How about a specific example:
Absolutely no respect.
Another:
Pope Benedict XVI
Despised him many years before he became Pope
I did respect Goldwater however.
I can’t see any way to be friends with people who oppose interracial or same-sex marriage. It’s such a nasty, bigoted position to take, and I have never seen an even remotely reasonable argument for the opposition - it’s always just some variation of ‘I don’t like them darkies/queers’. (FYI, ‘There’s a passage in this holy book that says gay is not ok, right next to the one I ignore that says mixed fabrics are not OK’ begs the question of why you picked one passage to follow and not the other). Same with anti-choice advocates, I’ve never seen anyone who claims life begins at conception who actually follows through with the concept, it’s pretty obvious that it’s really all about punishing poor women who gasp have sex.
I don’t really have a problem with people who disagree with me on, say, gun control, because they generally believe that they’re doing something good and have some kind of reason for it. It’s not their fault that they fall for fake studies like the one Hari Seldon mentioned, there’s a lot of people spending a lot of money to push that agenda.
Two of my best and oldest internet friends are staunch conservatives - one a southern conservative and one a northeast conservative. I’m best described as a staunch liberal. Politically and economically we differ on almost everything. But each of these individuals is a good, decent, hard-working, intelligent person and each has served a valuable function in my life. They have taught me why intelligent, decent people become conservatives in the first place and stay that way and they have forced me to think and rethink my own positions through the use of intelligent arguments and challenges to my position. I have done the same for them.
I often think that if the country could be run by folks such as the three of us - who have no outside agendas and who are willing to compromise when the ‘other side’ can show us that their solution is perhaps a better one than our own - we would have quite the well-run country.
I respect both of these friends tremendously, although it’s unlikely we’ll ever agree on anything in the political and economic realms.
Sure.
If they’re intelligent about it.
I love political discussion. But with informed people. Meaning people who realize they’re entitled to their own opinions, not their own facts. And people who are informed about the facts vis-a-vis what’s being discussed.
I’m a political minority where I live. I can’t hate everyone around me. 