Most people marry young. Even though the average age at first marriage is creeping up, it is still below 30 as far as I know. And it was closer to 20 when I wed several decades ago.

A person who is in his early 20s has a lot of life and learning ahead. His political views are likely to change. Mine changed from idealistic “liberalism” to informed conservatism, with a few stops in between. (For more, go to “About” and scroll down to “Beliefs”.) If one’s political views are heritable, as this piece suggests, what happened to me is that nature — my parents’ innate conservatism — finally overcame nurture — the attitudes and ideas that I absorbed as a collegian.

I married my wife only two years after completing my undergraduate degree, still a naive “liberal” with simplistic views about such things as race (not a problem), markets (suspect), and government (more is better). Fast-forward more than 50 years to the conservative me, still wed to the “liberal” lass who views Donald Trump as unalloyed evil, daily expresses the hope that he will be shot (though that may stop after the shooting of Steve Scalise), cannot understand why Texas Republicans care about who uses which bathroom, favors abortion (in principle, not practice), supports gun control (though we have guns in the house), has swallowed the global-warming hoax, and bases most of her other views on the slants of NBC Nightly News and the Austin American-Statesman.

But she hates to pay taxes.

That, plus love, unites us despite our differences.