Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

OrphanWilde

I skipped October and November owing to election season, but opening back up:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

I skipped October and November owing to election season, but opening back up:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

How well does that explain politics in Western Europe, where for the most part there are no pro-Moscow political parties? It certainly appears that Russian influence on politics is negligible in Western Europe - is this incorrect? Why is hating the EU necessarily a pro-Moscow position?

Please explain how the political parties map onto your axis in, say, Britain.

It certainly appears that Russian influence on politics is negligible in Western Europe - is this incorrect?

It's not as visible in Western Europe, but I think it's incorrect to call it negligible yes -- e.g. I understand that very recently there was some noise in the UK over the Conservative Friends of Russia who used an anti-gay attack on a Labour Party politician who was criticizing Russia's human rights record.

Why is hating the EU necessarily a pro-Moscow position?

It isn't necessarily so. But hating the EU currently helps Moscow policy, so any a... (read more)

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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