Which North American country do you live in?

Dear Friends: "Let's get things back into Perspective!"

Do you think you're a stranger in a strange land?

Does politics and society sometimes seem a little out of whack to you?

Can you identify with the rest of North America, or just keep your head low and stay in the house?

Well folks, the reason for this might be because North America can be divided into eleven (11) different regions!

That’s the argument made by journalist Colin Woodard in his book, North American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America.

Woodard says deeply held and divergent opinions on everything from abortion to gun control have deep historical roots. Woodard believes modern-day opinions in each of these nations were actually formed hundreds of years ago by the people who originally settled these regions.

For example, Woodard believes the southern part of the United States was shaped by the battle over slavery and today still resists any perceived efforts to increase federal powers.

“There’s never been one American culture but rather several Americas,” said Woodard. “The country was settled, not as a single enterprise, but by entirely separate groups of people founding separate colonial clusters with very different ideals and goals.”

Woodard says the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the founders of these regions aren’t assimilating to an American culture, but to one of these regional cultures, which leads the overall ethos and characteristics of these nations to persist over time.

Here’s how Woodard describes each nation:

Yankeedom
Encompassing the entire northeast north of New York City as well as parts of Michigan, Ontario,Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Yankeedom was founded by radical Calvinists who put great emphasis on education, local political control, and the pursuit of the greater good of the community. Yankees have great faith in the potential of government to improve people’s lives

New Netherland
It wasn’t there for long, but the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland had a lasting impact on New York City and northern New Jersey. Woodard describes this global commercial trading society as multi-ethnic, multi-religious, speculative, materialistic, mercantile, and free trading, a “raucous, not entirely democratic city-state where no ethnic or religious group has ever truly been in charge”.

The MidlandsWoodard says the Midlands — comprised of parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Ontario, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska — are possibly the “most American” of the nations, having been settled by English Quakers who welcomed people of many nations and creeds to their utopian colonies. “Pluralistic and organized around the middle class, the Midlands spawned the culture of Middle America and the Heartland, where ethic and ideological purity has never been a priority, government has been seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion has been moderate, even apathetic.”

Tidewater
This area — encompassing parts of Virginia, Maryland, southern Delaware and northeastern North Carolina — was the most powerful region during the colonial period and the early days of the new republic. Fundamentally conservative, Tidewater places a high value on authority and tradition and little respect for equality or public participation in politics. Woodard says these attitudes are not surprising since this nation was founded by the younger sons of English gentry who aimed to “reproduce the semifeudal manorial society of the English countryside, where economic, political, and social affairs were run by and for landed aristocrats.”

Greater Appalachia
The people of this nation — including parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Indiana, Illinois, and Texas — are often stereotyped as rednecks, hillbillies and “white trash”. Greater Appalachia was settled by “rough, bellicose settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England and the Scottish lowlands”, according to Woodard. Coming from a culture that fostered a warrior ethic and prized individual liberty, these “American Borderlanders despised Yankee teachers, Tidewater lords and Deep Southern aristocrats.” Large segments of the U.S. military have come from this combative culture, including Andrew Jackson, Davy Crockett and Douglas MacArthur.

The Deep South

Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina make up this nation, which was established by Barbados slave lords as a slave society similar to one in the West Indies, a system “so cruel and despotic that it shocked even its seventeenth century English contemporaries”. The Deep South has historically been a stronghold of white supremacy, aristocratic privilege and a classic Republicanism where “democracy was a privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of many”.

New FranceCentered around New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Canadian province of Quebec, this nation is down-to-earth, egalitarian and consensus-driven. New French culture blends  northern French peasantry “with the tradition and values of the aboriginal people they encountered in northeastern North America”. Pollsters have found the New French to be the most liberal people in the country.

El NorteParts of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California are in El Norte, which is composed of the borderlands of the Spanish-American empire. Woodard says El Norte — which spreads from the U.S.-Mexico border from 100 miles or more in either direction  — is a place apart from the rest of the United States, where Hispanic language, culture and societal norms dominate. In El Norte, being independent, self-sufficient, adaptable and hard-working is valued above everything else.

The Left Coast

This nation extends from Monterey, California, to Juneau, Alaska and includes four progressive big cities: San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. Originally colonized by merchants, missionaries and woodsmen from New England, as well as farmers, prospectors and fur traders from Greater Appalachia, the Left Coast has retained a strong sense of “New England intellectualism and idealism, even as it embraced a culture of individual fulfillment”. Today, the Left Coast combines the Yankee faith in good government and social reform with a commitment to individual self-exploration and discovery, according to Woodard.

The Far West
The high, dry and remote nature of the environment trumped ethnicity in the Far West, where harsh conditions meant most of the colonization was directed  by large distant corporations in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, or the federal government because the railroads, heavy mining equipment, dams and irrigation systems were needed to colonize this vast region. Often exploited for the benefit of the nations on either seaboard, Woodard says this nation tends to revile the federal government for interfering with its affairs while still expecting generous federal payouts. Far West states include Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Washington, Oregon, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California.

First Nation
This nation’s indigenous people still occupy this area and still retain the “cultural practices and knowledge that allow them to survive in the region” on their own terms. These are Native Americans who enjoy tribal sovereignty but most of this group is in Northern Canada.

http://blogs.voanews.com/all-about-america/2015/08/05/is-america-actually-11-countries/