I’ve been keeping a running tally of families in my area who have fled the disaster that has become California for greener pastures over the last year. So far I’m up to twelve. Twelve families who represent dozens of human beings, just gone. To a person they left because of school closures. To a person they had not been thinking about moving before COVID sparked a draconian power-grab in Sacramento. And those are only the people I know personally. These days everyone here in California knows multiple people who have picked up and left the state on a whim in the last year. They seek the small things we always took for granted – school, work, mobility. They seek freedom.

Naturally, those seeking a freer life are headed to successful red states that have managed to keep the growth of government bloat as slow as possible and thus the cost of living as low as possible. Naturally, many fleeing their unbearable home states don’t make the connection between their voting habits and their quality of life. Not all, but many.

This fact of blue-state escapees gives red-staters cause to complain about how the flood of freedom-seekers is beginning to shift the political balance of their neighborhoods and municipalities. Whenever I post about a friend or neighbor finally taking off for the greener pastures of Texas or Idaho, there is a common refrain that rises up from the bowels of social media.

“Tell those people they’re welcome to join sane America but they better not vote for all the same bullsh** they’re running from. They can leave their voting habits in California!”

It’s an understandable frustration. Even as I’m watching my blue state clear out, I can’t help but feel sympathy for all the small cities and big towns in normal America that are being flooded by thoughtless, clueless voters who have never learned to make the connection between how they vote and their own cost of living. It’s sad to see some places being overrun with the same nonsense that California voters are taking with them as they flee the consequences of their own poor political choices.

My response to all frustrated conservatives out there trying to figure out how to ride the wave of blue-state refugees is exactly this:

No, I won’t tell anyone how to vote. They’ll vote how they vote. They’re coming your way whether you like it or not. So you can stand around whining or get involved in your local politics right now.

There’s no one person who can dictate the habitation habits of Americans. I can scream at people to just stay put and fix our own problems until I’m blue in the face (no pun intended) but it won’t make one bit of difference. Not from me and definitely not from you.

So the way I see it, you have two choices: bitch and moan or get in the game and protect what you love.

Start entrenching yourselves in governing positions right now. Run for school board, seek out positions in the county clerk’s office. Run for city council, get on the historical commission, join your neighborhood council. Volunteer for community positions within the government. Go to your city council meetings and town halls. Volunteer for poll duties and election organizing. Get on the board of the Chamber of Commerce. When you see blue state encroachment, shout it down. Get loud, get involved, get into the power positions now.

You can no longer wait for someone else to do it. Of course you’re busy. We’re all busy. We’re all just trying to keep our heads down and live our lives but that is what progressive statists depend on. They depend on reasonable people being too wrapped up in their own situations to care much about what’s going on in the halls of their own governments.

Conservatives are fond of the saying, “Freedom isn’t free.” Like all people of all persuasions, we find it easier to recognize the sacrifice of others for our rights and privileges, but when it comes to making ourselves sacrificial we can’t be bothered.

Folks, we are at a time in our nation’s history in which the battle is not to be fought by soldiers and men of violent means, but by citizens with the power of their vote and their conscience. For too long we have depended solely on the constitution  to protect our interests. We have taken for granted that the freedom contained in that precious document is “self-evident” but sadly, my friends, it is not.  The constitution is not a living being. It can only protect us if we continue to hold it in reverence as a society. As President Ronald Reagan once famously said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

Even as we possess the greatest man-made document in history, we are still subject to the laws of human nature, and human nature dictates that we easily forget struggle and embrace complacency where it is offered. Conservatives are just as guilty as liberals in the sin of complacency. Complacency has no ideology.

There’s no way out of what’s coming your way. If you want to save your freedoms, you’re going to have to work for it.

There will be no one who can *poof* magically change the voting habits of beleaguered blue-staters as they flood the Heartland. There is only you. What will you sacrifice to protect your way of life? Gym time? Some extracurriculars for the kids? Your weekends? Your mornings? Your reputation? A year of your time? Two years?

There’s no one coming to save you. Save yourselves or resign yourself to everything around you dissolving into a facsimile of California without the weather and the beaches.