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.

It wasn't my intention to strawman you. If my interpretations of your arguments are incorrect, I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to convey, except possibly a big "It's complicated!" - which I don't disagree with, and if that's supposed to be a counterargument, it's misdirected.

As for people discarding evidence, proving "Brand A of universal healthcare is Bad" doesn't say anything about brands B-Z - again, my point is that you seem to be suggesting I should focus on implementation (or is that a strawman?) details rather than the intentions of that implementation. Disproving implementations does nothing.

For example, I could argue (ignore the truth value of this statement, please) that the PPACA necessitates or enables Death Panels, but this isn't an argument against universal healthcare, only one particular -implementation-. It doesn't matter whether it's true or false for purposes of arguing about universal healthcare more broadly.

As for people discarding evidence, proving "Brand A of universal healthcare is Bad" doesn't say anything about brands B-Z

There are obviously possible counter arguments that demonstrate that a vast majority set of possible implementations are bad. The possible implementations of any intention are likely to share a number of crucial parts. There are only so many ways to get to a place. E.g. If I think more health care harms health outcomes as much as it helps then I am going to oppose any implementation that involves subsidizing health care. And... (read more)