Really, you still be friends with Hillary Clinton or Stalin or someone who knowingly supports killing off 95% of the human race? Or it it that you would have never been friends with them in the first place?

kind of a waste of time dealing with these people. I agree.

I have given up trying to convince others. Harry Browne had it right- stick to what you can have some control over- like yourself. I will voice my views, but its totally up to others what they want to think or not think.

BUT, if someone I considered a "friend" tells me he wants to enslave me to pay for some plan that benefits HIM, what kind of friend is that?? I dont need any of those.

Thomas Jefferson also had hundreds of slaves that he could have released, but didnt.

It is hard too be friends with people that advocate stealing from me to give it to their pet cause.

If they are good kind people, okay. Over a period of six months of political discussions, I have been able to supple a friend with enough facts, that he has now said he cannot vote for Hillary. However, one lady friend I had to cut ties with was not open to discussion, was a college grad dumber than a box of rocks. This was during Obama's election. She said it was time for the "benevolent dictator". I told her there was no such thing, she would not believe the Federal Reserve was a private, not government, agency, and it was just one thing after another. she was in a shell and wanted to stay there. Sadly, such people vote, and have the ability to radically transform our rights and financial security, wile remaining ignorant of the truths. Some people enjoy a rousing discussion, an exchange of information, others want to hide under some rock and not do the work of being a free person.

I have found over many years that it is worth being reasonably selective re friends (not mere acquaintances). If you are self-confident and rationally selfish, you should not need many friends, and certainly not those who fundamentally disagree with you. However, they don't have to be Objectivists: they just need to be compatible with enough areas in your life to make the friendship meaningful.

A significant amount of mutuality is what I look for...oppose me or existence by 180 and the line in the sand becomes self evident.

A friend is someone who considers the relationship more important than the politics or viewpoint. They aren't friends if they allow their opinions to control their relationships.

Interesting. As I've become more apolitical I have grown stronger in my core beliefs. This has tainted a couple of my relationships and ended one. We all have our line in the sand. Mine happen to coincide with Objectivism.

Objectivists (including myself) can, and do often, fall into a couple traps. We can behave as though we must win an argument no matter what. This mistake plagues people of all beliefs. The second trap is when we confuse some neo-con position as Objectivist, in conflict with Objectivism. I've observed these plenty. It can gum up a forum like this one. But, I think this is a pretty good place...

Some of us are and are willing to bring others into the fold in their own time. Others are less patient. The problem arises when one feels as if their patience is wasted and they are communicating with a troll or an implacable person of a philosophic belief anathema to Objectivism, like Berkely's Idealism, or Marxism. Those that will not accept metaphysical facts, their own senses, that existence exists- that A is A, even after many civil attempts to reason with them, pose a danger to themselves and others. Some see this as a threat and an attack on the mind. The age of enlightenment is being dismantled and this brings fear that we are returning to dark times. Today's political divisions/factions and the associated vitriol feed this narrative and resulting emotions. Many rightly see the invasive nature of these philosophies as corrosive to the founding principles of our nation and the demise of same.

I guess it depends upon your estimation of the threat and whether one feels our course is rectifiable, or if it is too late. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? I keep trying, so I must be more optimistic than some. :)

Perhaps Objectivists should be more Jeffersonian. What do you think?

Hello Esceptico,
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." - Thomas Jefferson to William Hamilton, April 22, 1800
Respectfully,
O.A.

"One of the great tragedies of politics is that it can take people who in real life would be peaceful and loyal and loving friends and turn them into bitter enemies."
There's an industry of people who do this for a living. They can take something as mundane as needing a different set of rules for things in the countryside vs a dense urban center and some of those people hating one another.

"with the alt-right and alt-left (who oddly agree on so much) battling it out on social media."
I won't be surprised if they join forces within the next decade-- a coaltion of Trump and Sanders volters who want gov't to fix the problems with America.