Liberals, Reagan, Friends
Hello, fellow readers of Ricochet,
I've been lurking around the edges for some time, reading all the posts and listening to the Ricochet podcasts, but this is my first post!
I'm a conservative living in Brooklyn, NY, and I work in Manhattan. As a result, everyone I know is a liberal (almost. To be fair, I used to be liberal, too. What happened? That's another post, perhaps.) Especially on Facebook. There are some friends that I know I can have a political discussion with on Facebook, and others that I try to avoid getting into it with. Sometimes, it's really just not worth it.
This afternoon one of my Facebook friends, who is an actual friend in real life, posted a link to this:
I really wanted to reply to my friend, "Reagan eliminated loopholes for millionaires while reducing the top marginal rate from 90% to 28%! Obama wants to raise taxes on everyone making more than $250,000."
But I thought better of it. I'm not sure she knows exactly how conservative I am, and she is the one, after all, who told me about the wonderful restaurant she and her husband went to last year, while they were in Italy, the one where the chef sang and there was a giant portrait of Mao on the wall (this was specifically one of the reasons it was a wonderful restaurant). She's not a communist, of course. But let's just say she doesn't exactly appreciate Reagan the way I do.
Last year, when a (now former) friend in real life posted a New Yorker article about the Ground Zero Mosque, I did chime in. He ended up strongly implying that I was a bigot and that I was harmful to the country. Then he defriended me and I haven't spoken to him since, even though we live only eight blocks from each other.
So I didn't write anything in reply to my friend about Reagan. She and her husband were guests at our wedding (there were only 20 in attendance). I don't think she would have the same reaction as my other friend, but I don't want to ruffle her feathers, either.
The former friend who called me a bigot helpfully explained to my wife in an email that there were certain views that made people "undesirable" as friends for him. I find this strange. I didn't find it hard being his friend, looking after his sick cat for 10 days (which involved administering medication twice daily in both liquid and pill form) while he was on a family vacation, just because he had different politics than me. Actually it was pretty great, he had cable and a big flat screen (we have neither) so I watched a lot of Fox in his house while playing with his cat. (And to be fair, he looked after our cats when we were away too. Other than the part about him calling me a bigot an excommunicating us from his life, he was a nice guy...)
How do you cope with friends who don't share political views with you?
With kindest regards,
Albert
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Comments:
Aug '10
Re: Liberals, Reagan, Friends
I live in Hong Kong, and most of my friends are Brits. They've generally been even more cloistered from non-leftist dissension than lefty Americans, so they often find my views wildly extreme. That's fine. I try to stay cheerful and light-hearted, but I don't shy from voicing my opinions either, unless it would be obviously uncharitable to do so in a particular context.
In addition to several of the excellent tactics others have mentioned here, I think coming into a conversation from an unexpected direction sometimes works when frontal assault, no matter how well-marshalled and executed, only breeds resentment and defensiveness. To cite a simple example: when discussing firearms, which many Brits see as a straightforward, obvious cause of violent crime, I like to mention Switzerland, which of course requires members of its citizen militia to hold firearms at home. I just ask my friends if they felt likely to be a crime victim when visiting there. It's a starting point for a conversation, whereas trying to overpower them with statistics or USA-to-UK direct comparisons rarely gets much of anywhere.
Apr '11
Re: Liberals, Reagan, Friends
Kervinlee: This is a very timely post for me. I just lost my best friend over political differences; I'm kind of in mourning today.
Facebook is a minefield for a conservative with liberal friends. I scroll through all the lefty stuff - it's all pretty cliche', and it's all very angry and self-righteous, so I don't cross swords out in the open with those I disagree with.
But I do want to engage with my lefty friends when I think I have a point to make - so I've emailed invitation to a discussion, and it's just blown up in my face. Arguing over politics is no way to maintain a friendship.
All I have now is Ricochet.
Oh Kervinlee, how awful. One of my closest and oldest friends is a lefty and I always fear that we are one political blowout away from never speaking to each other again. Of course friendships should be able to survive politics, but our worldviews are so different that it's often difficult to speak in a mutually comprehensible way.
So to answer Arthur's original question, I guess my strategery is uncompromising avoidance.
Feb '11
Re: Liberals, Reagan, Friends
Agreed: many great points have already been made. I live in a city-worker section of Chicago, so while I'm surrounded by Democrats they're not necessarily liberals. Anyway, I too have come to understand that the frontal assault, take no prisoners approach of my youth was flawed. As Crow's Nest said, the first consideration is context. If you must try to engage a friend who disagrees with you, I'd suggest engaging disagreements as a way to gain understanding and pursue Truth rather than to defeat an opponent or gain a convert: the point about the importance of clarity is spot on. That certainly means we need to show a little humility; despite our facts and flawless logic we may just turn out to be wrong, or they may have a point despite the validity of our own arguments.Hopefully they'll approach the discussion in the same spirit.
Those who would throw a friendship away over something like this, well, good riddance, I say. Life really is too short to waste it on people with such obviously skewed priorities.
Edited on October 12, 2011 at 4:16pm