Ask Not For Whom the Stereotype Fails; It Fails For Thee

I was listening to the Communist radio show Tell Me More this afternoon, during a discussion of the martydom of St. Sarah, and heard columnist Mary Kate Cary hold forth on the very "one-of-us-ness" of Palin, and how representative she feels to the flyover types who find their unwilling noses forcibly pressed against a window into the babylon of eastern liberal hegemony. And she said something to the effect that Palin feels more like a real person, coming as she does from a state where there is no crime compared to the lairs of the citifed elite.

Well, that sounded odd to me, given the free-wheeling wild west ways of the Alaskan frontier. So I had to look it up. Imagine what I found:

"The crime rate in Alaska is about 8% higher than the national average rate. Property crimes account for around 83.6% of the crime rate in Alaska which is 3% higher than the national rate. The remaining 17.7% are violent crimes and are about 29% higher than other states."

That's 4041 crimes per 100,000 people!  Who has lower crimes rates than Alaska?  Well, the whole United States on average, for starters (3731 per 100,000).  Also these states, in descending order of crime:

• California             (3556 per 100,000)
• Massachusetts     (2825 per 100,000)
• Rhode Island       (2850 per 100,000)
• Pennsylvania        (2778 per 100,000)
• Connecticutt        (2656 per 100,000)
• Maine                  (2547 per 100,000)
• New Jersey         (2542 per 100,000)
• Vermont              (2447 per 100,000)
• New York           (2393 per 100,000)  New York!!
• New Hampshire   (2029 per 100,000)

And that's only 9 of the 31 states with fewer crimes than Alaska.  But let's not be unfair;  there are states who are more crime-ridden.  Eighteen of them, to be exact.  And among them are these bastions of liberal evildoing (in ascending order of crime):

• Kansas               (4132 per 100,000)
• Georgia              (4394 per 100,000)
• Alabama             (4420 per 100,000)
• Arkansas            (4482 per 100,000)
• N. Carolina         (4553 per 100,000)
• Texas                  (4632 per 100,000)
• Louisiana             (4806 per 100,000)
• Tennessee            (4840 per 100,000)
• Arizona                (4897 per 100,000)
• S.Carolina            (5060 per 100,000)

That's a powerful indictment against liberalism, all right.