1) I have not been a conservative all my life
2) I am not a member of the NRA but I am a gun owner.
3) I am reasonably intelligent have graduated from high school and have some college level education altho not a degree.
4)I have lived in the northeast, the south, the southwest,and northwest regions of the US and Alaska (NY, PA, FL, MS, LA, TX, AZ, CA, OR, WA, AK) and have traveled extensively through the rest of our country (every state except Hawaii) and parts of Canada. I have lived in almost every sort of community you can imagine from big cities like New Orleans, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix and Houston, to smaller communities like Rome NY, Fairbanks AK, Biloxi MS, to tiny hamlets like Yelm WA, Florence OR, Grand Canyon Village (south rim), to a log cabin miles and miles from everywhere.
5)I am not currently a member of any religious organization or church but I believe in God and occasionally pray.
6)I have been at almost every level of American society except the extremely rich at different times in my life from a shiftless unemployed drunk/druggie to a reasonably successful owner of my own business with a variety of common levels of lower to almost upper middle class America in between including a couple of failed businesses and numerous types of general employment from musician, to food and beverage jobs and mamangement, to ranch hand, to caretaker, to gold miner, to golf course maintenaince, to sales.
7) I have never been in the military altho I came close to joining as a youngster of 17 backing off at the very last minute and it was only the juvenile deliquent type troubles I had in my teens that allowed me to escape the draft in the mid 60s during my most liberal "hippie" era. (I was going to sing a bar of "Alices" when they sent me to see the psychiatrist at the draft board but didn't have the balls
)8 )I have been very close to people of various sexual orientations over the course of my life and hold no animosity towards any particular sexual persuasion.
9)I have been married/divorced twice with no children but lived with a woman and her two small sons for a couple of years (as if married) so I do have some idea of what its like to try to raise a family here.
9)I was somewhat active in liberal politics in the 60s and then mostly apathetic until recently altho I did watch from the sidelines and dealt directly with government and the results of our nations policies on many levels throughout my life as an individual, as a businessman, as a citizen, as both a defendant and a victim in criminal proceedings, and as necessary while living in a variety of communities many of which are quite different in how little or how much government effects your life and how easy or how difficult they can be to deal with. My personal experiences with the government go quite beyond what might be considered "normal" for most americans and in all these experiences I paid attention and took some mental notes.
10) I am not a sheep - I think for myself and base my beliefs on my own personal experiences over the course of an extremely varied and well traveled life in this country.
11) I am a patriot- I believe in my country with all its flaws and would not trade it for any other country in the world. I believe my country almost always acts for the greater good and I am proud of our heritage and hopeful for our future.
12) I will always step up and defend myself and my country against those who would put it down with mean spirited anti-american rhetoric.
That should give you some idea of exactly who I am and where my views come from and you can take it or leave it I don't really care but if the focus of this forum continues to be Bush bashing and America bashing then I will likely just wander on and leave you to it...
...go on ,breath in the mottos of your masters