By Zach Parsi

EXPATRIATE MANIFESTO

A spectre is haunting America—the hollow-eyed and moaning spectre of our nation's decline (2). It haunts the expanding waistlines of our increasingly obese citizenry (3). It lurks among the ineloquent yo's and ho's of our popular discourse, a diminished national conversation of ghetto kabuki, rhyming doggerel and white-boy ebonics. It peeps from the crusty, ragged piercing holes in the flesh of our self-mutilated youth. It rattles its chains at the hubris of our foreign policy and the imbecilic pap of our summer blockbusters. It stalks the parapets of our crumbling democracy, howling at our low voter turn-out and groaning at a republic of television-entranced morons with little knowledge of or interest in the world outside their cycles of compulsive consumption.

All true patriots shiver in dread when confronted with this spectre that no jump in GDP, world-changing Silicon Valley tech innovation or smackdown of suicidal terrorists can dispel. Conservatives decry a decline in family values while Liberals, a decline in social justice. Many are the scapegoats incorrectly identified as responsible for the invocation of this spectre, and many are the forces that fruitlessly attempt to exorcize it. But it endures and grows in strength of presence—a recurring visitation, an adumbration, the ghost of America's future. It endures and grows because this malaise has yet to be correctly diagnosed, nor has a workable remedy been proffered.

Until now.

SHIRTSLEEVES TO SHIRTSLEEVES

Three conclusions can be ineluctably drawn from our nation's founding, rise to world supremacy and current state of spectral decline:

The United States is a nation of brave and daring immigrants, a republic established by rebels whose forefathers were enterprising colonists who dared to establish new lives on terra incognita (4) discovered and mapped by intrepid explorers;

The unmatched success of the U.S. (5) is attributable to the traits of the adventurers, exiles, refugees, immigrants and colonists who settled and forged wildlands into nation: the self-reliance and adaptability required to survive in an unfamiliar land, the audaciousness necessary to depart one's home for distant horizons, the optimism to expect a better life at journey's end;

and, finally (irrefutably),

The descendants of these first-generation Americans have become vicitims of their forefathers' success. Coddled by prosperity, they have lost or abandoned the very newcomer/outlander characteristics that have long composed America's competitive advantage against the mouldering states of Europe and Asia, as well as against other upstart nations of the New World.

For generations we have skimmed the cream of the world's human capital over our borders. The American character was shaped by these striving, ambitious, desperate, driven immigrants, and they made our country the most powerful and innovative on Earth. But that cream has been deposited as adipose tissue on the double-wide ass of slothful and stupid America, and our human capital has been diluted with the ease in which successive generations have lived. We must reacquire the winning traits of our founding fathers. We must reawaken in our citizens the ambition and ingenuity of the newly arrived immigrant.

There is only one remedy: expatriation.

TAXONOMY OF TRAVEL

What is an expatriate? The word is ancient, for as long as there have been human settlements, some men have left comfort and safety behind in favor of the unfamiliar world outside their city walls.

It is helpful to think of travel from Homeland to Strangeland as a category of human behavior that has evolved distinct subcategories, each filling a different niche created by the development of human civilization—from first settlement to nation-states to empires to vacation destinations.

The first division in this taxonomy of travel is based on the motive for departure. On one branch there are those who are forced to leave Homeland (whether by expulsion or abduction) or who would be in peril if they stayed: slaves, exiles, fugitives, refugees. On the other we have those who leave voluntarily: explorers, invaders, colonists, migrant workers, immigrants, pleasure-travelers, expatriates.

The subcategories on the voluntary branch can be distinguished first by the length of intended stay upon arrival to Strangeland. Explorers are just taking a look around; pleasure-travelers abide long enough to become acquainted with interesting sites and interested parasites; immigrants aspire to abandon Homeland permanently, or rather to convert Strangeland into a new Homeland.

The expatriate is the most recent branch of this ancient tree, an offshoot of the pleasure-traveler and, like the pleasure-traveler, distinguished from the other types of voluntary traveler by the nonpecuniary impetus for his journey. Explorers living in an unmapped world departed their home shores under royal commission or for mercantile gain. Colonists were the middle-managers of empire, paid to keep the darkies in line. The self-interested economic motivation for the voyages of invaders, migrant workers and immigrants is clear.

