JAMES JOYNER ON PASSPORT SNOBBERY. “Jetting between New York, Paris, London, Rome, and Barcelona and keeping company with people just like you can reinforce provincialism rather than breaking it down.”

I did a radio show with a German journalist a while back, whose response to my Tea Party commentary was to ask if I had a passport. She was surprised to hear that I lived in Germany as a child while my dad taught at Heidelberg. She was surprised because — despite the fact that she possessed a German passport and was living in the United States — she entertained uninformed cardboard stereotypes of Americans. So travel clearly hadn’t broadened her. It’s also worth noting that while the European upper-class travels a lot, middle- and lower-class Europeans travel less even within their own countries. Meanwhile, many red-state Americans travel all over the world via military service or missionary work.