Hang on a sec, willya, while I rev up Jim Croce here on the old CD player? Can’t start talkin’ about folks renouncing — yikes! – their American citizenship without the right vibe in the background. 

We’ve been runnin’ away from
Somethin’ we both know
We’ve long run out of things to say
And I think I’d better go
So don’t be gettin’ excited
Oh, when you hear that slammin’ door
‘cuz there’ll be one less set of footsteps on your floor
In the mornin’.

You heard me the first time. Various departments and studies assigned to report such things have concluded that the number of Americans breaking up with America is sharply on the uptick. Although denied by various other departments assigned to squelch such things, the numbers do appear to be rising, not lying. People are actually getting fed up enough, or fed enough up, to say enough to the Feds.

At the risk of sounding like a cantankerous old buzzard, I must say that I never thought I would live to see this day.

And we’ve been hidin’ from somethin’
It should have never gone this far
But after all it’s what we’ve done
That makes us what we are
And you’ve been talkin’ in silence
Well, if it’s silence you adore
Oh, there’ll be one less set of footsteps on your floor
In the mornin’.

The official reason tendered by most of the interviewees in the newspaper coverage is the intrusiveness of income reporting requirements. Recent changes in tax law obligate American expats to report the banking activities of their spouses and children. Some of those non-citizens are not eager to be frank with doddering American senatorial types, hence the dissonance.

In an effort to extract revenue from our more peripatetic patriots we are cutting off their hopes to someday re-venue back home.

Oh, there’ll be one less set of footsteps on your floor
One less man to walk in
One less pair of jeans upon your door
One less voice a-talkin’.

Fair enough, they complain of burdensome and intrusive regulation, plus it all sounds like a big fig leaf for people who are paying some other country’s taxes and don’t want to give Uncle Sam sloppy seconds from their pies. If that’s all there is to it, I’m not running to give up my tea in the local harbor. Those people must realize that there is no representation without taxation.

But my intuition tells me that the reporters are missing the true story, probably deliberately. The real cause of the spike in renunciation is denunciation. Alienation breeds aliens. There is only one reason why people, good people, loyal people, patriotic people, people who hearts are brimming with sentiment for this great nation, would stand before the Stars-and-Stripes and say “Sayonara.”

It is that they no longer feel at home here in the fruited plain, and they see their dreams dimming from sea to shining sea.

But tomorrow is a dream away
And today has turned to dust
Your silver tongue has turned to clay
And your golden rule to rust.

People look around them and what do they see? Decay and demoralization. The space program has been outsourced to Russia and the only people getting married are gay. Achievers are being castigated for acting superior and hoods in hoodies are being lauded for acting inferior. The private sector has lost its heart and the public sector has lost its soul.

Our soldiers are dispirited and beginning to misbehave. Washington bureaucrats are fiddling while Rome burns and shooting video as they ease on down the road paved with good intentions. Members of the Secret Service advance detail are entertaining us with the details of their advances.

Israel can do no right and Muslims can do no wrong. It is evil to smoke but virtuous to pull the plug on disabled people. The government insists on watching our calories but refuses to watch the voting booth.

If that’s the way that you want it
That’s the way I want it more
Oh, there’ll be one less set of footsteps on your floor
In the mornin’.
Oh, there’ll be one less set of footsteps on your floor
In the mornin’.

You and I are still here, hoping for hope and change in November, not yet ready to bail. We believe that we can still snatch victory from the jawing defeatists. But we see a country with growing soup lines, and we can’t help asking for whom the bowl tells. The American dream is not broken yet, but it has a hairline fracture and we refuse to use plaster of Paris. Let us re-announce our citizenship and revitalize this nation’s spirit.