> So as I think I pretty civilly and clearly laid out my reasoning for why I think it is an important topic to discuss, and so many of you feel strongly enough about it to downvote, maybe one or two of you wouldn't mind to put your thoughts into words?

I think dang already laid out reason enough already. But hell, I'll add more fuel to the fire...

> [...] I did position myself pretty far to one side of an interpretive spectrum, as I find that is often a good way to elicit a response

You elicited a response alright. But not a good one, and not one conductive to constructive discussion. The well has been poisoned, so to speak. Why? Well, there's playing devil's advocate, and then there's playing the devil - your initial posts look more like a xenophobic version of the latter, to me, than the former. No offense...? I assume this is why your first post ended up flagged.

Even if we assumed this was on topic such discussion is unlikely to be productive at the moment as a result.

Rather than let sleeping dogs lie, you made a second post, defending the subject as on topic. Dang pointed out that it wasn't. Your reply, which we now discuss, admits you knew that it was "a bit of a stretch" (a bit of an understatement) - and still, yet again, attempts to force the topic, in explicit response to being asked not to. And you're wondering why it's attracting downvotes?

At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if the entire topic tree is eating down-votes - nobody wants to see any of this negative wasted opportunity for discussion. That includes this reply - if HN supported PMs, this is where I'd cut and paste this reply into one, to spare the other posters. As stands, I'll just have to take my licks as they come, if they come (I've found HN rather lenient in handing them out.)

(edit: fixed some awkward sentence flow.)