CALIFORNICATING OUR NATION

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CALIFORNICATING OUR NATION

Exclusive: Patrice Lewis asks liberal statists to stop bringing their ways to new locations

Published: 2 days ago
by PATRICE LEWIS

You’ve probably seen the list making its rounds on the Internet, to wit:

• If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
• If a conservative doesn’t like a talk-show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.
• If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

… and so on and so forth.

To this excellent list, I would like to make an addition: If a conservative doesn’t like where he lives, he moves. If a liberal doesn’t like where he lives, he moves and then tries to endow his new setting with the same problems as his old location.

Keep this in mind for a moment as I confess to a deep dark secret: I’m from California.

Yes, it’s true. In 1972, when I was 10 years old, my dad was transferred from his job in western New York State, and my parents moved us to California, where I lived for the next 20 years. I always viewed California as too hot, too crowded, too expensive and too restrictive. So shortly after my husband and I were married in 1990, we left. We spent 10 years living in southwest Oregon before moving to Idaho in 2003, where we’ve been ever since.

The reason my Golden State heritage is so distressing to admit is because Californians have, let’s face it, a bad reputation outside their borders. As newcomers to Oregon, we soon heard the term “Californication” and became aware that Californians were viewed with hostility because of their penchant to act like condescending know-it-alls, scornful of local culture and customs.

We got away with it because we simply didn’t act like transplants. We bought a small and modest fixer-upper, started a home woodcraft business (thus reducing our income) and otherwise broke the typical California stereotype. What we didn’t do was build a McMansion while complaining about hayseed contractors who couldn’t possibly live up to our superior standards. We didn’t join a deep ecology group (consisting of other out-of-state transplants) and start petitioning for an end to logging. We didn’t forget that the local economy was supported by logging and that our blue-collar neighbors had mortgages to pay and children to support.

But it seems this behavior was the exception, not the rule. It’s gotten so bad that “California” is now not just a geographic location but an attitude. Anyone can be a “Californian.” A typical example hit the news this week in which a progressive transplant from Virginia named Audette Fulbright moved to Wyoming and then became offended at the local culture, specifically gun laws and oil drilling. Aggrieved, she wrote to State Rep. Hans Hunt and said, “My husband and I moved to Wyoming not too long ago. We believed it was a good place to raise children. With the recent and reactive expansion of gun laws and the profoundly serious dangers of fracking, we find we are seriously reconsidering our decision, which is wrenching to all of us. However, the safety of our family must come first. We are waiting to see what the legislature does this session. I know of other new-to-Wyoming families in similar contemplation. Your choices matter. It would be sad to see an exodus of educated, childrearing-age adults from Wyoming as a result of poor lawmaking.”

No doubt expecting the soothing platitudes typical of most “California”-style legislators, it must have been a shock when Rep. Hunt forthrightly replied, “I’ll be blunt. If you don’t like the political atmosphere of Wyoming, then by all means, leave. We, who have been here a very long time (I am proudly fourth generation) are quite proud of our independent heritage. I don’t expect a ‘mass exodus’ from our state just because we’re standing up for our rights. … It offends me to no end when liberal out-of-staters such as yourself move into Wyoming, trying to get away from where they came from, and then pompously demand that Wyoming conform to their way of thinking.”

Rep. Hunt’s response went viral and received the enthusiastic approval of millions of people around the country who’ve suffered from “Californication” for decades.

Let’s face it, this is typical of “Californians” (and please remember the term refers to attitude, not geographic origin) who move away from the gutter they’ve created through excessive legislation and tax laws built on envy, into places where the locals are enjoying their constitutional rights and making a living with their area’s natural resources. Then, through complaints and agitation and ganging up, these “Californians” raise taxes and restrict freedoms and otherwise drag their new home down to the same cesspool they worked so hard to leave behind. Finally, after succeeding in their mission to “improve” their new home, they complain that things are too expensive and restrictive. Then it’s time to move on, dragging their liberal strategies with them and leaving another progressive California-style nightmare behind.

Presumably these out-of-staters don’t recognize their tactics as being destructive. They’re only trying to do good, you see. They just want to tutor the poor ignorant locals to get in touch with their feeeeeelings rather than bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles. They’re just here to help.

These “Californians” have an enormous disconnect between cause and effect. They don’t recognize that the effect of gun confiscation is skyrocketing crime, or that shutting down economic opportunities means unemployment. They never seem to “get” that the progressive policies they endorse cause the crime, pollution, out-of-control spending, regulations and taxes that chased them out of “California” to begin with.

Michael Savage once wrote a book called “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” The behavior of “Californians” supports this premise. It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Californication always means failure and suffering, usually for others. Its practitioners are, by this definition, insane.

So my advice to “Californians” everywhere is this: stay where you are. We don’t want you. Read Matthew 7:3-5, then clean up your own cesspool before criticizing the ways of others.

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