California at the Crossroads: Stay and Resist or Leave and Rebuild?

California, once the golden frontier of American promise, is now a state in ideological lockdown. For conservatives, patriots, and builders, it has become a place of contradiction — where freedom is preached but rarely practiced, and where dissent is punished not with debate, but with silence.

The question is no longer theoretical: Do we stay and fight, or do we leave and build elsewhere?

The Wall of One-Party Rule

California’s political structure has hardened into a fortress. With Proposition 50 poised to return redistricting power to the legislature, the state edges closer to permanent one-party control. Even voter-approved measures like Prop 36, which passed with overwhelming support to toughen penalties for repeat offenders, are ignored by Governor Gavin Newsom, who refused to fund its implementation. SB 280 was designed to further entrench Democratic dominance — not to open voices for the masses, as it claims.

This isn’t governance. It’s executive monarchy wrapped in progressive branding.

High Spending, Low Return

California ranks 8th in per-pupil education spending, averaging over $18,000 per student, yet it ranks 38th in overall K–12 performance, with math and reading proficiency near the bottom nationally. Chronic absenteeism, bloated bureaucracy, and ideological distractions have replaced academic rigor.

The disconnect between investment and outcome is staggering — and emblematic of a broader truth: California doesn’t lack resources. It lacks accountability.

Cultural and Legal Hostility

Conservatives in California face not just disagreement, but demonization. The treatment of January 6 defendants, the rise of political surveillance, and the weaponization of law enforcement have created a chilling effect. Expressing traditional values — patriotism, religious conviction, belief in merit — is increasingly met with suspicion or outright hostility.

Our population is increasingly shaped by arrivals from countries with deeply entrenched socialist systems and widespread corruption. Many come here not to build, but to live off government programs as if dependency were freedom. But as the middle class and businesses flee, even those reliant on the system will eventually find nothing left to stay for.

And here’s a cultural fracture we rarely talk about: many Californians of Latin heritage fly the Mexican flag, not as a celebration of roots, but as a quiet signal that their allegiance may lie elsewhere. It’s not universal, but it’s telling.

Attempts to build parallel institutions — charter schools, local media, community coalitions — are met with regulatory sabotage and funding blockades. The state pours money into suppressing alternatives, ensuring that ideological monopoly remains unchallenged.

The Case for Leaving

Leaving California means more than escaping political suffocation. It means:

• Affording a home that doesn’t require generational wealth

• Paying gas prices that don’t rise every year under executive fiat

• Walking into a gun shop and exercising your Second Amendment rights without waiting weeks or registering for ammo

• Buying insurance without navigating a maze of regulations so prohibitive that major providers are fleeing the state

• Living in a state where your vote matters, your voice is heard, and your values aren’t treated as threats

The mantra of “tax the rich” has backfired. The rich are leaving. The middle class is leaving. Businesses are leaving. Who’s left to tax? The poor?

The Case for Staying

But leaving also means losing the land that raised you. It means walking away from the streets where you played as a child, the churches where you found faith, the communities you helped build. It means abandoning the fight — not because it’s unwinnable, but because it’s exhausting.

Staying means being a thorn in their side. It means documenting every betrayal, rallying every remnant, and refusing to let truth be erased. It’s not easy. It’s not safe. But it’s necessary — if the goal is legacy, not comfort.

The Perplexing End

So what do we do?

Do we stay in a state that mocks our values, silences our voice, and rewrites the rules to ensure we never win?

Or do we leave — and risk becoming exiles in our own country, watching our birthplace collapse from afar?

Leaving means freedom. Staying means resistance. Both mean sacrifice.

Is it nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of a dying republic — or to take arms against a sea of delusion, and by relocating, end them?

For me, leaving the state looks like my only alternative. My thoughts, morals, and values will most likely rub against the left, and I fear I’ll be sent not to a debate stage — but to a reeducation camp.

I hear the Gestapo boots marching.

-- Gene D. Johnson Jr., Chair, Republican Party of Merced County