Red State, Blue State, Squirrel State, NYT-reader State

Two women wrote into the Times, horrified by an article about squirrel-hunting in Louisiana. Let me just say that I fall squarely in the "shooting squirrels sucks" camp, but nevertheless...

"It is sad to read of cruel behavior toward these small and beautiful creatures, which are merely struggling to survive, as we all are," writes Joanna Lake of Vermont. OK, the typical animal-rights line, and she does have a point about the cruelty, though I strongly disagree with her implication that shooting squirrels is as cruel as shooting humans.

The other letter is where it gets interesting.

Linda Holt of Trenton writes: "Cultures far wiser than ours respect the gift of life in all its forms. It is slight comfort that these miniature atrocities are isolated in remote pockets of our country where the light of human understanding has yet to dawn."

Here we have the two lines of thought that most contribute to making liberals seem unpleasant to conservatives. First, the patronizing respect for those (here, unnamed) other, simpler cultures where the evils of the modern world are absent. Then, the unnecessary implication that all people who live outside of the Tristate Area are squirrel-shooting barbarians.