As you might have detected; I enjoy arguing. People aren't going to escape arguing with me by trying to be clever picking topics - I'm great at connecting things together. As early as number 2 we've launched into the whole capitalism v. socialism debate which is a firestorm in the making. A fun one, in fact.

If a family has anyone intelligent and disagreeable, this list won't help. And as strategies go, trying to control what topics come up is a great way to generate some bad feeling. Believing there are important topics that people refuse to discuss is a really good way to drive a wedge into a situation and split people apart. Indeed, it'll also hurt the person bringing the topics up if they believe they have to start squelching or moderating their beliefs to make life easy for someone with ideas they don't respect.

There is an implicit call here for some sort of family agenda where the time is spent uncovering shared values and goals. Which is a great idea, and which this list does try to go to. But everyone will get better results if they go in saying "this is time to identify commonalities" rather than trying to change the topic or pretending that the root problem is politics. It isn't politics, it is either an impossible situation or bad strategy at the personal level. Trying to change the topic is a good tactic for about 3-5 minutes, but it doesn't deal with the root causes that make arguments bubble up.