Red states, red provinces and roja estados
By Bruce Walker
web posted July 17, 2006
Conservatives have won the last elections (and are now in power) in the three great nations of our continent: America, Canada and Mexico. Michael Barone, one of the most astute political observers around, noted that each of the three victorious candidates – President Bush, Prime Minister Harper, and President-elect Calderon – came from the hinterlands. As always, Mr. Barone is correct, but the truth is even more profound than that.
In the 2004 Presidential election, every single Red state out of the forty-eight contiguous states bordered another Red state. The South, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain states (and non-contiguous Alaska) were all Red. Blue states were in the Northeast, the West Coast, and part of the Great Lakes. Flyover Country, as it is called, went almost completely one way and those states close to centers of national power – Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles – went Left.
A few months ago, in the Canadian elections, only four of the ten provinces gave a plurality to the Conservative Party, but all four of those were from the Western half of Canada and those shared a long border with Red states Montana, Idaho and North Dakota. In other words, in the Canadian general elections, those big and powerful provinces, Quebec and Ontario, and the Canadian equivalent of our New England – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s Island and Newfoundland – were all Blue.
The province that Conservative almost carried out of that bunch, Newfoundland, was also the most remote from Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal. All of the Red states of America (except Alaska) and all of the Red provinces of Canada touch. They form a geographical map which skirts around Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Boston.
What happened in July 2006 in the Mexican presidential election conformed to the same pattern. Sixteen of the thirty-two states of Mexico were Red (counting the Federal District as a state), and yet for Yucatan (the northern half of the Yucatan Peninsula) and Puebla in central Mexico, all the other Red states bordered each other and Mexico was split roughly along a north-south axis, with the northern part of Mexico, the part that bordered America, all Roja Estados (Red States.) Indeed, almost two states deep across the Mexico border, those Mexican states with common borders with the United States voted conservative.
Except for California, every American state touching Mexico was a Red state and virtually every Mexican state touching America was a Red State. West of Minnesota, every Canadian province touching America was a Red province, and these were the only Red provinces in Canada. The entire center of the North American continent in these three elections was one vast splash of Red. These are the areas in which jaded bureaucrats, established wealth, hoary institutions like Harvard, and the glitz of New York or Hollywood do not rule.
Red States, Red Provinces, Roja Estados – these are all parts of Flyover Country in three great democracies. These are the places in which food is grown, oil and gas are produced, minerals are extracted, timber is harvested, cotton is grown and cattle are raised. These are regions that increasingly see themselves as colonial possessions of snotty types in Toronto or New York or Ottawa or Washington or Mexico City, who extract for the national government all that they can for purposes which only they may judge worthy.
The colonials are naturally self-reliant, morally serious and much increasingly resentful of the true imperialists who nestle in safe, comfortable Leftist enclaves and who treat people in Redlands with an arrogance and selfishness which is pure and ignorant bigotry. The colonies are in rebellion. The rebellion is winning. 
Bruce Walker has been a published author in print and in electronic media since 1990. He is a contributing editor to Enter Stage Right and a regular contributor to Conservative Truth, American Daily, Intellectual Conservative, Web Commentary, NewsByUs and Men's News Daily. His first book, Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie by Outskirts Press was published in January 2006.