If you have ever met anyone from California you know pretty quick they have a very different view about the role of government. (The exception being Orange County. Kind of the mirror image of our Orange County.)
I ran across this map and it made me pause and think about just how different North Carolina is from the left coast.However, this doesn’t quite explain why so many of the other western states are conservative, in general.
Surprisingly, North Carolina has the 2nd highest percentage of government owned land east of the Rockies. Why is this? Well, we do have a number of military bases and the Smokies National Park, but i wondered, until I found this map:
Don’t forget, nearly every major lake is controlled by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Add in the national forests and the federal game lands and you begin to get the picture.
While we may be comfortable with the amount of land controlled by the federal government here in North Carolina, the only time government has given up land in the west was when the military closed down bases a few years back. Once government gets a it’s grip on something, you can count on a fight to get it off.
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