You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know – But Most of Us Never Cease Seeking It
By Chip Ford
It’s a challenge at best attempting to change someone’s belief who’s confident it’s true, despite not having bothered testing it nor giving it even a passing evaluation.
I helped run a successful grassroots taxpayers’ advocacy group for three decades in Massachusetts, of all places, until all my hope was gradually ground down and finally crushed to dust. Five years ago, I escaped to Bowling Green. Unexpectedly, I continued running the organization remotely by popular demand of the membership, but even that faded by the end of 2022 when I shut it down permanently. Over those four years operating from exile, I frequently used part of Citizens for Limited Taxation’s email newsletters and on its website to advise members “It Doesn’t Need To Be ‘The Massachusetts Way’”. I was warning that the state’s steadily increasing political repression and overbearing governing eventually makes escape the only option.
In those messages to CLT members I contrasted what I’d observed expanding back there to what I found here in Kentucky. The comparisons were stark, even for me experiencing them firsthand. But breaking through even those political activists’ latent complacency wasn’t working. That’s when I realized it might not be possible when “You don’t know what you don’t know” and can’t fully comprehend until you’ve experienced the alternative opportunity. Many of those members expressed envy for my new life, a handful had their own escape plans in mind, but few have acted on them. Inertia, and for some their circumstances, are hard to overcome.
Even for the more adventurous of us, now termed “American Refugees” in a new book, packing up our lives and moving to a distant state meant cutting the cord to everything dear and familiar and starting all over again. It was a difficult decision to leave behind a comfortable home and job, friends, neighbors, and family, favorite places, local knowledge and customs built over a lifetime. We refugees abandon all that and more in pursuit of the American promise as it used to and is supposed to be. When we found and adopted our new homes, many if not most have become determined, even zealous to keep it this time. We were more than aware of its fragility. We had suffered the loss of that American promise once already.
Soon after arriving here in my “sanctuary state” I volunteered with the Warren County GOP as a precinct co-captain, and through that I met some even more like-minded folks who were forming a new grassroots group whose intent was to “Keep Kentucky Conservative”. This sounded like what’s necessary if Warren County and by extension all of Kentucky is to hang onto what we have.
“You don’t know what you don’t know” works conversely as well: one’s accepted rights and liberty can be subsumed over time through citizen apathy and inertia. When it’s not recognized that those values are gradually being eroded, when there’s nothing with which to compare the decline and gauge it, what happened in oppressive blue states can happen anywhere, even in Kentucky. Unless enough citizens are vigilant and active, complacency permits unwanted change, which steadily redefines the accepted norms, until it becomes too entrenched to any longer reverse.
That’s what happened over time in the state I recently had to abandon. Remember the instructions on how to boil a frog – gradually so it doesn’t jump out of a scalding hot pot? That’s what happened in Massachusetts over past decades despite the determined resistance of not enough of us. It can happen anywhere, including Warren County.
I just read the recently published “American Refugees: The Untold Story of The Mass Exodus from Blue States to Red States” by Roger L. Simon, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, a founder of PJ Media, and editor-at-large of The Epoch Times. He and his family left behind their longtime residence in California to become what he termed “refugees” in red state Tennessee, coincidentally a few months ahead of my escape from Massachusetts in 2018. Upon learning of his book, I wondered how much if any of Mr. Simon’s views would mirror my own experiences and observations. I was not disappointed. Here are a few excerpts from his book I especially related with:
Chapter 5: Rolling Out the Wrong “Welcome Wagon”
Many locals claimed that these blue staters were coming to their pristine red states not to join them, but to pollute them ideologically. Wittingly or unwittingly, migrants were carrying with them their liberal ideas and irreligious values. . . .
Some even contemplated setting up “welcome wagons” for the blue staters to remind them of why they had come in the first place, and to gently remind them to check their virtue-signaling social justice bilge at the door. . . .
