Politics Discussion Thread February 2013

OrphanWilde

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.

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'm not discussing the people creating policies, but the people supporting them. I'm not discussing implementation of those policies, even, but again, simple support.

I don't expect implementations to correlate with their intention, but I do expect the -intentions- to correlate.

I'm not arguing with an anthropomorphization of the political process or utilitarian philosophy, after all, I'm arguing with real people who have real ideas about how the world should operate. In order to argue effectively, I have to understand what their intentions are - my goal is not merely to prove somebody wrong, it's to change their mind. And starting with the implementation is backwards; you don't navigate from where you were to where you are, you navigate from where you are to where you want to be. First and foremost I need to know where this person wants the world to be.

And in this case, the intentions I can see conflict.

You have to have beliefs about the world and how it works before you can have intentions to change it. I'm sure just about everyone would rather live in a place where no one was killed and everyone has their health cared for. People who oppose "universal healthcare" don't usually want poor people to suffer: they just expect a whole host of problems to come with treating healthcare as a right and not a good. People who want extra-judicial drone assassinations of citizens aren't particularly concerned with the State being empowered who can live or ... (read more)