Red and Blue

Instapundit (yeah, like he needs my links) has snapshots of some of the "support the troops" signs put up by businesses around Knoxville.

He observes that

it seems to me that the flags mostly haven't come down, and I"ll bet there are just as many in a lot of "blue" states.

One Hand Clapping concurs:

As I mentioned, my family and I spent all last week on spring break vacation. We visited southeast Pennsylvania, ranging from Gettysburg eastward to Philadelphia. We saw a lot of American flags and signs similar to the ones Glenn posted. I even saw one small business with a "US out of UN!" sign, a sentiment more commonly attributed to the South or West than the North. In any event, Pennsylvanians seem rock-ribbed American patriots to me, at least the ones where we visited, and my guess is that the rest of the state is the same way.

i would make three points:

First, the Red/Blue divide takes place within states more than between them. Rural PA where i live now is more conservative than Charlotte NC where i used to live. Thanks to Philly, though PA was a Gore state, while North Carolina as a whole voted for Bush in 2000.

Second, i agree that there are patriots in both red and blue regions.

Third, a critical distinction between the two areas comes from something else Instapundit touched on:

There's lots of god-talk in these signs, with "God Bless Our Troops" and similar variations being quite common.

According to pollsters, religious observance is a powerful predictor of voting behavior.

One of the things that struck me after moving here from Madison WI, was the public expressions of faith. The signs after 9-11 were one example. Another was in Somerset when the Quecreek miners were trapped. As i drove up route 30 that Saturday morning, nearly every business sign carried a message of "Pray for our miners" or something similar.

I'm not saying that there are no religious people in blue regions. But red areas do tend to see more public and casual mentions of Christian faith.