The fear that blue staters were going to pollute red states with their indelible left-wing ideology, I came to learn, could not have been more baseless.
The problem, indeed, was just the opposite.
(Page 16)
Chapter 6: The Rise of a New Cavalry
The newcomers were anything but liberal and progressive, overt or otherwise. They were American refugees: people who so rejected those ideologies, who so preferred to live in a constitutional republic, that they were willing to pull up stakes; quit their jobs; leave behind friends, family, and their accustomed ways of life; and trek across the country – all to live in accordance with their values.”
Meanwhile, their destinations – the red states – had problems of their own. Most of them did, anyway.
Even reliably red Tennessee, which voted two-thirds for Donald Trump in 2020, had issues. . . . there was a significant disconnect between many of the legislators and their voters. A list of desires from the state’s conservative citizenry, for everything from educational reform to election integrity, went unanswered. In the worst cases, politicians reneged on their promises, betraying their constituents. . . . (Page 17)
A more pragmatic quote that keeps popping up is former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s “all politics is local” – and for good reason. The realm of politics that the people could change was mostly local, indeed almost entirely local. Whether or not the refugee cavalry were aware of O’Neill’s quote, his principle was motivating their actions and continues to do so. The battle to retrieve America is being fought in the local sphere, because here is the best place for it to be fought by the ordinary citizen.
(Page 21)
Chapter 40: “Country On”: New Year’s Eve 2023, Nashville
Among the last compulsions to wither away, if it ever does completely, is the need to convince friends and family in your state of origin (ones you may have disappointed or even angered in leaving) that you did the right thing, and that maybe they should even follow you. These are the last people you can influence because it often threatens them the most. It’s easier to sway a random person sitting next to you on a plane.
(Pgs. 189-90)
Chapter 42: On the Cusp of The New
Refugees are different kinds of people. To them, the ability to “move on” is part of their DNA. They are people for whom looking for new horizons is a natural, almost instinctive, part of life. Standing still, for them, is moving backward.
(Pg. 203)
Chapter 45: The Makings of a Wannabe Redneck
I have decided not to allow a few retrograde politicians to disturb my enjoyment of life in the great free state of Tennessee. We all have to accommodate to where we live at some level. In a way, it’s a positive compromise from which one can grow. And besides, since I haven’t met a single refugee who returned to his state of origin, I don’t want to be the first.
(Page 215)
One of the personally most satisfying of his findings appeared in Chapter 4: Why Are These People So Nice?
People, in general, were much nicer. In the first few weeks after my arrival, after so many years in New York and Los Angeles, I even thought such friendly behavior was a trick.
(Page 11)
I’ve said exactly the same. Just a few months after arriving in Bowling Green I wrote an op-ed column for The Daily News which I’d titled “Lucky in Kentucky,” in which I noted:
I’ve never met so many warm, gracious, friendly and helpful people as every single soul I’ve met here so far. Even public employees are friendly and helpful, unlike the typical arrogance and disinterest doled out back there. Instead of standing in long lines for literally hours to register a car or renew a driver’s license at a distant state Registry of Motor Vehicles office, it took twenty minutes here to change over my vehicle registration, another twenty for my driver’s license. And it cost less.
Lucky in Kentucky, The Daily News
Roger Simon, now living outside Nashville, and I have exchanged emails. He mentioned “I have yet to motor up to Bowling Green, but it’s on the bucket list.” I intend to invite him and his wife Sheryl to drive up from Nashville and speak to our Warren County Conservatives group at one of our monthly meetings. I’m hoping he’ll accept my invitation and join us in the near future. I look forward to meeting a fellow trooper of the “New Cavalry.”
About Chip
After over three decades of hand-to-hand combat in the political trenches of Massachusetts, Chip escaped to Warren County in 2018. He retired in 2022 as the final executive director of Citizens for Limited Taxation, that state’s most effective taxpayers advocacy group for half a century.
