you told me today that you had founded the Gulch and invited me to join you, would I instantly drop everything and go? Or would I hesitate and ask myself, is the world outside the gulch that bad?

How bad will things have to get before we are willing to flee to the Gulch?