My friend Peg posted a link to this story from the Hollywood Reporter. It resonated with me, because I have lost friends as a result of my "conversion" to conservatism. I should have put "friends" in quotation marks, because a true friend would never allow politics or religion to destroy a friendship. I now realize that these people weren't friends at all. They don't care about me as a person; they care about me as a political soulmate.
For consider: When I was a progressive, my progressive friends and I could commiserate about the role of conservatives in our political life. We could joke about them, abuse them, and refuse to engage their arguments. Once I became conservative, this had to stop. A true friend would have realized that the jokes and abusiveness were inessential to the friendship. A pseudo friend, however, would treat them as essential, thereby revealing a corrupt understanding of friendship.
I am proud to say that I have never ended a friendship for political or religious reasons. That makes me better, morally, than the so-called friends who abandoned me (some of them, sadly, went on to abuse me, even to lie about me) when my views changed. I feel sorry for them, for they mistake political solidarity for friendship. One shudders to think what they would do if their spouses, parents, or children went over to the other side.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 