Political debates are illogical

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Very often, people are using logic to support their own illogical positions, or to attack other peoples positions (which may be more logical). But sometimes dialogue can occur, and people can learn from debates/discussions.

That is very true.
In fact very often a crucial "bit" suddenly slots into place, or suddenly see why something not tenable, as a result of peoples reactions, not even necessarily those that are disagreeing either! The funniest thing is when someone agreeing with you makes you realise the weakness of own argument!

In some more complex situations, there is no obvious bottom line, so there is more room to debate. But in many situations, there is a logically right and wrong side to a conflict.... Sometimes group or person a might be partially correct, and group/person b who theyr going against may also be partially correct. People often ignore the facts if the facts does not benefit themselves or their own ego. People say "you can't not be bias", and this is an excuse or a crutch for people to lean on their ignorance, making no effort to even try to look at the non-bias facts. "If it's good for me, screw the other people". With most people, it's all about THEIR group, it's THEIR gender, THEIR race, THEIR religion, THEIR political clique, etc etc, (ad naseum). This ignorance sub-consciously drives them and feels good to them, it's like a drug addiction.

Rationality and logic aren't necessarily applicable to politics.

A political opinion involves an "ought" component, which is not answerable to a fact. If I say, "X ought to be done", this can be understood as an atomic claim. I can only believe or disbelief the statement. Political debates, therefore, must be emotional, because arguing axioms is, of course, impossible by any other means.

Casting one's position as rational is a statement used primarily to posture oneself as smarter than one's opponent, when in fact, as long as we are not talking about the implementation of a position, no position can be more or less rational than another because they are relying on non-rational axioms.

Ok, so there's no way to prove that child molestation is wrong, so are we to have open debates as to rather we should legalize child molestation?

Why not?

Anyway, I do tend mostly to agree with twoshots, and I even like the terminology used. I like "ought". I am not for child molestation, but things which we would call child molestation have been a part of some cultures and thus seen as just by those people.

Well I wonder how "just" it is to those children, the victims?

I agree with everything you said. My issue isn’t with logic as much as dishonesty.

The problem I have is that most people don't directly come out and claim the "oughts" they hold as self evident. Instead they dance around criticisms, use loaded language, and/or try to frame the issue in a way that derives the greatest emotional response. This kind of dishonesty is what bothers me.

I tend to find it just insulting personally

That's why I tend to just view politics as a game in which the cunning manipulate the small minded, rather than something directed at me. Keeps the blood pressure low.

How do we define justice? If the sexual actions are merely a part of the bond between mentor and mentee to build strength, or a means to give sexual potency to the young ones, then from that context it would seem very just given common assumptions of what is good without loading sexuality onto what is bad. Really though, if we state that due to a lack of knowledge on justice that there is no reason to assume that justice exists then doing this is as just as anything else.

And once again I think post modernism is BS, it's a so-called intellectual way of dodging the obvious in order to defend one's own ignorance.

First principle of philosophy: nothing is obvious. If you think something is obvious, it's probably because you have been indoctrinated into such a belief since childhood. Trust nothing

Ok, I didn't invoke postmodernism, I invoked cultural relativism as an argument against our knowledge of absolute moral truths. The fact that I was still using logic to make an argument is proof that I am not a postmodernist but rather simply tend to strong levels of skepticism while maintaining the use of logic as valid.

My f---ing god listen to yourselves here, your trying to make a case for the morality of child molestation.

Some things are obvious. It is OBVIOUSLY correct that it is unfair to base legislation and laws off of one distinctive religion when not everyone believes in that religion, it is OBVIOUS that I am not responsible for the evils my forefathers did over 200 yrs ago, and that reverse discrimination is still discrimination, reguardless of how "politically incorrect" that fact is. There I have leveled both "conservatives" and "liberals".
If you do something to harm an innocent sentient being, your wrong, it's that simple. People have a right to not be screwed over. I don't give a f**k if it's good for your self interest to screw someone over, that doesn't make it right.

"do unto others as you would have them do unto you". It is a social survival behavior, one which is now more than ever being erased through propaganda because selfishness is being taught as the new gospel of the masses. You wouldn't like if your laws were based on someone else's beliefs, then don't push to have your personal beliefs made into law (righties). You don't want someone condemning you for something beyond your control, then don't condemn others for something beyond their control (lefties).
Post modernism, or "relativism" as AG calls it, is an irresponsible, careless get-away from ignorance rehab. Some things just are obvious, you've got to have the ability to look inside yourself and ask how you would feel in other peoples' situations. You might not know 100% exactly, but you know if you do something unfair to someone, you would not like to be in their shoes.