I'm not too surprised that you find conservative arguments unconvincing. In general, purely based on reasoning, I find liberal arguments to be a bit better (on average). Sometimes, they are a lot better. The question for me, is how much weight to put on reasoning. How much value does reasoning have? My personal experience is that reasoning works well for writing software or fixing a bug. It doesn't work as well when I try to use it to decide how I should run my life. In fact, my own reasoning has led me into the pits of hell. That changed my perspective, quite a bit!

I truly hope that you and your friends and coworkers can keep peace and good will towards each other.