Ok: what I think about this is a little nuanced. I don't think we'll do well with debates on literal "politics" -- that is, politicians, elections, and laws. I didn't like the flamewars about gender and PC a while back. It's a little too much navel-gazing and too adversarial. LW does a lot of different things, but "stay constructive" is a good ethos to keep; I enjoy posts that call my attention to something interesting I can learn. Pure arguing for the "pleasure" of spoiling for a fight is somewhat addictive but ultimately disappointing.
As to why I encourage VladimirM's comments on politically sensitive topics -- I don't really consider that "politics." I wanted to know what you thought about education, most recently, and I literally wanted to know what you thought about how best to teach children. If we've got to taboo every topic that could potentially touch on human social organization, we have a VERY narrow range of topics and they've pretty much all got to be written in LaTeX.
To be blunt: I don't see any virtue in pre-labeling these topics as "politically sensitive." I'm getting rid of my own bad habit of labeling everything "left," "right," or "libertarian." When you preface your statements by "You/the establishment/the socialists will hate me for what I'm going to say," well, you're just priming more people to hate you for what you're going to say. I'm being encouraging with you, Vladimir, partly because I want to know about areas where mainstream popular consensus may be wrong, and partly because I want to encourage a norm of talking about these things in a non-adversarial, thoughtful, non-political way. I'm trying to model what I'd like to see more of.
There is a tendency to downvote articles and commentaries with a political subtext with a remark on how politics is the mind-killer. I completely understand that nobody wants his mind to be killed, however, I disagree on the employed methods. I don't think anybody can really afford to ignore politics. It's a fact about any group of even a handful of people. Thus instead of shunning politics I think it's better to build one's rational defenses. Understanding that politics is a problem is only the first step. If you stop there, there will always be a big part of life where you are not rational. Therefore I suggest that, as long as it doesn't get out of hands, there should always be room for political discussions if not on the main site at least in the discussion section.