22 July 2024
How Personal Is Politics?
It only became apparent to me how personal many people take their
political views when I received responses from some of my conservative
friends to an email I sent to them, along with other left-leaning
friends, expressing my concern about the prospective outcome of the
2024 presidential election. I know that all of them are aware of my
personal political views, which are usually liberal democratic, but
not populist. However, some of them seemed to take offense that I
would include them in a list of friends to whom I would feel free to
state how critical it appears to me what is at stake for the political
future of the country.
I thought that I could innocently assume that even my conservative
friends might agree that there is a difference between advocating
libertarian policies because they are what’s best for the country and
espousing them only because they will attract votes in a game the
point of which is only to win, with little intention to benefit the
common welfare.
One conservative friend of mine told me that he had lost many
friends in the past because they disagreed with his political views.
Somehow they could not accept continuing their personal
relationship with him because of their differing opinions on issues
related to public policy, despite their similar attitudes towards
family as well as business and social behavior. I don’t believe that
it is a fault to compartmentalize one’s attitudes towards various
aspects of life or to choose one’s friends by a common sincerity of
thought rather than by agreement on the conclusions of that thought
process. How few friends are we willing to live with if we would
limit their number only to those with whom we share identical
conclusions from our analysis. Life is not a scientific experiment
subject to peer review—even Newtonian and quantitative physicists can
share a drink from time to time.
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