I thank reader Don Noone for his e-mail note to me offering this important insight on the red-state vs. blue-state issue:
A critical point that the big Media and the liberal establishment are missing as they attempt to analyze the Red state vs. Blue state disparity is that Red states are increasingly populated by refugees from the Blue states. Beginning in the 1960s and continuing right up to Gray Davis’s California, huge numbers of people fled, above and beyond normal migration patterns, the liberal paradises that were created for them in places like California and New York. Red state boomtowns like Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, and Jacksonville are fueled by an influx of people from the Northeast and California who bring with them their economic activity, intellectual capital, and simple desires to have the garbage picked up, the schools run properly and their businesses not taxed/regulated into the ground. Failing to understand this pattern leads to a misunderstanding of both the economic and cultural views of Red-staters.
