Trying to remember what year, I was out of the Marines and hadn’t yet returned to Ga Tech, working as a carpenter. So it had to be 1971 or 1972. We were framing some houses and somehow a traveling pair of carpenters on sabbatical from some college in Minnesota ended up working with us. I wasn’t exactly the same person then as I am now but I was leaning even then. We were on an similar age so I ended up being fairly good friends with the pair so we ended up in a number of discussions with them and found they had a decidedly liberal bent. My biggest disagreement with them was the space program, this was the early 70’s and the Apollo was going full bore.
Their position was that no money at all should be spent on space exploration until earth was a paradise. I thought that was total madness because that condition would never be met and I thought (still do) that the advances from the various programs were the ultimate salvation.
Hard core liberalism must be in the water up there.