Freedom

By The Washington Examiner 

As the Washington Examiner reported this week, the end of the COVID-19 pandemic has done nothing to arrest the trend of people fleeing large cities in liberal coastal states for more pleasant and orderly locales, particularly in the Mountain West and the Sun Belt.

A mixture of unreasonable pandemic restrictions, rising crime, lawlessness, and hostility toward employers has forced this continued urban exodus.

A Census Bureau report released late last month shows which cities and towns have gained population and which have lost it. The data demonstrate that the states and cities that imposed the most draconian COVID-19 restrictions were very likely to lose population. But the fact is that the data are quite similar for the period between 2018 and 2019, when COVID-19 was not a consideration. What towns and cities gaining population generally have in common both before and during COVID-19 is that they generally live under laws made by Republicans. What towns and cities losing population have in common is that they generally live under Democratic rule.

It is hardly a coincidence that all 15 of the 15 fastest-growing cities and towns between July 2020 and July 2021 are in states that Republicans govern: Arizona, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Idaho. And 14 out of the 15 fastest-declining cities during the same period were in states that Democrats governed at the time.

What towns and cities gaining population generally have in common both before and during COVID-19 is that they live under laws made by Republicans. What towns and cities losing population have in common is that they live under laws made by Democrats.

Not all Democratic states and cities are equally anti-business, but COVID-19 helped bring out the totalitarian side of many state and city governments, driving away and keeping away many former and prospective residents. The Democratic states that were once the biggest draw (Colorado and Washington, a state with no income tax) dropped off the growth lists thanks to COVID-19.

There is a lesson to be taken here. When businesses have a choice of whether to live in a hostile business climate or a friendly one, the choice is a simple one. This has made it easy for states such as Florida and Texas to poach California businesses.

As for Democratic efforts to poach residents from red states, they have been rather pathetic. New York Mayor Eric Adams attempted not long ago to lure residents from Florida after the Sunshine State enacted a law preventing grossly inappropriate sexual content from being taught to very young children. But parents apparently didn’t find it much of a draw that New York City teachers might convince their 8-year-olds to transition to a different gender. Incredibly, it turns out that most liberals love their children, too.

Amid skyrocketing crime and homelessness, the government-enforced destruction of children’s innocence, and the gross enabling of political violence, cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago have had little to recommend themselves lately. That is one reason those four cities, the top four population losers in last year’s data, lost on aggregate the equivalent of Miami’s entire population.

It turns out that the classic bread-and-butter services that governments are supposed to provide (sanitation, law enforcement, a judiciary) are more attractive to taxpayers than the performative wokeness that has replaced useful governance in such places. People want their tax dollars spent to repair roads, not to force depravity onto their own children.

This comes as a shock only to Democratic politicians. This is precisely why Democrats are heading for historic losses in November.