I appreciate the concept of a state as a culture. But like the concept of a state as a community, that means nothing without people. I grew up in a country (long, long ago [0]) that takes it culture so seriously that it frequently forgets this association, and believes that culture has some kind of existence above and beyond the people who might (or might not) share it. NC, relative to the UK, is a young place, and it should not make that mistake. This is how you block change, this is how you oppress the future, this is how you become irrelevant.

But I also think that your connection between the concept of a state and its culture in a political context seems odd, to put it mildly. What possible decision can the US Senate make that has any real bearing on any of what you consider NC's "culture" to be? I mean, I suppose that if they were to ban BBQ (to use one of your examples), it would be a problem, but this is hardly the work of the Senate. There's really nothing about a state as a culture and/or community that the Senate makes decisions on. So when a NC Senator takes their seat in DC, what is it that is driving their decision making process? It's not voting for a particular folk music tradition. What are they voting to defend? To maintain? To extend? It's not your dialectical plurality, I assure you.

Next: your NC traditions have a history that goes back much further than the founding of NC. To imagine that they are somehow the unique property of NC is quite a stretch. Just yesterday, I watched an incredible documentary [1] about how southern baptist and presbyterian "line singing" is almost certainly a continuation of a presbyterian (read scottish) religious song form. And a great book [2] talks at length about how 4 British "folkways" (you have to read it to understand what is meant) form the basis of the majority (not all, obviously) of white culture in North America. Picking the declaration of independence and/or creation of NC as a state as some definitive breaking point with history is, IMO, not reflective of how human cultures work.

At the same time, those traditions do not stop at the borders of NC, but twist and change across the state and across state lines.

> if you think Americans think of themselves as a single nation with minor variations - you really haven't spent enough time in the South.

Possibly not. 7 years in Seattle, 23 in Philadelphia, 2 in Santa Fe. And I do acknowledge that an overriding impression I have of Texas where I've spent several months is that the people there consider themselves Texan's first and Americans second. Nevertheless, I would posit that with the level of migratory behavior in the US today (still not huge - the median American lives 18 miles from their mother, apparently), for an awful lot of people this sort of strong state level association has become much weaker. When you have children spread to the 4 corners of the country, which is quite common these days, it's hard to view their home states as "the other" with quite the same vehemence.

[0] please don't accuse me of not "getting" the US by virtue of being an immigrant. There's a reasonably good chance, based purely on the demographics of HN, that I've lived here longer than you :)

[1] https://vimeo.com/82304757

[3] https://bookshop.org/books/albion-s-seed-four-british-folkwa...