Anyone who has lived in the piedmont region of North Carolina will have passed a red clay bank exposed by construction, or found it on their gloves while planting. That is why some here call our state the “home of the red clay”, though some neighboring states might argue for the title. But red clay citizens can be found outside the N.C. piedmont, and it has considerably less to do with the composition of the soil than with the composition of the citizen. Indeed, you can find red clay citizens way up in the mountain laurel heights of the Blue Ridge, or wandering way out along the sands of the Outer Banks.

The red clay citizen is one who can tell you what the color red in the US flag symbolizes. The red clay citizen knows that community is made out of neighbors knowing and loving one another, not out of dictates from Washington or Raleigh. She has a deep spirit of volunteerism that she brings to her family, her neighbors, and carries beyond. But she will resist bureaucrats telling her whom to help, how to help, and how much. Her red is not the red of Chairman Mao, but more like the now-familiar 'red-state' red.

The principles upon which our Republic was founded go down to her very core—freedom, justice, and equality before the law. She sees citizenship as a duty to protect those principles, not as engaging in political activism for its own sake, or for the sake of telling others how to run their lives or finances. The red clay citizen understands that prosperity is created by people engaging in mutually beneficial exchange. The institutions that protect such exchange are prior to the aspirations of those who would build utopias out of what people might otherwise have created through that free activity.

A red state citizen, while not a xenophobe, understands what words like home, country, and - well "citizen" - mean. She gets what the Founders were up to. She sees why their wisdom makes our country great. She also recognizes that the land, like the rule of law that ends sharply at its borders, must be defended. When those defenses are overcome, her principles will be made meaningless. That’s why the red state citizen is willing to fight – whether on the red clay or online.

Welcome to Red Clay Citizen.