Red vs. Blue: Should Family Transcend Politics?

If you were to look at my brother, the first words that would come to mind would be "old hippie." That's because he is an old hippie. My brother was of the first cohort of Baby Boomers, born in 1949, which makes him 75 now. His hair and beard have long since gone gray, but he still wears a ponytail, and his beard is still considerable if a bit thinned out by age. He still favors colorful shirts, although he doesn't have much tie-dye anymore. And, yes, he really was a hippie, back when they first thought it up,

I was born 13 years after my brother, and at the age he was, well, hippy-ing around the country I was working as a campaign volunteer for Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, and then decided to follow our Dad and our paternal grandfather into Army service.

Needless to say, my brother and I haven't always seen eye to eye on the issues of the day. But he's still my big brother, and I'm still his "kid brother," and that matters more than anything else. That's how family should work.

But some people, mostly on the left, are taking the recent election so badly that they are threatening to cut off family members over it. It's gotten bad enough that even the old liberal Bill Maher is calling people out on it.

"Real Time" host Bill Maher closed his last show of the year by urging the country to enjoy the holidays without politics spoiling them.
"Can we please not let politics f--- up the holidays?" Maher began his monologue Friday night. "Half the country is moping. Half can't stop bloating. Enough. It's f---ing Christmas and you will act like it!"
Maher lambasted the FEMA worker who directed staff not to help Floridians with pro-Trump signs outside their homes after Hurricane Milton as well as the Ohio sheriff who wrote on social media, "If you support the Democratic Party, I will not help you."
"This s--- has got to stop on both sides," Maher reacted. "This is America. I want to be judged by the content of my character, not what's on my lawn."

Liberal Bill Maher is and liberal he will no doubt remain, but Bill Maher also has one attribute we can respect: He knows when people have gone too far in their partisanship and isn't afraid to call them out on it, even when they are on his side in political matters.

WATCH: Joy Reid's Wild Remarks to Trump Supporters About Thanksgiving

Granted, it's entirely possible that a family member can become so insufferable that cutting them off is the only sane course of action. I know of someone who actually cut her mother completely out of her life, not over politics but over her mother's ongoing mental illnesses that she continually refused therapy or treatment for and which made her impossible to interact with. But this kind of mess shouldn't happen over politics. Some of us tend to get wrapped up in politics - I literally make my living writing about political matters - but for a lot of people, politics is something they only worry about every other year or so, if even that, and these are the people most likely to be put off by endless complaining by the political left when they lose an election.

And isn't it almost always the left that gets so insufferable about these things?

If you find yourself in such a situation this holiday season, the only advice I can offer is to try to take the high ground. If that becomes impossible, have facts at hand to counter your leftist family members and guests. As for where to find those facts, well, you're in the right place.

If you want to brush up on the facts of the issues of the day before encountering your proggie college-aged niece or nephew, consider upgrading to a VIP account. A Gold-level account gets you access to all of our sister sites in Townhall Media: PJ Media, Twitchy, Hot Air, Bearing Arms, and Townhall.com, while the Platinum level gets you all that plus access to a catalog of feature-length films, and a credit to the new Townhall store. Use promo code SAVEAMERICA for a 50% discount.