I went to a redneck high school in the sticks, where I was taught that people from Northern Europe (like Brits, Germans and Scandinavians) were smarter and more ambitious because they lived in a harsh, cold climate and had to work harder to stay alive. People from warmer climates, like southern Europe and Africa, were lazier and dumber because they lived in a gentle climate where they could just pick fruit off the trees and not worry about shelter or clothing. I guess Mr Bishop never heard of the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks until he ran into my smart ass. As for the Civil Rights era, which was just breaking out, I was sympathetic. I knew very little about black folks then, but because I was from a Cuban family, I never believed they were a subhuman species like most of my classmates did. I knew the civil rights thing was long overdue, and I was amazed that the Negroes hadn't started a bloody terroristic civil war of their own. If I had been in their shoes, I would have. Southerners treated them like shit. I can't overemphasize just how fucked up the good old days in rural Florida were when I was growing up. I don't miss them a bit.

Fortunately, I had good teachers in Math, science and foreign languages and English. I was well prepared for college.

I started college in 1964, before the hippie invasion came to Florida, and I was struck by how much more tolerant and reasonable and racially enlightened the environment was than in high school, and how the people seemed so much nicer and smarter. I guess this is where I learned the real difference between Liberal and Conservative, and I chose sides.

I came back from the Navy in 1969, right in the middle of the Vietnam Protests and sex, drugs and rock and roll. Things had rolled further to the left than I was willing to accept, I considered myself pretty much how I see myself now, somewhat left of center, a liberal, New Deal Democrat, just like my parents and most of my relatives, pro-union but not a revolutionary. If I lived in Canada or Britain I'd probably vote Tory.

But I also had friends that swung far left, including my cousin Robert the Red and my best friend Roger. The fact I never swung that far convinced me I was truly a moderate, because I could see the extremes and nonsense of the left as clearly as I could see those of the right. I cared for neither, although I still felt the folks on the left weren't as mean and as dumb as those on the right. There are exceptions on both sides, of course, but that's the general trend I still see around me.

But in today's America, a middle of the road, center-left, liberal New Deal Democrat is considered by half the nation to be bloody Bolshevik bomb-throwing anarchist. And regardless of what Conservatives tell us, there is no true Socialist political wing in this country, other than a few radicals out on the fringe. Bernie Sanders may call himself a democratic socialist, but he'd be considered a middle of the roader in most of Europe, Britain, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealnd. You know, the civilized countries.

I haven't moved my politics left since high school. The country has moved to my right.