Offer a random person anywhere in the world a thousand dollars, a ticket to America, and a green card, but with the catch that the offer is only good for 24 hours. How many takers would there be?
Now, rerun the experiment for every other country. Does any country get more takers than America? Doubtful.
The fact that it’s only a question worth asking with respect to other free-market democracies in the West is revealing. China, Russia, India, Brazil, etc. are places people leave, not where they go. When it comes to civilizational flourishing, it truly is, as renowned historian Niall Ferguson has argued, a matter of the West and the Rest.
Identity politics makes for strange political bedfellows, but one thing on which virtually everyone on the left agrees is that the rise of the West and America is largely the story of the ever more effective oppression of the…
