As an American who has lived abroad for several years, exactly this. The grass is not greener. America may have its problems but there is social/economic/enviro

As an American who has lived abroad for several years, exactly this. The grass is not greener. America may have its problems but there is social/economic/environmental/political instability everywhere. Do you really want to sign up for unrest that you don't understand, in a completely new context, with different cultural values where you don't know who to trust? And if you have a family, good luck uprooting everything they know. I understand that the US has problems too but consider they are familiar problems and, to some extent, they are your problems as well. You can't run away from them without cutting ties. Personal anecdote: I moved my family back to America, as it happened exactly on Jan 20, 2017 (inauguration day). I could've chosen to stay abroad but I felt a sense of duty to return and support my stateside family and friends through what was sure to be a hard four years, soon to be a hard twelve. Re: the Jeffersonian ideal, I concur. Capitalist-mediated mob rule (which is effectively what we have now) has absolutely no resemblance to the republic envisioned by our founders - we must return to that politeia. If not, we explicitly give up on the cultural experiment that we once called America. Our current system bears no resemblance and is in danger of losing sight of that vision in the next generation.