The penchant toward living a green life has long been touted as being one which is more liberal--more--Democratic in nature.
The reality is--that's not the reality.
It's the liberal who talks about it more, it's the liberal who will approach you on the street to ask you to donate your dimes for saving the earth, but who is in the trenches, fighting the day to day battle for a better environment and a more safe way of growing our food and meat? The answers just may surprise you.
The conservatives that we've long proclaimed to be the polluters of an unsuspecting environment may in fact have a few faults we can point out, but the simple truth is that the conservatives aren't new to green living.
They can probably teach us a thing or two about it, if we're willing to pay attention and learn.
They haven't just jumped on the bandwagon and tried to emulate the more liberal desire to keep the world clean and free of pollutants.
In fact, they probably beat us on that bandwagon.
The very unpleasant truth is that we who are proponents of green lifestyles need to take a lesson from these folks, many of whom have been living a green life for a hundred years longer than we have.
If you grew up in the city you probably aren't aware that in states like Nebraska, or Iowa, or Arizona, or even Texas, very traditional strongholds of the conservative voters, you're going to find a great deal more small vehicles, a great deal more clean air, and a vast array of organic farming going on.
Typically, those organic farmers, those small bakery owners using only natural ingredients, and composting in the back yard are not the city or suburb dwelling liberals that we'd like to think they are.
They are solidly conservative voters who've been making their own pesticides out of organic materials for a hundred years.
The best compost piles you're ever going to see, the most organic food you're every going to eat, the best and most fresh air you will ever breathe, quite typically comes from states that are largely conservative in nature and maybe that's not an accident.
Maybe we've all got something to learn from them if we set aside our partisan politics and really get back to nature with these conservative old farmers that we think can't teach us a thing.
The very core of our green living is reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Who can teach you more about that than the older folks, conservative folks in your neighborhood who grew their own vegetables and reused their own clothing to produce quilts to warm them or recycled their furniture to a child who didn't have enough for that first apartment.
Older people, farmers, solid rural conservatives, living conservative and frugal lifestyles such as those that Obama declared as bitter and gun toting, are also our first and best way to learn more about reducing and reusing and organic farming.
They are the professors in a lifestyle that we all need to learn more about.