Mark, I accept your acceptance; it would be fun.
gatorman001, I have seen some videos. But my political views are self-taught or based on my experiences as an over-regulated struggling small business owner and taxpayer. They are best summed up with Winston Churchill's line (paraphrasing): if you're not a liberal as a young man, you have no heart; if you're not a conservative as an old man, you have no head.
I grew up in a conservative small town with those values and was among the first 18-year-olds to get the vote in 1972. Holding a 1A Draft Card with a lottery #24, I wrote in Barry Goldwater on the absentee ballot from Dodge City, Kansas, who promised to get us out of Vietnam years before.
Things changed as I was getting my Masters in Political Science/Public Administration. Met some feminists, saw Gloria Steinem speak, and got to chat with her. I drifted over to become a progressive liberal like everyone else in my late 1970's graduate program and all the professors (in a conservative state). Hell, I saw Peter Camejo on Tom Snyder and wrote him in the election the next day because I looked at Ronald Reagan as a character actor who would read a script for the string pullers. I'm pretty sure the FBI began bugging my phone after that with all the clicks and noises.
I worked as a policy analyst for two Kansas governors, one from each party, and saw the inside of government workings (in the 4th-ranked state government in the nation at the time) from point-blank range. That realization, when I was a wide-eyed kid bent on changing the world, made me return home to salt water and get a captain's license. I've been an independent, or NPA, for decades, and I protest vote most of the time. My late and current wives are both hippie chicks; it's hard to discuss politics even though I still have some pretty liberal ideas. But what the Democratic Party and their lap dog media has done to this country, aside from making lawyers rich in D.C., shows how dumbed-down Americans have become. Voted for a president who didn't campaign - Representative Republics aren't for everyone. You need a population at least smart enough to formulate ideas.
