I live in a rural area and have a family + cows, horses, dogs & cats.

I was a child of the 1950's, from a real Cleaver family, when the turmoil of the 1960's happened I felt left out because I did not agree with my peers on the issues of the day. I had a brother who served 2 tours in Vietnam and many cousins & friends who also served so I did not sympathize with the Anti-War crowd to say the least. I married a Vietnam Veteran, so still do not understand that viewpoint at all.

I live very close to the Mexican Border and see first hand the bad things that are happening here. Very little makes it into the news and when it does it is a sanitized version.

I was raised by a Democrat father; the kind who would vote for a Democrat even if he disagreed with them on every issue, and a mother who seldom talked politics. I first registered to vote as a Democrat, but would always research the candidates and what they stood for. I fancied myself more of an Independent than a Democrat. As I got in my 30's I realized I was kidding myself as I found myself agreeing with policies of Republicans much more than Democrats, and almost always voting for Republican candidates. I now just consider myself a conservative. I had grown up thinking my mother was a Democrat, like my father. In one very humerous moment I discovered she had probably been canceling my father's votes all those years. When President Carter had been in office long enough to show just how inept he was for the job, my father once commented to a friend that he was almost sorry he had voted for him and asked my mother if she regretted it. I will never forget her reply; "I have nothing to regret, I did NOT vote for him to begin with!" The look on my father's face was priceless, and something I will never forget. After that on every election day he would pester her on how she was going to vote, and telling her if she was going to cancel him out, they should just stay home- she would never tell him, and they voted in every election.