Dating Across Ideological Lines

Good article on dating those whose political views do not match your own. Sarah and I have mostly the same views and values, with our divergences focusing on foreign policy. We respect each other and accept that we each have valid views.

I think this advice would be good for reducing partisanship in communications outside of dating.

The second-biggest reason is probably the perception that certain political views are not just mistakes, but proof that the person who holds them has corrupt values. As I will argue below, this is occasionally true. But it's not true nearly as often as many believe. Partisans and ideologues routinely overestimate the extent to which political disagreements reflect differences in fundamental values rather than divergent evaluations of the best way to achieve the same or similar values. A very high proportion of the disagreements between conservatives, liberals, and libertarians in the US today fall into the latter category. There are some important exceptions, such as the conflict over abortion. But even these partly turn on divergent views of how to apply shared values to particular cases. For example, both sides in the abortion debate claim to value both life and freedom; they differ, however, over the threshold at which a person acquires a right to life sufficient to override another person's right to bodily autonomy. Moreover, at least some of the issues where adherents of the three major US ideologies really do diverge on basic values have arisen in part because the issues in question are genuinely hard (as the abortion issue surely is). If so, one can embrace the wrong values on that issue without necessarily being a moral cretin in general.