Exile and Renewal

How the American Diaspora Could Strengthen the World

Editoral Note: This post was originally written for Borderless Living, my publication focused on practical expatriation. But this one’s personal—and foundational. Because while I’ve spent the last several months documenting America’s accelerating collapse, I haven’t said much about what I’m doing next. This is that story. It’s not just about leaving. It’s about what we carry with us when we go.

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Today is Easter.

For some, it’s a holy day marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For others, it’s a celebration of spring—the return of light, life, and warmth after winter. Either way, Easter is a story of renewal. Of rebirth.

And that’s what I want to talk about today. Not religiously, not symbolically. But personally—and geopolitically.

I’ve made my decision. I no longer believe the United States has a future worth investing in. Trump isn’t the cause, but the catalyst. The rot runs deeper. The final chapter of the American story is being written, and I’ve chosen not to go down with the ship. Instead, I’m joining the growing wave of Americans quietly, methodically, making their way out.

But this isn’t a eulogy.

It’s a declaration.

Because what we’re about to witness—what we’re already seeing—is something remarkable: a global ripple effect set in motion by the American diaspora. We’re not just leaving. We’re bringing something with us. And if it’s handled right, it could be one of the greatest unintended gifts to the world in this century.

Let’s talk about renewal—not just ours, but theirs.

Because for all the “ugly American” tropes that have circulated for decades, there’s another truth people don’t talk about as often:

The world doesn’t hate Americans. Not really.

They hate what America has become. But they still admire what once made it exceptional—the confidence, the restlessness, the willingness to try something new and build something better.

That attitude is coming to a country near you.

The Talent Shock Effect

The Americans who are leaving now aren’t tourists overstaying their visas. They’re not retirees or digital nomads on a whim. They’re builders, thinkers, and doers. They’ve launched startups, led teams, survived recessions, and navigated barely functioning systems.

Drop a person like that into Portugal, Ireland, or the Netherlands, and you don’t just get another tax resident. You get an economic accelerant. Someone who finds opportunity where others see bureaucracy. Someone who believes in building. Someone who doesn’t ask permission, because they’re used to making it up as they go.

This is how cities are transformed.

It’s how Cuban exiles made Miami an economic powerhouse. It’s how Hong Kong was built by refugees. It’s how Tel Aviv became a global innovation hub.

Culture follows capital, yes. But capital follows energy. And American energy—when it’s been exiled from its home—tends to build a new one.

Exporting Confidence, Importing Dynamism

Say what you will about Americans, but there’s a mindset that’s hard to find elsewhere: the unshakable belief that reinvention is always an option. That the rules are bendable. That “fuck it, let’s try” is a strategy.

Sure, it can be annoying. It’s part of why we’re seen as arrogant.

But it can also be revolutionary.

When Americans show up, they:

• Start companies in sectors others avoid.

• Challenge assumptions that “this is just the way things are.”

• Move faster than systems are designed to allow.

This mindset has downsides, no doubt. But in societies that prize stability over motion, it can be rocket fuel. It disrupts stagnation, questions fatalism, and builds.

We’re not leaving the U.S. to sip espresso in a piazza and contemplate existence. We’re not on vacation. We’re relocating our lives—and lives like ours don’t stay idle. We build. It’s what we do.

That will cause friction. On the one hand, we’ll try to get those around us to “think American.” On the other, they’ll try to assimilate us. Somewhere in the middle—through sparks and tension—something new will emerge. And that something will be dynamic.

Many of the people we’ll meet have always dreamed of America. But they no longer have a viable path to immigrate. So we’re bringing the American spirit to them—in their backyards.

And here’s something few are talking about—but they should: We, the ones who leave, may also be the world’s best protection from the America we left behind.

Our optimism, creativity, and relentlessness may be the antidote to the chaos exported by a declining empire. Suppose the United States is becoming a rogue actor on the global stage. In that case, the Americans who flee it, who reject its new authoritarianism, may serve as an early warning system—or perhaps more aptly, an inoculation.

We may be the antibodies, carrying the memory of what America once stood for, and spreading civic resilience where it’s most needed.

Not to contain America.

But to ensure the virus of its decline doesn’t spread unchecked.

The Reverse Brain Drain

The U.S. spent the last century attracting the world’s best and brightest. Now it’s pushing them out—and pushing out its own.

Innovators are being handcuffed. Scientists are being defunded. Writers and artists are being surveilled, harassed, or blacklisted. Doctors and lawyers are leaving. And so are former intelligence officers, military planners, and public servants. We know because we are those people, or we know them.

This is a reverse brain drain.

And smart countries will recognize it as a once-in-a-generation arbitrage opportunity.

Do you want world-class professionals willing to contribute to your economy, culture, and democracy? Offer them a visa. Make it easy for them to start a company. Please don’t ask them to renounce their past. Give them a future.

And believe it or not, most of us are ready to pay taxes, give up our guns, and adapt to new ways.

Take me. If I move to Ireland, I’ll probably pay around €60,000 in taxes. That’s $70K. Sounds like a lot, right?

But in the U.S., I’m already paying:

• $40K in federal income tax

• $18K in state tax

• $7K in property tax

• $12K/year in private health insurance

• Thousands more in "fees" for services that barely work

Total? Well over $80K.

So yes, I’ll pay European taxes—but in exchange, I’ll get healthcare, functioning infrastructure, less crime, and no national psychosis. That’s not a burden. That’s a deal.

Every American I talk to who’s serious about leaving has run the numbers. The math almost always points toward leaving.

