Why I’m Leaving

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Jay Fonseca]

This will be the fourth consecutive emigration of the last three generations of my immediate family. My grandparents emigrated from Portugal to Mozambique during the 1940s and 50s in search of a better life. The massive and undeveloped colony seemed like the land of milk and honey for those willing to get their hands dirty. A few decades later my parents-to-be immigrated to South Africa as Mozambique headed towards what would become a 10-year war for independence. Then when I was just 4 years old they decided that a fascist state fully enveloped with the evils of apartheid was no place to raise a child. My mother was fortunate enough to get a work visa into the United States and that’s where we’ve been ever since.

Now the time has come for me to follow in my family’s footsteps. Maybe it’s in our blood to not only yearn for change but to have the fortitude to go out into the unknown in search of it. But this time something is different. I’m leaving the United States of America, the shining city on the hill; a land where millions of people try to enter each year, often at great risk.

Upon learning of my wife and my decision to leave our friends, family, great jobs, and fantastic home, everyone immediately asks us: Why? It’s such a painfully awkward question to answer. How could the answer be anything but obvious? That said, we learned our lesson early and have stopped telling people the truth behind our exodus. Instead we’ve been answering with generic statements like “Oh, just for a change of pace” or “We’ve always wanted to experience another culture.”

I’m tired of holding my tongue. It’s not healthy to keep so much bottled up inside and it’s even more painful to watch those closest to me living a most ignorant and animal-like existence. So here are our real, unfiltered, and honest reasons for fleeing the land of the free.

1. I own my body and the initiation of force is always immoral. I don’t want to live in a society that has accepted violence as the answer to every question.

2. Privacy is dead. If the NSA wants my phone and email communications then I’m going to make them jump through some geopolitical hoops. Where I’m going you can buy a cellphone at any gas station anonymously and without a contract.

a. Five Misconceptions About US Cyber Espionage

b. The NSA: And Who Will Watch The Watchmen?

3. The Patriot Act.

4. I’m tired of having the fruit of my labor stolen from me each year.

a. List Of Taxes Paid By Americans

b. Americans Work 129 Days A Year To Pay For Government

5. Travel in America.

a. TSA Goons

b. Jeff Berwick vs. United Airlines

c. The Top US Checkpoint Refusals of 2012

6. I’m scared of the police and would never call them for fear of my own family’s safety.

a. NYPD Breaks Into Home Without Warrant And Kills Unarmed 18-Year-Old

b. Cops Shoot Man In Bed 16 Times…Ooops Wrong Person

c. BART Police Kill Unarmed Man Lying Face Down

d. Dad Calls Cops On Son To Teach Him A Lesson, Cops Kill Son

e. Cops Raid Wrong House & Shoot Man Armed With Golf Club

f. Cop Tasers Man For Fun

g. I could post a million of these.

7. I love my dog.

a. Is A Dog Really Killed By Police Every 98 Minutes?

b. You Need To Calm Down, You Can Get A New Dog

c. Cop Shoots And Kills Leashed Dog

d. Responding To Wrong House, Police Officer Shoots Chained Dog

e. Again, I could post a million of these.

8.  You Don’t Own Your Home and Never Will .

9. The US doesn’t negotiate with terrorists; it simply ruins every aspect of daily life in order to deal with them. I’m moving to a peaceful country that has never attacked another nation and doesn’t have to worry about revenge for collateral damage.

a. Blowback

b. Noam Chomsky On 9/11 Theories

c. Collateral Murder

10. Free Market Capitalism is a necessary condition for freedom.

a. I, Pencil

b. The Free Market Has Been Framed

c. Surrounded By The Achievements Of Capitalism (If you don’t have time to watch the entire talk, jump to 19:23 for one of the best moments ever in an economics lecture.)

d. America Is Fascist

11. Everything is Illegal.

12. False Flags, Lies, or Extreme Ineptitude as a justification for war and the confiscation of liberty.

a. Indisputable Photo Evidence That the Boston Marathon Bombing Was Staged

b. 9/11 Truth

c. Lies of the Iraq War

d. Robert McNamara Admits 2nd Gulf of Tonkin Attack Never Happened

13. The Federal Reserve is the most evil institution on the planet.

a. Zeitgeist – The Men Behind The Curtain

b. Hidden Secrets Of Money

c, The FED Unspun

d. War and the FED

14. A major financial crisis is on the horizon.

a. There Will Be No Economic Recovery. Prepare Yourself Accordingly.

b. The Real Crash, America’s Coming Bankruptcy

15. Fluoride in the water supply.

16. The incestuous relationship between “too big to fail” corporations and the state.

a. Goldman Sachs’ Revolving Door

b. Monsanto, FDA, & EPA

17. American citizens are being assassinated by the president without any judicial review.

a. What If A Drone Killed YOUR Grandson?

b. Obama Admin. Admits For First Time It Killed 4 US Citizens In Drone Strikes Outside War

Zones

18. Conscription has no place in a free society.

19. The dollars has lost 95% of its value in the last 100 years. I’m not waiting around for the other

5% to run its course.

a. Inflation Calculator

b. The Record Of The Federal Reserve

20. The judicial system is a farce.

a. The Trial of Irwin Schiff

b. Civil Forfeiture Law – Guilty Until Proven Innocent

21. The suspension of Habeus Corpus.

a. Not Just For Enemy Combatants Anymore b.

b. US Indefinite Detention

22. Americans worship villains like gods.

a. The Real Lincoln

b. Lincoln The Racist

c. FDR’s Japanese Internment Camps

d. Recarving Rushmore

23. The military industrial complex and the incessant beating of the war drums.

a. Eisenhower’s Warning

b. Timeline Of United States Military Operations c.

c. The Truth About How the US Will Save Syria

24. Obamacare.

25. The Police State.

a. The Militarization Of The Police

b. Towns Don’t Need Tanks

c. Drones For Local Police

26. The overwhelming idiocy of everyone around me.

a. America Is A Stupid Country…And Now There’s Proof

b. Americans Who Don’t Know The Capital Of The United States

27. “Support The Troops”

a. I Do Not Support The Troops

b. Joining The Military Will Make You A MAN!

