Currently, I am writing a book about the politics of the conservative Mountain West through the lenses of the Mormon Cultural Region or Mormon Corridor, within the Far West Cultural Region, and the American West as a whole. I am trying to explain how the persecutions of the Latter-Day Saints in Missouri and Illinois, subconsciously adopted a geopolitical strategy that would protect the people from annihilation. As Brigham Young stated,  

“We want to get between some of those mountains where we can fortify ourselves, and erect the standard of liberty on one of the highest mountains we can find” (Council of Fifty Administration Notes, pg. 328). 

 It explains why the Mormon Pioneers picked the defensible Intermountain West in opposition to California, Oregon, and the hill country of Texas, and this strategy bore fruit in the Utah War nearly ten years after first settlement. It also explains the surprising (to liberals in America) defection from the Republican Party in 2016 and 2020 of the most Republican demographic, standing at 85% Republican in 2011, in the United States.

I am also trying to explain what is missing from other grand works of the human and cultural geography of the United States such as The Nine Nations or The Eleven Nations of America in regards to the conservative Mountain West or Far West as it has been called, and in particular to it's Mormon enclave. 

The Strategy: