I’m just kidding really – I teach nonviolence so it would not do for me to go around kicking butt in a literal way. Like you I do enjoy the mix of folks you find in Montana: School Marms who hunt Elk, Hippy tree huggers with law degrees, Fly fishing novelists and so on.

And on the enviro-hunter discussion, perhaps it is more of a western thing but I grew up in the midwest and considered myself an enviro while hunting. I love Montana for the melting pot that it is with hippies and rednecks and enviros and industry and lowbaggers….ok minus a few of the rednecks because that stuff gets old. We need to break down the walls though. The left (non-partisan) should embrace guns, regionalism, federalism (when appropriate) and rebellion! I’m a new age redneck….I’ll kick your ass and listen to you tell me how it made you feel.

Now that is over the top Macho for you Peggysue.

Hush D

As a life-long westerner who has also lived in NYC and DC, it’s been amusing to watch East Coast political handicappers try to figure out western politics. One mistake I see made time again is assuming that the West might as well be called West State, as if the entire 9-state intermountain region is one large state with a homogenous population. The good western politicians understand how far from reality this thought is, but I’m not sure east-based observers do. I see far more difference in politics between Idaho and Montana or Montana and Wyoming than, say, New York and New Jersey or Virginia and North Carolina.

The David Sirota comment gets close to the interplay of what may seem to be contradictory politics in a national context. In Missoula there were three conversations only: hunting, skiing and fly fishing. In the most liberal city in the state, finding a neighbor who hunted duck or elk was as easy as finding fleece-clad Subaru Outback driver (in other words, just open your eyes). And, in some twist on Take Your Daughter to Work Day, I knew a couple men who brought their teenage daughters on their elk expeditions and I knew one couple who brought their 8-week-old newborn into the woods in season. This was not some redneck backwater, this was Missoula. Point is, there are quite a few people (myself included) who consider themselves both environmentalists and who hunt and see absolutely no contradiction in the association.

Yes, I think the point is that in the West they try to broaden who would support environmental protection and access beyond the “weekend warriors” to the more traditional baits and bullets folks. There are social differences that sometimes keep them apart.