Posted on 08/02/2015 11:51:03 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In his fourth book, "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America," award-winning author Colin Woodard identifies 11 distinct cultures that have historically divided the US.
"The country has been arguing about a lot of fundamental things lately including state roles and individual liberty," Woodard, a Maine native who won the 2012 George Polk Award for investigative reporting, told Business Insider.
"[But] in order to have any productive conversation on these issues," he added, "you need to know where you come from. Once you know where you are coming from it will help move the conversation forward."
Here's how Woodard describes each nation:
Yankeedom
Encompassing the entire Northeast north of New York City and spreading through Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Yankeedom values education, intellectual achievement, communal empowerment, and citizen participation in government as a shield against tyranny. Yankees are comfortable with government regulation. Woodard notes that Yankees have a "Utopian streak." The area was settled by radical Calvinists....
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
While I didn’t used to think this way, I sure have no problem splitting us into two or three Nations. What we have now is unworkably absurd.
Greater Appalachia.That confirms what we all knew in Northern Ohio.Everything south of Columbus is really Kentucky.
I would not argue with what the map depicts. I’m waiting for the Mexican flag to be raised over California’s public buildings.
How about 50 distinct states, each with its own government, loosely bound by a limited federal government?
And everything great in Texas is an offshoot of we Greater Appalachians.
:)
There are important cultural differences in regions, but the most important one in terms of the US is the chasm separating the corrupt, left-wing elite (both business and political) whose actions are driven by its insatiable desire for both more wealth and more power, leading it to try to gain total control over every facet of society in order to rob it blind and impose its own lunatic and perverse agenda, by force if necessary.
LOL!
That idea is *so* 1861.
;D
Nah. The Articles of Confederation were a disaster. And in this day and age there is no competing on the world state with 50 balkanized States.
The problem is that a Nation can not be powerful without a consensus of some sort. We have zero consensus on anything.
Essentially this would split us up culturally. Now is the time.
I think Woodward is largely delusional. He is stereotyping whole regions for probably his own reasons. We could stereotype people who come up with theories like that as largely self-important knuckleheads who are trying desperately to manufacture some notoriety for themselves.
Oops. My age is showing. ;)
And DC is NOT Commieville?
That’s a pretty big area. How do you all share the set of teeth? (He asked haughtily from his Far West enclave in God’s Country)
Oh and would you be so kind as to turn the banjo down? It upsets the rattlesnakes and you know how cross they can be...
“Greater Appalachia” runs from Virginia to West Texas???
That’s beyond ridiculous. Arkansas alone is a culture separate from virtually every other in this country.
This maybe makes sense when ignoring Large ‘Rat cities, except the west was agriculture based, industries that supported same grew up later.
LOL!
I kind of like the idea of individual states, but I’m an old fart. The wave of the future is an all-powerful one-world government. I just hope I don’t live long enough to see it.
Having grown up in Yankeedom, spent 11 years in Tidewater, 7 in Appalachia and now 11 in El Norte, I have to agree. They are different cultures.
The Balkanization of the territory once known as “the United States of America” is well begun. Like iron filings rearranging themselves in a magnetic field, there are clusterings around the lines of greater attraction, and a thinning out in those areas in between where the attractive force is less.
Once set up, these lines are much harder to break.
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