THE GREAT MIGRATION: George Korda: Color these (new) Tennessee former blue-staters red.

I recently met a highly educated, professional family from Washington state who’d moved to Knoxville. Wondering about their reasons for coming such a distance, I asked what motivated them. Their answer was that they no longer wanted to live in a state with Washington’s rising crime rate and politically liberal political, regulatory, taxation and educational priorities. . . .

There are Tennesseans and others in red states who are understandably uncomfortable with the influx of blue-staters, fearing they might bring with them high-tax, big-government philosophies. But it appears most are coming to escape those situations, so it wouldn’t seem likely they’d want to duplicate those conditions in their new home.

This isn’t to say that Tennessee doesn’t have long-standing political “progressives” (read, “liberals”) within its population. They tend to be concentrated in the blue islands within the ocean of red that is Tennessee’s political coloration. Some blue-sters carp a good bit about Tennessee’s politics and low-tax climate.

On such occasions I make it a point to ask them this: “If you don’t like Tennessee, what blue state would you like to see Tennessee emulate? California? New York? New Jersey? Washington state? Another?”

I have never — and I mean never — gotten a straight answer as to why they want to turn Tennessee into a place they don’t want to live in the first place. Perhaps they like the taxation, regulatory and other advantages of living in red Tennessee while at the same time talking it down. That enables the best of both worlds: a sense of moral superiority while not having to live under the policies for which they claim to pine.

Read the whole thing.