Merrill D. Peterson’s 1976 book Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue tells the story of their friendship from their first meeting in 1775 as delegates to the Second Continental Congress to their extraordinarily bitter contest for the presidency in 1800 through to their reconciliation a dozen years later. It’s on the healing of the relationship that I want to focus.

As Peterson tells it, Dr. Benjamin Rush, America’s most eminent physician, took upon himself the task of reuniting his old friends. “In them the spirit of the American Revolution was personified, Rush thought, and their continued estrangement was a national calamity.”

Through an intermediary, Adams, who had voiced his old grievances against Jefferson, was assured of Jefferson’s continuing affection. To which Adams responded, “I always loved Jefferson, and still love him.” When this report reached Monticello, Jefferson told Rush, “That is enough for me.” Rush immediately wrote to Adams, saying, “And now, my friend, my dear friend, permit me again to suggest to you to receive the olive branch which has thus been offered to you by the hand of a man who still loves you. Fellow laborers in erecting the great fabric of American independence! … Embrace – embrace each other!” A correspondence renewed between them that “continued without interruption for fourteen years, until they were both ready to die.” Peterson continues:

A marvelous vindication of the spirit of friendship over the spirit of party, it also carried symbolic meaning for the nation at large. Adams and Jefferson were well aware of this. As their revolutionary comrades fell away one by one, they became the last of the founders, the great patriarchs of the nation’s heritage, and it almost seemed that renewal of the ancient friendship was the highest service they might yet render their country.

In an extraordinary and seemingly providential historical coincidence, Jefferson and Adams died on the fiftieth anniversary of American independence – July 4, 1826. Although Adams died five hours after Jefferson, it is reported that his last words were, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.”

I recount this story because many people who are involved in dispensing political opinions have at one time or another experienced estrangement from acquaintances and even friends. Differences that are political and philosophical turn personal. Debates get heated, words that shouldn’t be said are said, and soon people are impugning not only each other’s wisdom but also their motives.

That’s happening within the conservative movement today, particularly with the rise of Donald Trump. People who were once close allies and friends are now at swords’ point. It’s not enough for people to have honest differences; the motivations, it’s said, are television or radio ratings, magazine circulation, cozying up to the “establishment” and more (Jonah Goldberg has a good discussion of this here).

It’s easy enough to understand why relationships can fray because of political differences. Many people view politics as central rather than peripheral to their lives, and they believe, with some justification, that the wrong philosophy and wrong policies can lead to genuine harm. On top of that, when we hear someone attack positions we believe are right and reasonable – especially if they are attacked in a way we take to be unfair or misleading – it’s frustrating and exasperating.

We all know that friendships are deepened when we see the world in a common way when we interpret events through a similar lens. Here’s how C.S. Lewis put it:

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”

So seeing and caring for the same truth can deepen the bonds of affection among us. But of course, there are truths — including spiritual, moral and aesthetic truths — that lie beyond politics. Friendships are based on different things. (In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle described three types of friendship base on utility, pleasure and the good, with the latter a “complete sort of friendship between people who are good and alike in virtue.” It is the highest form of friendship, and the most durable.)

To have a friendship broken over political differences is almost always something we come to regret. Friendships, real friendships, shouldn’t be sacrificed on the altar of politics. And in my experience, at least, to reconcile with a friend after a breach caused by political differences is encouraging and regenerative, helping us to clarify the right order of the loves.

I should add one other thing in this context: If you do hold ideas that wrong, misguided or incomplete, it is often friends who have the greatest capacity to help us alter our views when facts and circumstances demand that we do. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, from whom I have learned a great deal, said this in the context of confirmation bias:

We are all so good at confirming what we want to believe. If there are other people out there to disconfirm it and we have no relationship with them, we just hate them and disagree with them. But if they are members of our company, if they are friends, if they are fellow scientists, [it is different]. This is why it is so important to have ideological diversity in the sciences, because if everybody shares certain assumptions and there is nobody there to question them, then you get bad reasoning.

That is at least as true in politics as it is in the sciences. We benefit from friends who see things differently than we do. That’s a reason to keep them around, not jettison them.

Let me close by returning to Jefferson and Adams. The friendships you and I have don’t carry meaning for the nation at large. But they do carry meaning. And for those of us who care about both politics and friendships, the Jefferson-Adams example – “a marvelous vindication of the spirit of friendship over the spirit of party” – is one to keep in mind. Especially this year. Especially in this environment.