Peter K (Fionn),

Thank you for your tender concern for the Southern Appalachians. You will be pleased to learn that we do have the rule of law here.

My home state of West Virginia has had a crime rate lower than the national average for many years. This is true of both violent crime and property crime: http://www.idcide.com/citydata/wv/index.htm The same is true of our neighbors Virginia and Kentucky. (You can reach those statistics through the link above.)

Mousethief's neighbors, perhaps, tend to assume that Muslims are lawless. You apparently assume that Appalachian people are lawless.

Bigotry is a terrible thing, isn't it? I wonder...would it help you to overcome your prejudice if, one day a year, your neighbors wore bibbed over-alls?

Kent