Shared Values and Goals

By now, I'm sure everyone has seen some variation of the debate about whether or not it's possible to be friends with someone you disagree with politically. Usually, I see the right wing downplaying some of the statements and positions from their side as not worth ending friendships over while the left wing points out that they have no intention of being friends with people that don't care about their basic human rights. (There is a version where the right wing types refuse to be friends with anti-American traitors or something like that, but it's less common.)

Inasmuch as I think either side is always right, I tend to side with the idea that people can and will break friendships over politics... but that's largely because I think that people can and will break friendships for almost any reason whether it's good or bad. "I don't want to" is a perfectly valid reason not to be friends with someone, frankly. 

That said, I also don't think people are under any obligation to break friendships because of politics. I think there will often be situations in which maintaining the friendship is extremely difficult (and possibly not worth the trouble), but there will also be situations in which it's possible. There does have to be some level of mutual respect, and ideally some sort of shared values, though.

Let's use healthcare as an example. Depending on how we define the terms, what the two parties want is quite different: one wants the government as far away as possible from the funding for and operations of our healthcare system, the other thinks the government could do a much better job than what we've currently got. From a different perspective, though, what both parties want is the same: a well-funded healthcare system that improves life expectancy and general welfare for the population.

It may or may not always be easy to focus on the similarities, admittedly. There are often going to be disputes about whether one side or the other is being honest with themselves and the other side about the likelihood of their policies actually reaching the stated goals, to provide one example. But if the decision is made to try and maintain the friendship, those similarities can provide a bond to focus on, even if both parties have to avoid talking about their disagreements.

However, there may be circumstances where no shared goals can be found. Most of the examples I can readily think of involve religious values, because I think those change the way we define a good result in ways that may be hard for the other side to understand or agree with, but I'm sure there are other examples. Even then maintaining a friendship isn't impossible, but I'd expect it would be extraordinarily difficult in that case.