Vote With Your Feet

Tomorrow’s election is bound to disappoint some people, and, according to many pundits, election forecasters and the presidential futures contracts online, they are going to be Democrats for the most part. For many Democratic activists it would be hard not to: If a Republican president can’t win a war and preside over a booming economy, how could anyone want to re-elect him? With all the impassioned campaigning of “Rock the Vote,” “Vote or Die” and the efforts of 527 groups like Moveon.org, there would be something futile about protest and political action after a Bush win. After all, liberal activists were born to win this election. An opponent and circumstances like these really should not require Clintonian charisma to gain the support of the American people.

There will be a number of ways for liberals to respond to another questionable election loss like that of 2000. Maybe people will just take it in their stride and accept the horrors of a lame-duck Bush administration. Then again, in many other countries stolen or rigged elections can trigger riots—though that is unlikely to do much, even if people do have the right to bear assault rifles again. No, the secular and sensible will probably just have to grin and bear the following four years much as they did the last four and hope that the Democratic party will get its act together.

The question I would like to ask left-leaning Harvard students is why they put up with the idiocy that is this country’s political process. You don’t have to live here. There are other civilized countries where you can live, be free and mercilessly make fun of anti-abortion activists safe in the knowledge that their views are totally irrelevant to the political process. Other countries with better weather, where Congress is more lively than “Crossfire.” It is not any more an act of treason to change your citizenship than it is to get a divorce, and if your current country is misguided enough to get its sense of how Iraq is going from Fox News then maybe you should think about kicking it to the curb.

I come from Australia and would like to comfort every Harvard student who feels that the world must have gone mad to have a President George W. Bush: Don’t worry, it’s just your country and not the world that has gone mad. If you want to move to a country where the big issues in the last election were healthcare, education, the economy and environmental protection—and not “flip-flopping”, wars on abstract nouns or the merits of giving the general public assault rifles—then you should seriously consider applying for citizenship in my home nation. Australia’s immigration system is extremely simple: If you’re smart, speak English and are unlikely to go straight to welfare then you’re probably good for getting residency or citizenship. As it happens, that’s a decent description of most Harvard students.

Maybe it’s wrong to leave one’s country in this way, immoral and perfidious even. But to say so would be a massive act of hypocrisy, because this country has gained every time another nation or region has engaged in spectacular acts of ideologically-motivated stupidity. Jewish scientists fleeing Nazi Europe were a great boon to American academia, and the Pilgrims themselves moved here because continental Europe wasn’t working out for them. Leaving messed-up nations is not just an American tradition—it is the pragmatic instinct upon which this country developed.

I will be watching this election very closely because if Bush wins I intend on snagging some prime human capital for my country. We’ve got beaches, cool animals, a low drinking age and a sensible political system but we can never have enough smart and sensible citizens. There’s no reason for Harvard people to put up with this country any more than they have to, and I’ll be making that clear. Citizenship applications will be available in my room and the Australian New York Consulate website (www.australianyc.org). I look forward to seeing you in the civilized world.

Alex Turnbull ’05 is an economics concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.