That describes me to a "tee." My absolute best friend of all time was a Jewish kid from the Chicago suburbs that I met in college. I love that guy like a brother.
But he and his family were just inexplicably hard-core liberal. Even when it went completely against their own core values of hard work and doing your best.
His brother graduated from Georgetown Law, and immediately went to work as an aide to Adlai Stevenson Jr. in his several bids to become the pinko liberal Democrat governor of Illinois.
My friend hated Ronald Reagan with unbridled passion, and in our many conversations he could NEVER tell me why, just that "he wants to start a nuclear war." Whatever.
I still love him as always, but we're never going to see eye to eye politically.
That was the prevailing "wisdom" circa 1980. If he still believes that, your friend's gotta be Rip Van Winkle.