A recent Gallup poll interviewed more than 178,000 people to determine which state is the “happiest”. Residents of each state were asked various questions about work, social life, the availability of food, shelter, and healthcare, as well as physical and emotional health.

The poll showed that residents of the Midwest are the happiest in the nation and the only state east of the Mississippi to make into the Top Ten by happiness is Vermont.  This demonstrates the utter falsity of the mainstream media’s and popular culture’s portrayal of the Midwest as a barren, dreary, miserable place. The film Fargo which ironically took place in North Dakota’s most populous city, was so acclaimed by critics not only for its edgy plot, but also since it made the Midwest look like a dark, cold, violent, and utterly unpleasant place.

But what are some characteristics of the happy state of North Dakota? There is of course, the oil boom of recent years, which allowed the state to weather the Great Recession that is ravaging the rest of the country. North Dakota has the highest GDP and job creation rate and the lowest unemployment in America. But economic prosperity can hardly be the main explanation.

A more likely, yet unmentioned (and unmentionable) reason for North Dakota’s relative happiness are its demographic characteristics. The state is remarkably homogenous.  North Dakota is 90% White, 86% Christian, and 95% English-speaking. In fact, more North Dakotans (1.39% v. 1.37% ) speak German than Spanish and the three largest ancestry groups in the state are the Germans, the Norwegians, and the Irish.

In short, North Dakota strongly adheres to the Founding Fathers’ vision for this country, as articulated by Sam Francis in his “Paleo Persuasion”:

“It was intended by the Founding Fathers to be an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic nation also    influenced by Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.”

In his seminal “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century”, Robert Putnam (the author of “Bowling Alone”) shows how diversity – that wretched idol of the American Left – destroys communities, hurts civic life, and causes unhappiness. And as Pat Buchanan proves in “Suicide of a Superpower”, diversity is a weakness, not a strength. In fact, diversity seems to be a fatal weakness that is destroying not only America, but the West as a whole. Is it any surprise then, that a homogenous, non-diverse state like North Dakota is the happiest?

Not that the commentariat and the noxious cultural elites will ever admit this. Sure, they practice homogeneity in their private lives by living in Lily-White suburbs, yet howl with indignation when real Americans dare to question diversity. 

Such is the America we live in today. A country as far from the America envisioned by the Founding Fathers in light years, as Manhattan is from North Dakota in miles.