[tanknetter]

The LAST place in the country that one would expect to return to conservative ideals would be the northeast with their nasty tyrannies where the second and fourth amendemnts are no longer in effect.

I took at double-take on that as well.

However ...

I also recall how something like 85% of CT gun owners just ignored orders to register their firearms under threat of felony indictment. AND how NY state took their registration numbers and slapped "Law Enforcement Sensitive" on them to inhibit their release.

The truth is that there's a massive, and silent, portion of the NE population that is at best apathetic about the statism that's been inflicted on them, at worst quietly seething about it while slowly stockpiling weapons.

So look at it this way, hypothetically say there's a general breakdown/break up of the US. The NE coastal cities will quickly go up in flames and then burn themselves out when the food and water supplies end and thirst/starvation start setting in. What'll be left are the upstate regions, which tend to be much more traditional and Conservative in nature.

[Yashcheritsiy]

Exactly. I wonder how many FReepers on here would have refused to turn in their AR-15s had they been under threat of felony prosecution for not doing so from a law enacted by their states?

The thing we need to keep in mind about the NE is that it appears to be so liberal (and is, in its voting patterns) because of the relative urbanization it has. Cities nearly always vote liberal because 1) they are cesspools of vice and filth, and 2) packing that many people in close together tends to make people less self-reliance and more dependent on government, for whatever reason you wish to assign to it. Ergo, all we hear about from Massachusetts are Boston and Worcester and Cambridge, but we never remember to take into account the 30-40% of people who consistently vote against the liberals, despite the strong social discouragement to do so.

Or what about Maine? ME-2 just went Teapublican, and they just re-elected Paul LePage - widely vilified as a radical right-wing fanatic Tea Partier - with 48% in a three-way race. That’s actually not bad at all.

I don’t think the NE will be the genesis of a new order for liberty in the USA as Victoria seems to suggest (hint: the author is, IIRC, from Maine). But I could see patriots from the NE pulling their weight in the years to come.