Political Stances Are Moral Stances

In light of the present societal leanings toward a superficial sense of unity and tolerance, political differences between individuals are sometimes treated as if they are irrelevant to relationships between individuals.  When one realizes that political diferences are ultimately differences in values and metaphysical or epistemological stances, it becomes clear that politics is not an unimportant factor of either relationships or philosophy.  Therefore, it needs to be regarded as such.

Politics is not all that there is to a person's worldview, but a given political ideology is inescapably the result of a person's metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological stances, regardless of how correct they are.  In other words, an irrational political position is a symptom of potential problems with the whole of someone's worldview, not merely the political aspects of it.  Beyond this, there is also the fact that the effects of political ideas are often more readily visible than the consequences of other philosophical beliefs.

It follows that politics is not a thing that should be shoved aside in order to accomodate romantic relationships, marital relationships, or friendships.  Political stances are inherently moral stances (unless they are a combination of political ideas with nihilism, something that is extremely rare at best), and thus anyone who prioritizes making friendships over a commitment to moral consistency elevates their subjective fulfillment over matters of truth.  Even when two people of drastically different political backgrounds are genuine friends, they are unable to share the deepest level of relational intimacy.

Moral errors are more serious than a lack of intimacy, of course.  The idea that two people can politically differ without having any significant moral differences is asinine.  Two people with conflicting moral stances, furthermore, cannot be moral equals as long as either one refuses to abandon any fallacious or contradictory notions.  Both persons may be unjust, but they cannot both be just at the same time.  Given that politics is not disconnected from metaphysics and ethics, there is no basis for regarding a person's beliefs about the former as something that should not be emphasized.

The pressure to trivialize political differences, and therefore moral differences, is simply another manifestation of Western culture's fixation on the delusions of tolerance.  Politics is nothing other than the application of worldviews in the context of governance, and conflicting worldviews are inherently unequal.  How can the people who unrelentingly cling to thoroughly differing worldviews be equal if the ideologies they espouse are not?