[Eisenstein]

What would be a good term that defines 'politics as discussion topic' as you clarified above, but excludes 'poltics as partisan bickering' as apparantly the author of the article defines it? Wouldn't it be useful to have a word we can use for this?

[roenxi]

That'd be great, then I could claim all my partisan talking points where this new word and denigrate all my opposing partisans as undermining the foundational principles of the new word.

The article is a call to polite and interesting political debate. It is a good idea. But it is, nonetheless, politics around the dinner table. Can't escape it, learn to enjoy it. Practice some tolerance, learn some respect and be polite. Learn that you don't have to have the last word, I more or less everyone on HN knows that trick.

The options are politics or unimportant trivia. Can't talk about something important without running in to people's principles and risking a heartfelt argument.

[Eisenstein]

I think you may have missed the point of my question. Is there a way to define the type of conversation you are talking about butmake it clear that it doesn't 8nclude topics for which viewpoints are bound to be relatively fixed. I think you might agree that a conversation about the existence of God with mixed company or about civil rights with your racist Uncle is going to be unproductive and lead to shouting matches. Let's define this type of discourse and make it distinct from 'poltics'.

[roenxi]

It is impossible. It cannot be done. The incentives around politics are too clear - there privileging things some group of people think is acceptable discourse would bringing down the entire edifice of liberal political tradition.