The Image Problem With Atheism in America

[Thumpalumpacus]

Where, doing what, and when?

I studied at a university for three years in Washington D.C. beginning in 2006, lived just outside the city for another two years. I visited the NASA center in Huntsville, Alabama including the control room for the ISS, visited Virginia (as far south as Norfolk, even if I drove further south on a trip) many times as it was across the river (best spot in America is Williamsburg), visited North Carolina and thought the food was great and the people were less crazy than the Virginians (a surprise to me), went down to Florida to see Disney World (was not a fan of the rain down there). I also visited West Virginia a few times, a state I wasn't including earlier but then realized that it as well is south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Well, we can throw your three years in DC out the window, because while that may be south of the Mason-Dixon line, it is not really part of the American South, as any redneck will tell you.

And I'd argue that your perceptions are filtered by your biases anyway, and your virulent anti-Americanism may well have kept you from seeing any of the better qualities people have here.

And -- the nature of this answer tells me that you don't really know what the South is, and that you're looking at it as solely a geographical construct. It's not.