Increasingly safe and reliable international transportation gave rise to the pleasure-traveler. For the first time in human history, the principal motive for voluntary travel was not tangible personal gain. International travel was still a luxury, however, and so the original pleasure-traveler was necessarily a wealthy individual seeking the new sensations and pleasant disorientation that occur when visiting a foreign land.

EXPATRIATE: AN
AMERICAN INVENTION (6)

Like the pleasure-traveler, the expatriate's displacement from Homeland is not economically motivated. But the expatriate's journey is more than a short diversion from the familiar or an exotic entertainment. The duration of the expatriate's sojourn varies but is measured in years, not months; that, however, is not the only element that distinguishes him from the pleasure-traveler. The expatriate's reason for leaving Homeland is always tinged with an element of dissatisfaction with life in Homeland, ranging from ennui to frustration to disgust. The desire for greater freedom, be it artistic or sexual or political, is a common motivation.

Although there are early examples of expatriate departures from other Homelands, the expatriate can be seen as an American invention, or at least as arising from socio-economic conditions that are most closely associated with America—a large middle class. Just as the expense of the earliest pleasure travel necessitated that the original pleasure-traveler saunter forth from the well-appointed salons of the upper class, so the expatriate could only have materialized in the middle-class kitchen, an adventure story in one hand and a grilled-cheese sandwich in the other.

Three characteristics of the American middleclass gave rise to the expatriate:

1. Sufficient education to know of the wider world;

2. Sufficient money to make his way to Strangeland (although not by first class); and

3. A psychology of dissatisfaction, restlessness and complaint.

This last middle-class trait comes in many flavors: envy of upper-class freedom, glorification of working-class authenticity, frustration of being trapped in a large class of largely undistinguished Americans—that is to say, the desire to live a life less ordinary.

THE BENEFITS OF ANOMY

The defining aspect of expatriate life—the sensation, whether they know it or not, that all expatriates are seeking when they decide to depart Homeland—is anomy. Anomy is defined as a lack of familiar rules and values. The expatriate must learn the local language and customs. He must find shelter and sustenance with no network of family or friends to assist him. Anomy means the removal of context, both the strictures of prejudice and the false props of family reputation and class. The expatriate is a stranger whose actions are judged prima facie by the locals, qualified of course by common American stereotypes.

Anomy encourages independence, self-expression and the development of new ideas. It is no accident that the most innovative and enduring art of the last century was created by expatriates. Anomy requires self-reliance and initiative. Mental and physical vigor are rewarded by anomy; sloth and hebetude are punished. Anomy inspires humanistic sympathy for the previously strange and unfamiliar and favors the strong and imaginative and individualistic. Anomy is what made America great. A dearth of anomy and its salutary effect on the human organism is responsible for the spectre of our nation's decline.

THE SOLUTION:
MANDATORY EXPATRIATION

Heretofore, relatively few Americans have chosen to become expatriates, preferring the ease of life in Homeland. This can no longer be tolerated. A new category of human travel must be created, a graft of the expatriate onto the non-voluntary branch of the travel taxonomy. A regime of mandatory expatriation must be introduced—the forced removal of U.S. citizens to live in Strangeland. This program has precedents; from the military draft during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts to the Peace Corps, the U.S. government has a history of mandating and facilitating international travel.

The proposed program will take the form of an obligatory national service that will, in fact, be an international service. International service in service of the nation: the Expatriate Corps. We will focus on our nation's youth, for if the seed corn be rotten, then the farm must surely fail. If our youth continue to deteriorate in mind and body, then America must surely lose its place of supremacy in the world.

Starting at age 18, all American citizens will be required to live for two years in Strangeland. A Strangeland will be deemed sufficiently strange if it exposes the expatriate to anomy and so reawakens the essential traits that are responsible for our nation's power and glory. Countries like England and Canada would be disqualified as not sufficiently strange Strangelands.

Country assignments will be random and will distribute the American expatriates among the world's urban centers, in contrast to the Peace Corps, which sends the majority of its volunteers to rural sites. Expatriates will receive a monthly stipend equivalent to slightly more than the average per-capita monthly income in the city of residence. Agreements will be made with host countries to permit expatriate travel within the country of assignment but not outside its borders during the two years of service.

