> No reason for any of the US top intellectuals to stay here.
Depending on who you ask, the US is still the only country to have freedom of speech and the right to bear arms against a tyrannical government, which might be appealing for some of the top intellectuals (mostly Y Combinator founders, I think?)
>Depending on who you ask, the US is still the only country to have freedom of speech and the right to bear arms against a tyrannical government, (...)
I question the intellectual capacity of anyone who actually buys into this mythology.
Especially given the number of countries - presumably without freedom of speech or a right to bear arms - which have been far more successful at dealing with tyrannical governments than the US.
I don't know. It does turn out that one can find guns if one needs them, legally or not, and revolution doesn't require a Constitutionally mandated right to keep and bear arms. Not that a tyrannical government would respect such a right anyway, unless they had the gun owners on their side. The only things guaranteed by the Second Amendment are a market for guns and some irreducible amount of societal gun violence.
Even in Japan, where the gun laws are so onerous even the Yakuza supposedly avoid dealing with them, that guy managed to build his own and shoot Abe Shinzo.
Meanwhile in the US that tree of liberty they love to go on about is getting real thirsty.
Just take South Korea for an example. The president tried to enforce martial law, and got his ass handed back to him. Can you imagine anything similar to that happening to Trump?
To be fair, I suspect the top military officers take their commitment to protecting the constitution a lot more seriously than the current batch of cabinet level officials. Even back when there was the 'contested' election results the military basically told Trump to go pound sand.
Sure, they can spend the next few years filling the top ranks with loyalists but that doesn't mean anyone will follow their unlawful orders because in the military it is a crime to follow an order you know to be unlawful.
I'm not saying I personally agree with the statement, but to be chartiable there is definitely a non-zero amount of commenters here who believe that the US is the only "real" democracy in the world.
Depending on who you ask, the US is still the only country to have freedom of speech and the right to bear arms against a tyrannical government, which might be appealing for some of the top intellectuals (mostly Y Combinator founders, I think?)