ROGER SIMON: So You Wanna Move (to a Red State)?
Who wants to sing “New York, New York” or “I Love L. A.” anymore? And can you imagine leaving your heart in San Francisco? What has happened is a true American tragedy—and it’s not just because of COVID, although that helped. The cancer has been growing for a long time.
It could be said you should stay to help resuscitate these cities although I would argue you do more for them by leaving, making those governing the cities—universally Democrats, as everybody knows—and even more those dopey enough to have voted for that governance, wake up.
And yet… and yet… and yet… moving is not easy. And I’m not just talking about the onerous task of packing up years of possessions and trucking them cross country. That’s bad enough, though transitory.
You carry yourself, your quirks and neuroses, with you wherever you go from Knoxville to Kuala Lumpur and you don’t know exactly the extent of that until you are forced, or force yourself, to change years of habit.
Just as much, the places you are going have their own quirks and neuroses, their own patterns, also established for years. Where do you fit in?
Moving from a blue state to a red state is not an instant transformation yielding spiritual and political liberation. There is work to be done—on yourself and on the locale itself.
I can speak most accurately about what it means to move to the Nashville area but I would imagine it’s a paradigm for some other migrations.
In itself Metro Nashville, as they call it, embodies the culture clash we are seeing across America. Nashville the city, contiguous with Davidson County, is decidedly blue, while neighboring Williamson County, really part of the metropolitan area—I described it earlier as “Republican Heaven”—is red, although problems exist there as well, especially in their supposedly vaunted schools. The state is, of course, quite red.
People and businesses are pouring into the area in droves. An article just the other day in the liberal San Francisco Chronicle —‘What Austin felt like 10 years ago’: Is Nashville the next hot spot in the Bay Area exodus?—gives some idea of what is happening.
How’s that Welcome Wagon program coming along?