Don’t Mess with Massachusetts

It may be everyone’s punching bag, but it’s time to face facts: The Bay State is best.

By Mark Vanhoenacker  |  Posted Monday, May 14, 2012, at 6:00 AM ET

Massachusetts, in today’s political culture, is more epithet than state. The People’s Republic, Taxachusetts, “Sweden”—this is America’s arugula-munching, maple syrup-swigging, receding-ponytail hippy uncle, exiled to its cold, lonely corner of American geography by Sunbelt population growth and a rightward-leaning national discourse. That “Spirit of America” license plate doth protest too much. For much of the country, Massachusetts, if not actually un-American, is the suspicious redoubt of the American left.