Moving to Canada: One Year Later

So it's been almost a year since the electoral fiasco of last fall. I was reminded of this upon seeing a car with one of those "Move to Canada Like You Promised" stickers. It occurred to me that those of us who cannot bear to stay and fight against the scary ideologues attacking our liberties have a plethora of secular humanist states that would have us. The most popular example is, of course, Canada, Bill Maher chose Switzerland, but the list usually includes havens such as Holland, Greece, France, and anywhere in Scandinavia. But what about those on the right? Where will they run away to when the thundering backlash from the left finally puts an end to the insanity being wrought upon us in the name of Jesus? I thought I would try to answer that question.

According to the pro-life (or anti-choice... it's all semantics, right?) Pregnant Pause, abortion is illegal under all circumstances in Chile, El Salvador, Malta and Vatican City. It is allowed only to save the mother's life (not health) in Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua, Benin, Brunei, CAR, Chad, Colombia, the Republic of the Congo, the DRC, Cote d'Ivoire, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Gabon, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Kiribati, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Monaco, Myanmar, Niger, Oman, Palau, Paraguay, the Philippines, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, the Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Syria, Swaziland, Tonga, Tuvalu, UAE, Venezuela and Yemen. Ok.

From this list of "life-loving" nations we should remove those countries who are not hypocritical as far as abortion and the death penalty. According to Amnesty International, the list is then reduced to Afghanistan, Antigua, Chad, the DRC, Dominica, Egypt, Gabon, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malawi, Oman, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, the UAE and Yemen. Unfortunately we had to drop a lot of countries that have the death penalty but "are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions," and we don't get to restore anyone to the list by adding those bleeding-hearts who only use the death penalty for non-ordinary (serious) crimes. Now we're getting a clearer picture of where the defeated Republicans would go.

Red-Staters also love a strong military. The CIA reports US military expenditures as a percentage of the GDP at 3.3% (which seems right from what I've seen elsewhere), so we should cut the list to countries that find it necessary to spend at least as much of their income on "strong defenses." Data is not available for Antigua or Dominica, but our list could be reduced to Egypt (3.4%), Iran (3.3%), Libya (3.9%), Oman (11%), Syria (5.8%), Yemen (7.8%) and maybe Afghanistan (2.6%), Indonesia (3%), Lebanon (3.1%) and the UAE (3.1%). I used 2.6% as the absolute cutoff because that's what France spends! They probably wouldn't feel safe from the evil-doers abroad if they went to weak-on-defense Chad (2.1%), the DRC (1.5%), Gabon (2%), Guatemala (0.8%), Lesotho (2.3%), Malawi (0.7%), the Philippines (1%) or Somalia (0.9%).

Their chosen country of exile would never allow same-sex marriage either. From the countries on our list, homophobes... I mean, Republicans would probably feel least comfortable in Egypt or Indonesia, where according to Public Agenda homosexuality is not even illegal!

I could go on and on, but I believe I've made my point about some of the values and issues that define us as conservative or liberal... but just in case I haven't, it bears mention that three out of these six potential conservative utopias are also three out of the six State Department-designated "state sponsors of terrorism" (Iran, Libya and Syria).

To the owner of the stickered vehicle in question I can only say one thing: "you'd like that, wouldn't you?"