Vote, but no matter who wins, don’t move to Canada

As important as voting is, it isn’t the most important thing. Elections have consequences. Yes, and they should. And the policies and laws adopted by elected leaders matter, too. Most of my working career has been devoted to understanding and improving these decisions. If I didn’t think they were important, I wouldn’t continue to put so much time into them.

But sometimes we give government too much power over us. We do this when we say one program or policy is going to “ruin America” or “destroy our country.” Government does not have that much power over us. 

What makes our country is not the government, but our people and the things they do together: associations, businesses, churches, clubs and charities. Nearly two centuries ago Alexis de Toqueville wrote: “Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.” The virtue of America is that we do so much voluntarily. 

No matter what happens on Election Day, we can continue to influence elected officials individually or in groups. Beyond that, we can build our society independent of government - or sometimes in spite of it.

This presidential election is particularly frustrating. (A year ago I wrote a column explaining my disappointment in Donald Trump.) It seems that each party nominated the only person with enough baggage that they could actually lose to the other party’s candidate. If either party had nominated someone else, he or she could have run away with it.

One candidate can’t be trusted to speak to school children. The other got a rich-and-powerful exemption after committing a federal crime.

The election results may end up more decisive than they currently look; there’s still a month to go. One thing we are guaranteed is disappointed supporters. It’s time we talk about moving to Canada. 

Our neighbor to the north is nice enough, but threatening to move there if the wrong candidate wins is churlish. Is this ever more than an empty threat?

Even if you are serious, why give them the satisfaction of leaving? I’d suggest the threat “I’ll move to Canada” should be replaced by another one: “I’ll stay and fight.”

Elected leaders don’t have that much power over us and we can be sure they don’t by staying engaged even after they win. I am encouraged by the example of heroes who stood up to worse governments with admirable integrity - and with dire consequences. I recently read about two of them.

St. Thomas More stood up to King Henry VIII. He had the opportunity to escape England for Spain, at least according to the play A Man for All Seasons. Yet he stayed and paid for it with his life. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who opposed the Nazis. Today in America, he is best-known for his writings, particularly “The Cost of Discipleship.” Bonhoeffer left Nazi Germany for his second trip to America. He could have remained, but he decided to return on the last ship back to Germany. (I recommend the biography, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” for more details from his remarkable life.)

“I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America,” Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. “I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany.” 

Bonheoffer’s compassion and courage led to his death, too. The Nazis saw the end of the war coming and cleared out their prisons, hanging Bonhoeffer at the Flossenburg concentration camp. 

America faces challenges far less grave, but do we have the courage to meet them? 

Zachary Janowski writes for the Yankee Institute, Connecticut’s free-market think tank. His opinions are his own. Reach him at zach@yankeeinstitute.org.