Almost there

I totally agree with you, Ben--it's the ideas that are important. We have good ideas and should make them clear and accessible to all. I'm really impressed by your new tax proposition, it sounds like it might have a really good effect on everybody (aside from the initial sudden drop in spending).
The whole point of my spiel is,

I want to make sure that our *ideas* themselves are /logical/. I want to avoid empty, partisan noise. I feel we should use our discussion to learn from each other.

Otherwise, without any guidelines, we'd be simply stabbing in the dark at each other. Throwing out arguments based on unstated assumptions, ignoring criticisms, making lots of noise, but little communication.

If we could just pledge to make our ideas clear and reasonable, both the creative and the critical ones, I feel that would be ideal.

A blog is what people make of it.

Let's agree on a general principle of clarity and reasonableness and get back quickly to the debating. I don't care about the format as long as anybody makes a good point.

-Chad