And so we are.

Choosing Law Over License

It’s not just about money. It’s about sanity. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about safety.

We’re not just fleeing for lower taxes or better healthcare. We’re fleeing a culture of violence, suspicion, and slow-motion collapse. And we’re not bringing that chaos with us. Quite the opposite.

We’re ready to give up our guns.

We’re ready to stop living in a society where every disagreement might end in bloodshed. Where schoolchildren practice lockdown drills. Where gun ownership is treated as a sacred right, but access to insulin is up for debate.

We’re ready to live where public safety is a shared civic project, not an individual liability.

And no, we’re not coming to dodge laws. We’re coming because we want them. What many of us crave now isn’t “freedom to,” but freedom from:

• Freedom from violence.

• Freedom from paranoia.

• Freedom from the creeping authoritarianism that wraps itself in the flag.

We’ve seen the consequences of unlimited “freedom to” do anything—carry an AR-15 into a Target, ignore public health mandates, harass school boards, storm the Capitol.

We’re done. (I hear this sentiment a lot when I talk with people who have made this choice.)

We want rights with structure.

Liberty with order.

And maybe most of all: law that means what it says.

That’s what stunned me when I began looking seriously at Ireland. I’m someone who carries a gun. I carry a knife most places. I think seriously about my family’s safety. And I know the U.S. legal system intimately—not because I’ve been caught in it, but because I studied it for years.

Here’s the brutal truth most Americans don’t want to hear:

Ireland protects your civil rights better than the United States does.

In America, we talk a lot about freedom, but those freedoms are riddled with exceptions. The Fourth Amendment? Shot full of holes from Terry v. Ohio, Carroll, Whren, and dozens more. “Unreasonable search and seizure” is now a gray zone of loopholes. The Fifth Amendment? Eroded by decades of prosecutorial latitude and compelled cooperation. Miranda rights are routinely sidestepped. Civil asset forfeiture is legal theft.

Americans think they have rights. What they have are privileges—conditional, retractable, and unevenly enforced.

In Ireland, the state cannot stop and frisk you without a legitimate cause.

There is no Irish equivalent of Terry v. Ohio. Gardaí need real, articulable suspicion—not just a hunch or a hoodie. You can’t be searched without a proper warrant. Your right to silence is respected. You can’t be detained arbitrarily. The courts aren’t overloaded with plea bargains designed to coerce confessions.

And here’s the kicker: none of this is seen as controversial.

There are no tanks in the streets. No “warrior cops.” No jailhouse-to-courtroom pipelines flooding the prisons.

Also? You can’t carry a gun. That would horrify some Americans.

But here’s the tradeoff: You don’t need one.

(If you really must, you can own firearms in Ireland, subject to strict licensing, which allows for shotguns and sporting rifles.)

In Ireland, your odds of being murdered are vanishingly small. Your chances of being shot? Almost nonexistent. The police don’t assume you’re a threat. You don’t live in a state of ambient dread.

When the police in Ireland roll up on a subject, it doesn’t end with the guy shot, tased, or beaten up, and then the cops saying, “qualified immunity.”

So when people ask me if I’m worried about giving up my “freedom,” I tell them: I’m not losing freedom. I’m regaining it.

Ireland has the rights Americans think they have. America has the mythology. Ireland has the law.

And that, more than anything, is why many of us are leaving—not to run from the law, but to run to it.

As we depart for foreign shores, we will find we’re much more liberated outside the “land of the free” than inside it.

The Shadow Side: Neo-Colonialism and Cultural Overreach

This isn’t all upside. There are real risks.

When Americans arrive flush with cash, we can distort local economies. We can drive up housing prices. We can create bubbles and resentment. We can form echo chambers and replicate the very systems we fled.

Already, countries like Portugal and Spain are seeing backlash. Locals are being priced out. Expats are snapping up property, creating parallel economies. And tensions are rising.

If we want to elevate, not just escape, we need humility.

We need to be useful, not just present. That means participating in civic life, not bypassing it. That means supporting local economies, not just exploiting them. That means building with—not over—those who were there first.

Diaspora is not immunity. It’s a responsibility.

If we don’t integrate, we’ll be resented. If we don’t adapt, we’ll be rejected. The welcome mat will curl at the edges and eventually be pulled away entirely.

But if we do it right? We could help build something better—not just for ourselves, but for the places we now call home.

We won’t be planting flags. We’ll be planting seeds.

And that might be how something better begins.

Exile as Elevation

History rarely moves in a straight line. Sometimes collapse in one place fertilizes growth in another.

And while the fall of the American republic is a tragedy, it may also mark the beginning of something new—not in Washington, but in Dublin, Lisbon, or Tallinn.

That restless, ambitious, experimental energy that once defined the United States? It’s still alive. It’s just on the move.

If it lands well—if it listens, adapts, and builds—it could elevate every country fortunate enough to receive it.

Not as conquerors.

But as catalysts.

This is what renewal looks like.

A century ago, millions came to America to build a better life. Now, the arrow is reversing. It falls to us to carry America's best parts out into the world—not the arrogance or entitlement, but the belief in possibility.

As one reader reminded me, inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty are the lines from Emma Lazarus’s The New Colossus—words once meant for those coming to this land in search of freedom:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

But maybe now, for this generation, Lady Liberty speaks not only to those arriving—but to those departing.

And her message is simple:

Go forth from this land. Carry the bounty built upon this soil. Not through conquest or pride, but through renewal, resilience, and reinvention. Carry the spark of liberty to those who still yearn to breathe free.

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