The Soapbox Archives:
I know people who are so radicalized that they won't have anything to do with people who are of a different political bent. I bet that's an easy filter on Match.com
Now, I just saw a post of Facebook where someone said they would "unfriend" anyone who makes a political statement on Facebook because that's not what he "signed up for" with Facebook.
The problem these days is that many people aren't interested in listening to the other side. They're not smart enough to see if there are possible and alternative solutions to their problems. They want their way and only their way; everyone else can kiss their butt.
The first step to finding a solution is to *listen* to people whose opinion you don't agree with. Yeah, it's painful, but it's much harder to negotiate a compromise when you don't understand what the other side is arguing for. As long as the other side isn't screaming at me, I'm willing to listen. I've long stop putting up with the notion that the louder voice wins the argument. I'm interested in listening to new ideas and the best way to get them is to "talk". And listen. It's hard to listen when your lips are moving. Find out the endpoints of the conversation and move towards the middle somewhere.
As for the person who's going to remove anyone mentioning politics from his Facebook friends list, well, if you end up removing everyone from your list, what did you sign up for with Facebook? I have about 600 "friends" on Facebook, most of whom friended me for the Facebook games we had in common. Quite a number of them are the politically polar opposite of me and they're quite vocal about it. Regardless of their political slant, I take the good (comments) as well as the bad because that's the only to understand the other points of view. (though, I must admit that it was more surprising to find out that some of my high school classmates are foaming-at-the-mouth extremists than that some of them were gay.