Joel Fox talks taxes in 2012 with reporters in Sacramento. The former president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association died on Jan. 10.

If political differences are destined to leave us divided and friendless, how do you explain the life of Joel Fox?

Fox, who died on Jan. 10, was California’s most prominent taxpayer advocate since Howard Jarvis, whose anti-tax organization he led from 1986 to 1998. Fox, a Republican, advised the campaigns of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and U.S. Sen. John McCain.

That profile, in our polarized times, might make you think Fox was another political ideologue driving the country apart. But the opposite is true.

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Fox, more than any person in California politics, built deep relationships with people across the political spectrum. And he did not do this through compromise. Instead, Fox built friendships on disagreement itself — a warm and open style of disagreement.

“Everyone knew where Joel stood on things, but he was so open and friendly,” his rabbi, Paul Kipnes, said in his eulogy. “And he always listened.”

One example of Fox’s approach was the four-hour-long, weekly class on California public policy that he taught for 18 years at Pepperdine University. I thought of it as “Joel Fox and Friends,” the polar opposite of cable TV’s “Fox and........

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