28. The Main Stream Media is pure propaganda.

a. How The Media Manipulates The Public

b. The Daily Show – 2011 Ames Straw Poll

c. Conan O’Brien May Be About to Push The Envelope

29. I can’t even watch a football game anymore without having statism shoved down my throat.

30. There are more Americans in jail than there were in Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago

a.  More than half of America’s 6 million prisoners are in jail for drug convictions, 80% of those for “possession.”

b. Incarceration In The United States

31. Truth Is Treason In The Empire Of Lies.

32. The Keynesian economists in charge have no idea what they are doing and those with a track record of correctly predicting economic events continue to be ignored.

a. Ben Bernanke: There’s No Housing Bubble to Go Bust

b. Ben Bernanke Was Wrong

c. Janet Yellen Exposed

d. Austrian Predictions

e. Peter Schiff Was Right

f. Ron Paul Predicts The Housing Collapse

33. I received a fraudulent education in government schools and am now being forced to overpay for other innocent children to receive the same indoctrination.

a. Stupid In America

b. No, WWII Did Not Help The Economy

c. The Politically Incorrect Guide To American History d. The Bellamy Salute

34. Start A Business In The United States? Are You Kidding Me?

35. The War on Guns.

a. Gun control isn’t about guns, it’s about control.

b. When They Come For Your Guns…You Will Turn Them Over

c. Don’t Worry About Your Guns: There Is Nothing Left To Defend

36. The War on Drugs

a. Why Drugs Should Be Legalized

b. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

c. Penn & Teller: The War On Drugs – Bullshit!

37. $211,000,000,000,000 National Debt.

38. Democracy is no longer a four letter word.

a. Founding Fathers’ Quotes On Democracy

b. The Founding Fathers Rejected Democracy

39. The Epidemic Of Envy.

a. Self-Entitled Monsters

b. College Students Think They Are More Special Than Ever

c. I didn’t realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally!

40.  I’m only allo wed to sav e $ 5,0 00 a year fo r my re tire ment .

41. I wish Social Security was a Ponzi Scheme.

42.  You can go to war bu t yo u can’t drink a beer…or smo ke a cigaret te .

43. The Walls Are Closing In.

a. Foreign Bank Accounts – Americans Not Welcome

b. Outraged By Facebook Founder, Senate Proposes Steep Expatriate Tax

c. Forget Travel If You Owe The IRS

d. Permission Is Required To Renounce US Citizenship

44. Political Correctness and the Racism Card.

a. Political Correctness Gone Mad

b. Being Offended is Fucking Bullshit

c. The Race Card

45. The Welfare State and the Vice of Charity.

a. The State Against Blacks

b. Economist vs. Secretary of Welfare

c. The Inhumanity Of Welfare

d. Doug Casey on Charities

46. Items 1-45 are horrible. Being forced to pay for them is unbearable.

After reading this list, many people will retort: “But no country is perfect!” I agree. Not only is there no such thing as a perfect country, there is not even such a thing as a free country. Unfortunately, the whole world has been poisoned by the disease of collectivism where people believe their rights are derived from the groups they belong to rather than their individual humanity.

However, few countries are as un-free as the United States. While I may never be able to escape this entire list I’ve managed to find a place where most of these grievances do not exist and where many of the rest have been significantly marginalized. Perhaps even more importantly, I’ve found a place that suits me and makes me happy. And if that ever changes then it will be time to continue on with the family tradition.

To those who dismiss me as a coward and believe that I should stay and fight: I have no quarrel with you. The decision to put your life and your family’s wellbeing in danger is one that each person must make for themselves. I don’t think this machine can be stopped by bullets or by ballot boxes nor by petitions or protests. I wish you well and will support you from abroad but I don’t believe in participating in a fight that can be avoided.

Like love, true freedom is a goal worth a lifetime of pursuit and sacrifice even if only to experience it for a mere moment. We are long past the point of inconveniences and small erosions of liberty. Today, the choice is between slavery and freedom. I’m leaving.

Jay Fonseca is a Dollar Vigilante contributor and modern day Renaissance man; always learning a new skill, cultivating a different interest, and searching for untapped opportunities. He comes from a long line of immigrants and has chosen to follow in their footsteps. Unwilling to cope with the anti-capitalist environment and dangers of the USSA, emigration has allowed Jay to pursue his ventures in freer markets alongside freer peoples.

New Years’ Parting Shot

Justin O’Connell

2013. What a year. As Dollar Vigilantes have observed, so much has happened for anarcho-capitalists the world over. No, scratch that – for freedom loving people the world over. We live in exciting times. Every day we get out of bed our generations face more opportunities and threats than any of the generations before us. 2013 was the year of bitcoin, the year of the NSA and the realization that the public is the “Enemy of the State.” To re-interpret the words of a band called Blink-182, what we need now is an “Enema Of the State.”

We now head into 2014. One hundred years after the First World War. For students of history, that is pretty damn ominous. What’s next? 

It doesn’t matter. Likely, we cannot control it. But, what can we control in 2014? We can control our immediate actions. As I type this in modern day America,   someone searches through my complexes’ trash barrels, looking for plastic to turn in for money. It’s New Years’ Eve. Their immediate action is to search for pennies a day, and to keep up with much of what, in the twentieth century, was considered the “Third World.” Now, we know, the Third World exists at our own dumpster.