Vermont

Vermont has a reputation for liberalism because its people are generally tolerant and value their environment. However, it’s worth remembering that they were for a long time the only state to allow permitless concealed carry firearms, which was called “Vermont carry” back before many states chose to extend the privilege to any white guy with an assault rifle. Vermont’s state motto is “Freedom and Unity” (they also have a dopey Latin motto), and the state still has much of the old New England Yankee culture, which is hard-working, self-reliant, understated, and modest. New Englanders tend to believe in helping their neighbors, if they are deserving, and otherwise keeping their noses out of other people’s business. Vermont is usually a nice state, though it’s not very diverse and African-American residents find some towns less pleasant.

 

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Missouri

Missouri, in Colin Woodard’s take on American regional cultures, is Appalachian in the southern half and Midlands in the northern half. It has two large, diverse metropolitan areas, Kansas City and St. Louis, at the western and eastern edges of the state respectively. However, its government is entirely dominated by the rural areas, and in the present climate of what Will Wilkinson terms the “Southernification of rural America,” we may presume that it would join the Confederacy or Red republic if the Union broke up today, whatever the urbanites might think of that.

 

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