Friends and family will be encouraged to visit, but no return to the U.S. will be permitted. Logical exemptions from the Expatriate Corps will be made for those with disabilities or dependents, as well as for U.S. citizens with at least one parent who is a first-generation American.

The Expatriate Corps will be inexpensive to fund and non-bureaucratic. There will be no tests or explicit goals to be met by those serving in the Expatriate Corps. The only requirement is to be sustained expatriation. Penalties for non-compliance will be permanent ineligibility to receive government aid of any kind, as well as a permanent doubling of the normally applicable tax rate on earned income. Poor and wealthy Americans alike will find it extremely inconvenient to shirk their expatriate duties; thus the Expatriate Corps will unite even the most disparate young Americans through a common life-changing, character-building experience.

The domestic benefits of the Expatriate Corps for America will be immediate and profound. Imagine homeboys rusticated from the ghetto and its culture of glorified ignorance to the intellectually charged atmosphere of Paris or Berlin. Enough playing the victim and excusing antisocial behavior as a culture of the dispossessed! We offer a different sort of manumission—freedom from excuses—by sending them to live with people who had nothing to do with their ancestors' abduction into slavery or Nat Turner or Jim Crow.

Consider suburban adolescents with their derivative mass-market identities transported to the streets of Prague or Beijing, there to forge unique identities and experience the joys of individualism. These tattooed and pierced automatons, deluded by fantasies that their facile body decorations render them unique—they shall abide in Khartoum or Bangladesh or Barcelona, there to question assumptions and gain fresh perspective on such feeble-minded poses.

As for the cutthroat competitive straight-A students with lurid fantasies of Ivy League acceptance and delusions of haute-bourgeoisie grandeur: For those who deem themselves the future leaders of our nation, it's off to Dakar or Riyadh or Caracas. There they shall test their wits in the heart of Strangeland, where prep courses, grade-grubbing and resume-padding will be of little assistance.

A concerned father inquires: But won't you be putting America's youth in mortal danger? Sir, there is far more danger in the children's continued malingering in comfort, complacency and provincialism. The current path poses a grave risk to their future and to that of our great nation.

An ambitious lady protests: Our sons and daughters will be wasting two years when they could be getting ahead in the world! Madame, what use is the mortarboard of a university degree when it perches atop a rotten melon? What use is the fast track when it is the wrong track? Does the world really need more blinkered corporate lawyers or investment bankers who have never considered a destiny other than that imposed upon them by the materialistic fantasies of their overbearing mothers? We are becoming a nation of credentialed cretins, madame, nincompoops with advanced degrees.

Initial domestic resistance will give way to widespread acceptance, as the members of the first Expatriate Corps class return from their service abroad. Anomy will have made them strong. They will return wiser, more creative and more agile-minded. They will enjoy a tremendous competitive advantage over their slightly older peers who were not required to become expatriates. It would not be surprising to see a mass expatriate movement even by those Americans who fall outside the statutory obligations of the Expatriate Corps.

The principal indication of a successful state has long been the number of voluntary travelers that it attracts, be they tourists, migrant workers or immigrants. The hallmark of a failed state is the restriction of their citizens' right to travel abroad—a locking of the Homeland gates motivated by fear of a mass exodus of the most talented and ambitious individuals to more successful states.

With the Expatriate Corps, the U.S. will be setting a new standard of excellence. We will be known throughout the world as a country so successful that it requires a two-year absence of all its citizens, confident that they will return to their country because there is no other in the world that offers the opportunity, freedom and excellence of America.

We Americans who have resided in Strangeland are uniquely qualified to prescribe this powerful remedy for our country's malaise—a remedy whose miraculous benefits we have observed first-hand, a remedy that has made us strong and happy upon our return to our beloved Homeland.

We openly declare that the spectre of our nation's decline will only be exorcized by the forced expatriation of American citizens. Let the rest of the world tremble in envy at the daring genius of our Expatriate Corps—a source of vital new blood for our increasingly anemic nation.

Anomy will be America's salvation! Expatriates of the world unite!