How to Maintain Friendships Across Political Divides
This week Americans head to the polls in what has been another fractious presidential race. Whatever country you live in, our great challenge these recent years has been how to stay friends with people who think or vote differently to us. While some won’t even countenance extending civility to the “other side”, it’s good to know such friendship really is possible—and even enriching.
The Unlikely Bond Between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg served 27 years on the United States’ Supreme Court, her championing of gender equality and other progressive causes making her a hero of the political Left. Serving alongside her was Justice Antonin Scalia, who by all measures was Ginsburg’s polar opposite. She was Jewish, he was Catholic, she was Democrat, he was Republican, she a hero of the Left, he a hero of the Right. The two of them rarely voted the same way and were known for their ‘spirited’ debates (code word for arguments!). And yet when Ginsburg passed away a few years ago, a photo of them emerged that made the world do a double-take.
There they were: Ginsburg and Scalia, grinning like school kids, riding an Indian elephant together on a joint family holiday. It turned out Scalia brought Ginsburg roses on her birthday every year, they went to the opera together, spent most New Years Eves together, and in Ginsburg’s words were “best buddies.” What power could bring such opposites together?
The power of friendship.
How to Build Friendship Despite Differences
Friendship across political divides isn’t easy. It requires patience, humility, and a dogged determination to respect each other, no matter how deeply we disagree. This topic is so important we’ve dedicated a whole session to it in the Friendship Lab Course, where we delve into the key skills needed to enter each other’s worlds and respond wisely. For now, let’s touch on the foundation needed to have such an inclination in the first place. The guidebook for developing it can be found in a short, famous poem.
Often read at weddings, this poem was originally written to a group of warring friends. It is the famous passage on love from First Corinthians in the New Testament. You may know how it goes: “Love is patient, love is kind. It doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it isn’t proud, it doesn’t dishonour others.” If you reword it a little, you get a great list of friendship’s most important virtues: “Friendship is patient, friendship is kind.” And with one more edit, we get a playbook for forging friendship across difference: “I will be patient, I will be kind. I won’t envy, or boast, or be proud, or dishonour others.”
According to the poem, such friendship will “never fail.”
Lessons in Friendship from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia
Viewing each other through our political preferences is like viewing the Himalayas throw a straw. If Ruth Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia had seen only each other’s political stripes, they’d have missed out on elephant rides, opera nights, New Years Eve parties , and decades of close friendship. They joked that their differences made them a “mutual improvement society,” challenging and sharpening each other’s thinking. And maybe that’s the greatest reward for the effort required to reach across our divides:
Making a friend of an unlikely ally makes us better human beings.
Listen Now
First broadcast in a shortened form on BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball Breakfast Show
