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Mother Davis gets out the map and suggests,

It’s time for liberals to make their move. I mean that literally. In the real world, every day is Election Day, and the choices that we make either make the liberal position stronger or lend support to the Republican nationalist cause.

Here at Irregular Times, we have begun describing the political position of the Republican Party not just as conservative, but as nationalist. First of all, the Republican elites who now govern this country have betrayed many of the conservative ideals that they claim to hold. Worse than that, the Republican Party has officially endorsed a neo-Fascist platform.

I’m not kidding when I call the Republican platform neo-fascist. Think about the way that it officially values security over freedom. In Texas, the Republican Party has officially declared the USA to be a nation of and for Christianity. The renaming of America as The Homeland has sent a chill down the backs of many older Americans who remembered many similar phrases coming out of Nazi Germany and the Fascists in Italy and Spain. The unquestioning militarism in our popular culture and unapologetically expansionist foreign policy, combined with the Republicans dehumanization of our enemies with epithets such as “towel heads” and “sand niggers” comes straight from the top of the nationalists’ leadership. Our flag has become an idol to worship much in the same way that the Nazis reverred the swastika, and our government is scapegoating vulnerable cultural minorities the same way that Hitler made political use of the Jews. The list of Fascist characteristics of the new Republican elite goes on and on.

We’re not alone in detecting the whiff of a new and dangerous American nationalism in the air. Many American liberals have intuitively felt the gathering threat, and in reaction to the narrow re-election of George W. Bush and his promise to strictly enforce his supposed mandate, a record number of Americans have begun the process of emigrating to Canada.

Pause and think about that for a second. Under George W. Bush, the United States, which in the past has been so respected around the world that immigrants flooded our shores, is now experiencing a boom in the number of its own citizens who are desperate to escape its borders. This is another similarity to the growth of Fascism in Europe. Artists, intellectuals and freethinking citizens are starting to flee.

The numbers prove that this flight is, in fact, taking place. The day after the election of George W. Bush, requests from Americans about how to obtain Canadian citizenship skyrocketed 575 percent. Even after that first shocking and tragic day, tens of thousands of Americans are starting the process of leaving for Canada - every day.

I understand why these good Americans are calling it quits. The new nationalist America is not something that we’re proud of. My own sister-in-law is among those who are in the process of fleeing to Canada, and I know many others who are making the move.

However, I want to suggest three alternatives to emigration to Canada. Keep in mind that Canada is by no means a perfect nation. I also still believe that America is worth saving - if only because we are the most powerful nation on Earth, and if the Republican nationalist agenda is allowed to suceed, the entire world will suffer the consequences.

Alternative 1: If you live in a red state, leave it for a blue state. By living in a red state, you not only contribute to the economy of the nationalist culture, but you also are helping to give that red state power in the Electoral College. The number of a votes a state gets in the Electoral College is calculated according to the number of people living in that state. If you voted for John Kerry, but you live in a red state, your vote in the Electoral College is now for George W. Bush, whether you like it or not. If you had lived in a blue state, you could have lent your Electoral College weight to the more progressive candidate, and taken it away from George W. Bush. The next time that the Electoral College votes will be recalculated in 2010, so moving will not affect the next presidential election, but it will affect the elections of 2012. Moving out of that red state will also reduce the number of nationalist politicians the Republicans there are allowed to send to the House of Representatives.

Alternative 2: If you’re a liberal currently living in a red state, move to Ohio. The Republicans like to claim a landslide, but the fact is that they won Ohio by just 132,000 votes. If the liberals who live in Kentucky alone would just pick up and move across the state border to Ohio, Ohio would become a solid blue state, and would never vote for a neo-Fascist candidate like George W. Bush again. This suggestion goes for Florida too, which also had a fairly close vote. If you’re a liberal living in Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi, you know you’re not welcome there, so move to Florida, enjoy the beaches, and vote!

Alternative 3: If you don’t already live in one, move to a blue town. Where you shop and pay taxes determines a lot about who has the power in America. If you live in an area that has a majority of Republicans, even if you live in a blue state, you are inevitably giving most of your money to pro-nationalist businesses and local governments. Take your money and leave for more friendly territory, and the Republicans will suffer for it. Their businesses won’t make as much profit, and their property values will go down. In the progressive town that you move to, on the other hand, local businesses run by good liberals will benefit, and the real estate wealth of the area will increase as well.

How can you find a liberal oasis? Go over to Google, and find an index of liveable cities. These towns are likely to have liberal values, because we liberals support our communities, and are much less likely to create generic suburbs, cut up our towns with interstate highways, and racially segregate our communities. We also support our schools more than nationalist Republicans do, so you’ll be in the company of well-educated youngsters, which is always a pleasure. I’ll also help you out by suggesting a few good blue state liberal havens that I know of: