Whenever I say nice things about Canada, some people get annoyed. After all, they have socialized medicine and are more inclined to regulate certain kinds of speech. But these are anecdotes. If looks for anecdotes on the lack of freedom in the U.S., one becomes buried in them. If I look at actual indices that attempt, however imperfectly, to measure various freedoms, the U.S. and Canada come out pretty much identical on a classical liberal conception of freedom. And Canada comes out ahead on contemporary capabilities conceptions of positive liberty. To my mind, the evidence pretty strongly supports the conclusion that Canada is at least as free as the United States. Why is this a problem for some Americans?
And then this corker on why U.S. Libertarians don't want to move to Canada:
But My sense is that some American libertarians have a vague sense that if Canada really was more free, then they should want to move there. But they emphatically don’t want to move to Canada. My diagnosis is that many libertarians prefer to live in a place where it easy to find others who share their individualistic and libertarian values over living in a place where they would actually be more free, but would feel more culturally alienated.
...which rather seems as though he is saying that U.S. Libertarians would rather talk the freedom talk down there then come to the True North and actually walk the freedom walk because the ground up here is too thick with non-Libertarians. Or, alternatively, that Libertarians would prefer to feel free rather than be free. Or, even better, Libertarians prefer the ideological homogeneity you get when surrounded by other Libertarians.
Of course, the WS's Terrence Watson argues that, if you think Canada is more free than the States, you just haven't weighted your freedoms properly:
In any event, while in practice the U.S. and Canada may be similar in terms of liberty, they are not identical in terms of freedom of speech. And, since freedom of speech is an extremely important liberty, this suggests that Canada may be less free than the United States, in terms of the freedoms that matter the most.
Speaking of cultural conformity, incidentally (as a number of Wilkinson's commenters do), nothing beats hanging around a hot-bed of Libertarianism like small town Arizona (Yuma, specifically). Five radio stations playing either C&W or Rush Limbaugh, and every dept. store selling the same cheap American flags.
A whole herd of independent thinkers, down there.
