Bite your tongue! North Carolina is fantastic.
First, great weather. A bit hot in the summer, sure, but the rest of the year is fantastic. It never gets too cold in the winter.
It's got both the mountains and the ocean. Have you ever driven through the Blue Ridge Parkway? It's breathtaking, and you can stop on wide shoulders by the road and climb. There are also protected national parks you can visit. And then if you like wild beaches, North Carolina has a coastline that is longer than the distance from the state to New York. This is the coastline where man first took to the air, so that's not too shabby either. As if that weren't enough, it has some of the best golfing in the world, if you're into that.
It has one of the leading biotech areas in the country (the Research Triangle Park), along with three excellent universities in close proximity (Duke, UNC Chapel Hill, and NC State). There are, in addition, over a dozen other excellent public and private institutions, and the UNC public university system is one of the best systems in the country. Chapel Hill, after all, was the first public university in America.
Also, in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina has one of the key banking centers of the United States. Bank of America and Wachovia, the first and third largest banks in the nation, are headquartered there.
For all you soda fans, Pepsi was invented in North Carolina.
And property value is still quite low in most of the state, making it possible to buy a nice house on a nice piece of land. That said, Charlotte is one of only three real estate markets in the country with appreciating value.
And who can forget the fact that some of the best college basketball in the country makes its home in North Carolina. I'm a Duke fan, but I guess UNC and NC State are, by objective standards, great teams, too.
There is a lot of tobacco and there are a lot of hogs, that's true. There is poverty, especially in the Eastern-most and Western-most parts of the state. But at the same time, there is a remarkable emphasis on the public education system, stewarded in particular by Governor Jim Hunt and Governor Terry Sanford before him.
The state's not as liberal as I'd like, but it's more liberal than you'd think. In 1963, Governor Terry Sanford fought to desegregate North Carolina schools, and even sent his son to one.
PS: And now, it's got three Apple stores.
