Is there a place where you can go to find yourself planted firmly in the Heartland? For some the Heartland is used to describe the geographic expanse in the United States that lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains. For others, the region is geographically the same as the Midwest, a combination of the nation’s industrial rust belt and breadbasket states. Gary North, in a recent posting on the Internet, makes a strong case for the South now being economically integrated squarely into the heartland, as the result of air conditioning and the growing acceptance of entrepreneurial immigrants.

Heartland is also used frequently in describing other areas of the US, which are culturally similar to the central United States. On this basis you can find the heartland in central Florida, in inland California, the central part of Washington and other places with Norman Rockwell-like small towns and bucolic landscapes.

To some like Pierre Tristam, this is a mythical heartland; an ideological euphemism, a warm and fuzzy fabrication of that place that supposedly represents America’s hard-working, self-reliant, honest, friendly, God-fearing core.

Of course not all notions and beliefs about the heartland are warm and fuzzy. Economically, some view the heartland as the nation’s least productive, least self-reliant, most handout hungry segment of the economy. Isolation is it’s main claim to fame on all important dimensions ­ physical, social, economic and personal. Overly reliant on subsidies for farmers and dominated by government employment and transfer payments to old folks the heartland to some is a drag on the nation’s grand enterprise; always has been and always will be.

Politically the Heartland is a curious mixture of populism and progressivism, forged by hard times caused by climate and large-scale economic waves, a clear distaste for big cities and a distrust of big business. A place, played out through several generations of lowered expectations, where to succeed is to survive, not thrive.

Surely there’s some element of truth in all of these perspectives but to me the heartland, right here and right now, is once again the land of opportunity. Places whose economy and traditions are deeply rooted in agriculture but now finding their way in the globally competitive, network-centric economy. Places, as my friend and colleague Joel Kotkin says, are a part of the national fabric that has regained its footing lately. It’s a religious, family-centered archipelago of regions where politeness, education, a focus on marriage and children, and a search for balance between work and family are commonplace.