Leadership Quote by Bill Janklow

Freedom, in Bill Janklow's phrasing, comes with a hometown tether. "So people ought to be free to leave here" nods to the American civic religion of mobility: if a place can't keep you, it shouldn't cage you. But the sentence pivots hard on "but" and lands on the real agenda: a state isn't judged by how tightly it holds its people, but by whether it builds conditions that make return possible - and desirable.

Janklow, a South Dakota power broker with a reputation for blunt, executive certainty, is talking less about individual wanderlust than about state capacity. The subtext is a quiet indictment: out-migration isn't just a demographic trend; it's a policy failure. When young people leave for education or jobs, the usual political reflex is either sentimental guilt ("don't abandon us") or boosterish denial ("we're doing great"). Janklow splits the difference. He refuses the moralizing trap, then immediately reclaims the issue as something government can shape: jobs, wages, infrastructure, schools, and the kind of cultural confidence that signals a future instead of nostalgia.

The craft is in the word "opportunity". It's slippery enough to mean economic development, but also broad enough to sound like a promise rather than a program. "Come home" does the emotional work that budgets can't: it frames policy as belonging. He isn't just selling growth; he's selling the right to leave without forfeiting your place in the story.