The more I think about it...
states' rights, community standards... Who cares?
As time goes by, as our world gets smaller and smaller, geographic location has less and less to do with who we are as people. I have no emotional stake whatsoever in my neighborhood, town, county, or state. In a few generations it's likely to be the same for countries. My loyalty is to friends and family. I can come up with a lot of "groups" I belong to or identify with. Very little of it is geographic in nature.
So why do we still cling to this concept that communities within the country have the right to dictate behavior? The market demands that people be able to move fluidly through the country and coming soon... around the world. We can't control the world outside our borders, but why do we not believe in maximizing individual freedom for all within our borders. Instead we cling to this concept that different geographic locations have the rights to enforce common standards on those within- even beyond what is necessary to prevent violence or damage to property or other actual harms.
The only thing it can lead to is segregation of the population and the inevitable fact of certain arbitrary factors becoming more profitable than others which is an insult to freedom, meritocracy, and the market.

But thankfully the concept is dying along with the importance of arbitrary geographic boundaries. Good riddance.

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I don't identify with my geographic location either, but unfortunately, the residents of some heavily Democratic and heavily Republican areas seem to equate their political leanings with their longitude and latitude, thus hardening them into their partisanship. That makes it difficult to establish uniform national standards on many issues.

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"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased- short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed." (Max Beerbohm)

Where people do not know and interact with those living 100 metres from their own front door there is no community. People have been stripped of the natural, communal interdependance and nurturing that had structured our development for thousands of years. Industrialisation has forged great potentials in material human development, but has never been able to replace the true, living community that it has served to dismantle. Its a trade off.

But it is sometimes funny to witness the witless attempts to construct a sham 'community', as if all that was required was to piece Humpty Dumpty's broken shell back together with glue. The nation state, religious cults, professional sports, political parties - all these come to mind.

Only in families or at work are people, to some degree revisiting the former 'community' sense...and these are eroding as families splinter and 'work' is now a 'job' (on a short-term contract, with neither ties to company or expectation of long term commitment)...

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

I agree, but unfortunately I get the feeling the community is not coming back. Though I must admit, other than family I've never known a community. I think most people my age and younger are similar. As a result we either don't care about communities or have an unrealistic idealizing and longing for them. I try to be realistic. Sure, they produce more of a communal bond between people but they are also somewhat totalitarian in their control of those within.
That second point is what I'm addressing. It seems many of the same conservatives who are all for the continued destruction of the community as our grandparents knew it are for imposing those same regional standards that came from such an era. Personally I don't mind the erosion of the community since I never had one anyway and I like the idea of being able to piece a community together with no geographic boundaries (though there is a fine line between this and complete compartmentalization- scary stuff). But I just don't feel we should keep community standards alive as a concept.
So true it is odd to hold larger values to smaller communities that don't share them.
The only solution is to create standards that allow maximum freedom for all, ignoring the whims of the masses or of communities to oppress others. We need to get over this concept of freedom as the freedom to take away choices from others that don't hurt us.
Both looking at things too micro and too macro is ridiculous. On the same token as community standards get my goat, large corporations are also aggravating in their attempts to reach the lowest common denominator. It's time to stop focusing on the lowest common denominator as a society and start focusing on a base that allows as many harmless or beneficial options as possible.

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is alive and well in many parts of America. Here in rural Maine there is always a "Bean Supper" fund raiser or a school play to go to - Never a dull moment, let me tell you!! I lived all over the place growing up, then moved to the big city,so I know what you mean about the deterioration of the concept in a mobile society. I imagine that the popularity of mega churches has something to do with people filling the void that they sense for lack of community.

I have noticed that small towns are once again really popular places to live. I think it is a terrible mistake that many formerly rural towns try to maintain a semblance of their rural character by zoning for 2 acre lots. Thoughtful planning could encourage a sense of community by having cluster zoning with small lots and leaving large swaths of farmland for community use. Instead, these exurbias end up with lonely commuters living in massive houses on their huge lots. Farms are chopped into two acre bits of manicured lawns and there are few community play grounds and places for people to meet their neighbors. America is kinda schizophrenic about this idea- it sometimes glorifies the concept but try to advocate anything that actually enhances the commons -other than church attendance- and you will be labeled a commie so and so..

Because members of a community take care of each other. It is part of our identity.
At one time, there was a powerful black community.

Competing with the world is not competing on a level playing field. For example, there are more engineers in China than in Europe and the US combined. Likewise, the entry-level positions are moving overseas to places like China and India. They will gain plenty of experience and eventually compete with Americans for jobs in the US. Don't expect them to give you the same career opportunities in those countries.

But you are speaking of differences between the US and other countries, not about differences in geographic regions of the US. Globalization has not yet had the effect of making us think of countries the way we think of states today- and it is a harder process. But I think it's coming.
Still, the fact that China has different ideas than the US on human rights (let us hope our view wins when globalization is further solidified) has no bearing on the fact that a town in Michigan might feel the need to set some arbitrary moral standards (I'm talking laws that disallow a certain arbitrary behavior or criminalize non-harmful actions or speech) despite the fact that there is no real community there. It is simply a mode of a town enforcing will on others in that town. The community is really that mode, not the other people in the town. There is no real common interest other than that which is American common interest.
People don't live places because of family or friends as much anymore. They live places because of jobs. So what I'm saying is that I think it's dumb that while we push for more of this change, we also still push to maintain community standards in some places. I say it's an outdated concept. Right now the US is our community and it is a large diverse one, impossible to make consensus on a lot of arbitrary issues. At some point in the future, barring collapse of the entire world system and a degression into barbarism, the world will be the community, even more diverse and with even less consensus on normative behavior aside from what effects the lives of others or the movement of commerce.
Communities do still exist. But they are becoming less and less geographic. So what I'm saying is that community standards should now belong to those groups that consider themselves in communion and not by geography. Laws, other than those that protect life, liberty, property, and commerce, are obsolete.
Aside from the family we are soon to see all relationships become a product of meritocracy rather than personalism. This includes communities.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.