Are you attempting to persuade me that we can't have rational arguments about politics here?
Because this is the second attempt you've made to attack the same comment on the basis of its semantics. The first I could get, because I saw a line of argument that might arise depending upon my clarification. In this case, you seem to be asking me to make broad generalizations.
Are you attempting to persuade me that we can't have rational arguments about politics here?
An excellent question. I don't know if "we," meaning you and I in particular, can have a rational argument based on what you say in your this response. Maybe I should try harder.
I don't know, maybe I can't do it. The evidence is not strong that I can, that's for sure :)
It seems to me that your response proposes a form of private contract which does not exist at all in real life, and that you state a preference for this theoretical solution over a...
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) 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.
3.) 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.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.